Child died of parents' Tennessee faith healing

Jessica Crank of Loudon County, Tenn., died of bone cancer at 15 after her mother and "spiritual father" substituted prayer for medical care, very much like 11-year-old Kara Neumann's Wausau, Wis., parents.

An emergency appeal has been filed on behalf of Jessica's "spiritual father," Ariel Ben Sherman. who alleges that the governing law is legally flawed and should be struck down. It doesn't tell parents when to stop praying over children who have been variously expressing their agony (Jessica had a 17-pound tumor), and call the doctor.

Or as one of Sherman's attorneys, Gregory P. Isaacs, explains:

Tennessee's Child Abuse and Neglect statutes are unconstitutionally overbroad and vague in that they fail to identify and provide fair notice of the point at which a person's reliance on his or her religious beliefs for spiritual treatment becomes criminal conduct, if ever.

Tennessee's 1994 "faith healing" law does appear to be intended to permit parents to substitute prayer for medical care. If somehow Sherman's attorneys prevail in their appeal, that does not end the case.

Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News writes:

Loudon County authorities have alleged that even if the faith-healing loophole were valid, it only applies to practitioners of a "recognized church or religious denomination." Sherman has been accused of being a cult leader whose Universal Life Church was cover for a commune with no ties to any legitimate religion.

The underlying principle here is long-established and well-understood:

The 1944 U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Prince v. Massachusetts, which concerned a Jehovah's Witness convicted of violating state child labor laws after insisting that her religious beliefs required her child to distribute Witness literature at night, that "the right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or child to communicable disease, or the latter to ill health or death... Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children.