Exorcisms, Underage Marriages, and the Texas Supreme Court
Jeffrey Weiss, in The Dallas Morning News religion blog, reports on a Texas Supreme Court ruling against a girl who says she was injured by an exorcism. The girl claimed the church abused her and falsely imprisoned her. The Court ruled that a church can't be sued for what it was doing as part of its religious activities.
"We further conclude the case, as tried, presents an ecclesiastical dispute over religious conduct that would unconstitutionally entangle the court in matters of church doctrine and, accordingly, reverse the court of appeals' judgment and dismiss the case."I am curious about the case's impact on the FLDS case in west Texas. In that case, it was alleged that underage girls were being "married" to adult men. The Texas Supreme Court recently ruled that there wasn't enough evidence in the FLDS case for Child Protective Services to take children away from their parents. Now, with this latest ruling, I wonder if even if there had been strong evidence of sexual abuse of children, whether the state of Texas could do anything about it. FLDS could claim this is just another "ecclesiastical dispute over religious conduct that would unconstitutionally entangle the court in matters of church doctrine."
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