WORLD Magazine by God's World Publications

Author:God's World Publications
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: God's World Publications
Published: 2013-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

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Schools of thought

HOMESCHOOLING: The German government harasses and persecutes that country’s few homeschoolers. A German homeschooling family’s fight for asylum in the United States will say a lot about the U.S. government’s official attitude toward the growing ... Jamie Dean | 2419 words

Matt Rose

MORRISTOWN, Tenn.—From a distance, the small community of Morristown, Tenn., might remind outsiders of a small hamlet in the German countryside: Quaint houses sit tucked into verdant hillsides, and handfuls of churches dot the landscape.

One noticeable difference: Churches in Morristown often fill up on Sunday mornings. It’s a stark contrast with a city like Berlin, where the area is full of historic church buildings, but as few as 3 percent of the city’s population regularly attends services. (Indeed, officials in the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Berlin announced they would cut the number of churches in their region by 70 percent over the next seven years.)

For decades, Germany’s Catholic Church and its official Protestant denomination have lost congregants by the thousands, and the situation is even more tenuous for evangelicals: As little as 1 to 2 percent of the German population identifies as evangelical.

It’s a challenging landscape for the tiny percentage of German evangelicals living in a heavily secularized society wary of evangelical Christians. For some, the spiritually dry climate is stifling.

One example includes Christian parents who want to homeschool their children in a country that requires children to attend state-approved schools. Homeschools don’t qualify.

That dynamic led Uwe and Hannelore Romeike to flee Germany with their five children in 2008. (They’ve since had another daughter and expect a baby in June.) The Christian couple faced increasing fines and the threat of losing custody of their children after they decided to homeschool in 2006.

The family settled here in Morristown, Tenn., where they knew another German family. They soon applied for asylum, arguing that they couldn’t return to Germany because they feared persecution for their religious-based determination to homeschool.

An immigration judge granted the family’s asylum request in 2010, marking the first time a family has won asylum based on homeschooling. But the Obama administration appealed, and the Board of Immigration Appeals reversed the Romeikes’ asylum win. The case is set to continue on April 23 in another hearing at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio.

The Romeikes—represented by the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association—plan to challenge the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) argument that the family’s case doesn’t constitute persecution by the German government. (The court likely won’t render a decision for at least several weeks.)

If they lose, the Romeikes could face deportation. If they win, their case could establish a precedent for other foreign homeschool families to seek asylum in the United States, if their home governments don’t allow homeschooling.

Meanwhile, the family’s saga highlights the challenges confronting evangelical Christians in Germany—both homeschooling families and those who send their children to public schools.

It also highlights an important moment for the United States: The Romeike case carries significant implications for whether the Obama administration deems homeschooling a fundamental human right.

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