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Lawyers argue over pastor’s role
AUSTIN, Texas — In 2000, Peggy Lee Penley’s marriage had hit the skids. She and her husband went through marital counseling, but Penley was now being pulled in another direction. She was having an affair (with a man she would later marry), and she wanted a divorce.
She confided in the man she considered her therapist. Trouble was, C.L. “Buddy” Westbrook also was Penley’s pastor, and church law compelled him to pursue discipline against Penley, including informing the congregation of her adultery and instructing members to shun her.
Six years later, lawyers are still wrangling over whether Westbrook was acting as Penley’s state-licensed secular counselor, which could subject him to a negligence lawsuit, or as her church pastor, which would likely protect him from such a suit under the First Amendment. Lower courts are split over whether the court has jurisdiction, so lawyers for Westbrook and Penley took their arguments to the Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Representing Westbrook, Kelly Shackelford of the Liberty Legal Institute in Plano, Texas, made a case for religious liberty, saying that if the courts interfere with the discipline doctrine of Crossland Community Bible Church, they will undermine church autonomy provided by the First Amendment and open the floodgates to disgruntled parishioners suing their pastors simply for following church doctrine.
“Who decides church discipline?” Shackelford proposed. “Judges or churches?”
Shackelford has used this case and a similar case in Dallas, which will be heard by the Texas Court of Appeals today, to rally churches around religious liberty in a recent fund-raising letter. “If we win,” he wrote, “these attacks on churches will be stopped forever.”
The U.S. Constitution and previous court rulings made clear, Shackelford argued, that the courts should not interfere with church autonomy when it comes to matters of religious doctrine, leadership and discipline. There are exceptions, he said, such as physical and sexual assault. But the courts have found in the past that while an “intangible emotional” harm may occur in church discipline matters, preserving the integrity of the First Amendment is more important.
Penley’s lawyer Darrell Keith of the Keith Law Firm in Fort Worth tried to steer the focus away from Shackelford’s focus on religious freedom.
“I think the Liberty Legal group … has an agenda to advance these types of cases,” he said.
Keith said he isn’t out to undermine the First Amendment but to hold Westbrook responsible for negligence in his role as a secular counselor.
Keith said Penley and Westbrook knew each other at a church they attended, and when Penley began having trouble in her marriage in 1998, she sought counseling from Westbrook who had a secular, state-licensed practice. Keith said she paid him for the services. The following year, Penley helped Westbrook start a new church where he served as pastor. Westbrook invited Penley and her husband to attend group counseling sessions at his home, which Keith said were secular in nature. Penley, Keith argued, was under the impression that even though Westbrook was now her pastor and the other members of the group were from her new congregation, Westbrook was acting as a counselor, not a minister.
Justice Harriet O’Neill suggested Keith was “dancing on the head of a pin” in his efforts to parse out secular from ecclesiastical activity.
But Keith maintained Westbrook had an “obvious conflict of interest” and caused Penley mental anguish and humiliation before he and the elders wrote a letter about her to the congregation. Westbrook, he said, used his secular role to elicit information from Penley and then broke that trust by informing the elders, who issued a letter to the congregation disclosing Penley’s affair.
Penley quit the church before Westbrook began the discipline, which is based on the Bible’s Matthew18:15-17. The passage instructs believers to first meet one on one with a sinner and urge him to repent, then bring a group to confront the person. When that fails, the Bible says, “treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
In 2002, Penley’s lawsuit was dismissed by district court for lack of jurisdiction. But in 2004, a ruling by the 2nd District Court of Appeals stated that while the court could not hear a case against the church and the elders, Westbrook could be sued for professional negligence as a state-licensed secular counselor.
Lawyers said the Texas Supreme Court could take months to issue a decision that would determine whether the courts can hear a case against Westbrook.
Eileen E. Flynn writes for the Austin American-Statesman.
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