Homeschooling German Evangelicals Seek Asylum in U.S., Germany Remains Insistent that Mass Indoctrination Way to Go, Experience Being the Best Teacher « Strange Herring
Cuis regio, eius religio sucks if you have only one massive secular rex.
Romeike, his wife, Hannelore, and their children are living in a modest duplex about 40 miles northeast of Knoxville while they seek political asylum here. They say they were persecuted for their evangelical Christian beliefs and homeschooling their children in Germany, where school attendance is compulsory.
When the Romeikes wouldn’t comply with repeated orders to send the children to school, police came to their home one October morning in 2006 and took the children, crying and upset, to school.
“We tried not to open the door, but they (police) kept ringing the doorbell for 15 or 20 minutes,†Romeike said. “They called us by phone and spoke on the answering machine and said they would knock open the door if we didn’t open it. So I opened it.â€
Romeike said he wanted to teach his children because their school textbooks contained language and ideas that conflicted with his family’s values.
He had to pay fines equivalent to hundreds of dollars (euros) for his decision, and he’s afraid that, if he returns to Germany, police will arrest him and authorities will take away his children, who range in age from 11 to 3.
So, are we seeing the outright rejection of Luther’s Two Kingdoms philosophy, whereby the secular realm has intruded into the home life of the family and stripped parents of their priestly duties to instruct and nurture their children in the faith? Or are these Christians disobeying rightful authority by withholding their children from school, expecting the secular realm to uphold spiritual values? Is that realistic in 2009? Or do tax-paying Christian parents have a right to demand, at the very least, that their spiritual values not be undermined, even if not explicitly promulgated?
Or are German Christians simply living in a social-welfare tyranny wherein their freedoms have been circumscribed “for their own good�
