[Morganite]

The murder trial of a Georgia couple accused of whipping, confining and then beating their son to death shines a spotlight on the child discipline practices of a controversial Brentwood church. Josef Smith, 8, died in 2003 on the day he was whipped with foot-long glue sticks, locked in a closet and told to pray to a picture of Jesus. Ex-members of the church say the punishments were in line with the discipline advice they heard while attending Remnant Fellowship Church.

But church leaders, including Gwen Shamblin — the charismatic woman known for creating the best-selling Christian weight-loss program called the Weigh Down Workshop — say the trial under way this week in an Atlanta suburb is their chance to set the record straight. The church condones discipline, not abuse, said Shamblin. In an exclusive interview, she called spanking a "loving," "time-tested, ancient teaching from the Bible." "Parents need to know that spankings and traditional groundings are not against the law," she said. "I abide by the law. "We don't leave marks."

On Oct. 8, 2003, emergency crews were called to the Smiths' home in Georgia after the couple reported Josef was having trouble breathing. He died the next day at an Atlanta hospital. Sonya Smith told police that on the day he died the couple had disciplined Josef with a series of glue-stick whippings, delivered in increments of 10. She said the boy was locked in a closet and made to pray to a picture of Jesus affixed to the ceiling. He was monitored in the kitchen via a camera in the closet.

A grand jury indicted the Smiths on murder charges, saying the couple struck him with unknown objects and confined him to a wooden box. The indictment included five counts of first-degree cruelty to a child, two counts of false imprisonment and three counts of aggravated assault, including beating him with glue sticks, the kind sold at craft shops to load into a hot-glue gun.

In an interview last week, Shamblin said her personal contact with the Smiths was limited and that she was only vaguely familiar with the family. She said the couple is innocent. Hundreds of Remnant church members have prayed and decided to collectively foot the Smiths' legal bills, Shamblin said. Shamblin wouldn't go into detail about the case, saying she didn't want to say anything that might jeopardize the Smiths' chance at getting a fair trial. She said she does not know of any Remnant members who will testify.

"It has been three years now, and I am more sure of their innocence than ever," Shamblin said. "The forensic evidence that will come out in court will prove the innocence of the Smiths." Part of the evidence police have collected is a tape recording of a women's group meeting in which Shamblin praises Sonya Smith for disciplining her son, the magazine Christianity Today reported in 2004. Prosecutors won't comment on what evidence will be introduced at trial.

In the recorded church conference call from 2003, Sonya Smith tells Shamblin she had locked her son in his room from Friday to Monday with only a Bible, the magazine reported.

"That's a miracle," Shamblin responded. "You've got a child going from bizarre to in control. So praise God."

At the trial on Tuesday, defense attorney Manny Arora cautioned jurors they would see photographs depicting the boy's injuries that "may make you sick to your stomach." But, he said, those injuries "did not cause Josef's death." Josef slipped and fell on a banister, he said.

Laura Boone, 17, has been called to testify as a witness in the trial this week. Boone, who will graduate from Brentwood High School this spring, began baby-sitting for Remnant families when she was in junior high school.

In April 2003, Boone baby-sat during an event at Weigh Down's Gen. George Patton Drive headquarters, where she says the Smiths had come for a weekend visit. "There were more than 20 kids total there," she said. "All the adults were getting ready to go into the worship room, and Josef Jr. was crying really hard in the corner. I asked his dad what he wanted me to do, and he looked right at me, and he hit his fist into his hand really hard."

Boone said Smith Sr. told her to hit his son, "Hit him hard," she recalled Smith telling her. "I just told him I didn't feel comfortable hitting his son," she said. "So, he took Josef in the little room next door, and we could hear Josef crying really hard and his dad hitting him." Boone said Josef returned to the nursery area still crying but with no visible marks on his body. That was the last time Boone or her friends accepted a baby-sitting job at Remnant or for a Remnant family, she said. Boone says she is testifying because she "wants to be a voice for Josef Smith Jr."

Some former church members say obedience to church leaders, called "getting under authority," is paramount for adults. Children's disobedience is a sign of sin, they say. Ex-members have created an online support group called City of Refuge. Former member Adam Brooks, a Philadelphia psychologist, says the online group has attracted about 100 people, ex-members and family members cut off from those still in the church. They are closely watching the trial coverage, he said.

Like other members, Steve Miozzi and his wife joined Remnant after taking a Weigh Down class at their church in east Cleveland, Ohio. He said he and his wife were initially enthralled. "You walked into the church, and you thought this is what heaven must look like," said Betsy Miozzi. Everyone was thin, their teeth white, the children well behaved, and many appeared to be financially successful, she said. And everyone was "lovebombing" the couple, she said, using the church's terminology for friendly embracing of new visitors.

But when Steve Miozzi sought help on how to deal with an 11-year-old boy misbehaving during worship services, he said he was told by church leader Ted Anger to beat the back of the boy's thighs with a glue stick. If the boy didn't behave he was to keep repeating the procedure, and if the boy continued to misbehave he was to put him in a room with nothing but a Bible, Miozzi said. Miozzi says that when he visited the Brentwood church for worship services, there were "glue sticks sticking out of diaper bags" in the aisles.

Child discipline is not what Miozzi says prompted him and his wife to leave the church. They left after three years because of a church philosophy that he said did not allow any questioning of church leaders. The strict obedience to their authority "destroyed my personal relationship with Jesus Christ," he said. Also, he said, he was taken to task for not losing enough weight.

Support group member Susan Warren of Oklahoma says she feels she has lost her daughter to Remnant. Her daughter, Cary, joined the church seven years ago at 17 after baby-sitting for a church couple. One day, Warren said, she and her husband stopped by the home where her daughter was baby-sitting three small children. She said she spied two long white glue sticks on the kitchen counter. "We were in the kitchen with the kids," she said. "We saw the glue sticks on the counter, and I said, 'why do you have to keep glues sticks out like that?' She (Cary) said they were necessary, that she didn't have to use them very often, but she did have to use them" to discipline the children, Warren said.

Shamblin said that the criticisms leveled by a handful of former church members distort reality. Miozzi, for example, has spoken with the media before. "Talking to someone who left our church in anger is like talking to someone's ex-boyfriend," Shamblin said. "People have learned they can get on television if they have something bad to say. It's really exciting being Gwen Shamblin's enemy." The handful of church critics must be weighed against thousands of more who have found joy in the church, she said.

"Nobody is told what to do here," Shamblin said. "They do it because they're under conviction to do so. If they don't like it, some of them leave on their own. It's not my way or the highway." Shamblin said the church does not promote or condone child abuse, adding that she differentiates between hitting and spanking. "Spanking a child is very different from hitting a child," she said. "Hitting is not spanking. Hitting is inflicting pain in anger. Spanking is a reluctant feeling that is necessary, and it does hurt the parent more than the child."

She called spanking a "time-tested, ancient teaching from the Bible. … Every child is different, and some parents in the Remnant, all they have to do is give the child a disapproving look, and some children are strong-willed. Teaching and constant direction in the form of both positive and, very occasionally negative, reinforcement is the most loving way to raise a child."

Shamblin and 78 church members also have filed a $3.3 million defamation suit against Rafael Martinez, who operates the self-described cult-watch organization Spirit Watch, saying statements that described church members' use of "extreme discipline" such as "harsh spankings and whippings" were a "lie and a falsehood." It's "been a series of media sound bites that have been taken out of context for three years," Shamblin said last week in a four-hour interview she sought out with The Tennessean. "This is unfortunate for the Smiths, and this will soon come to light the truth of what happened."

...

Can it be reconciled? What do you think?

[shygrneyzs]

I am stunned but I should not be. My ex got into a church like this while we were still married and I refused to even step in the building . You would not believe the teachings that came out of the so called pastor there.

To me, there should be no reconciliation. What those parents did amounts to unmeasurable horror to their son. God did not tell them to do the things they did. No where in a Christian Bible does it state to abuse your own child, to cause that child's death. Remember when Christ taught in Matthew 18:6 - But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

I have nothing against non denominational churches - but churches like The Remnant Fellowship Church give me the shivers. There are no apparent guidelines other than what the leader states, the translation of the Bible appears to be loosely applied to suit their beliefs, and there is no accountability. For their own leader to say, "we leave no marks". How comforting to know that! (NOT)

So now they are backpedaling and saying the parents were overzealous in their discipline. Both the parents and the spiritual leader should be accountable. The memory of this little boy deserves better.

[Lord_Darkclaw]

The Bible also says adulterous women should be stoned to death - hardly a sensible idea, even by the standards of the times it was written.

There are always people who use religion to justify evil.

[Fr_Chuck]

While of course a standard spanking is a great method of displinine of children when needed, but that is not beating or harming the child in any way. It is merely an example of something used in the wrong way.

[Morganite]

While of course a standard spanking is a great method of displinine of children when needed, but that is not beating or harming the child in any way. It is merely an example of something used in the wrong way.

It is my conviction that beating a child cannot be reconciled to the Christian message. How does violence instil anything into the young except fear, pain, and the ringing message that it is acceptable to solve probloems with violence.

Wasn't it Adolph Hitler who said: "My father used to beat me and it didn't do me any harm!"?

Anyone who uses violence to resolve issues, whether behavioural or otherwise, has already lost the battle and is resorting to pre-Christian primitive transmission of fear into another person or child in order to modify behaviour. Jesus commanded his followers to "Love one another." This can and must be translated into a pattern of parental behaviour in raising children and in correcting them with kindness, love, and tender mercy. We cannot treat our babies as if they were hardened criminals.

[Fr_Chuck]

Actually not properly raising your child is not christian and giving proper disipline to your child is very christian and even highly recommended in the bible. This is of course not beating or harming, but a spanking is not violence at all, but very proper, What we have in our socieity today is a good example of why it does not work not to.

And spanking a child when it is serious enough is more love than most can ever understand, it may well save that child's life in the future.

And you are right we can't treat them like criminals, you can't spank the criminal, but we should treat them like kids who need proper punishment for their actions.