My SDA Church Board Voted My High School Friend Out

I have a story to tell about something that happened to a friend of mine as we were both growing up fully immersed in Seventh-day Adventist culture. This is something that has seriously bothered me about the church I grew up in, and I have never really spoken out about it before.

So this girl was one year older than me, but I've known her my entire life. We went to church, were in Pathfinders, and went to SDA schools. We graduated from an SDA high school and spent almost all of our time socializing with the same group of kids from birth until high school graduation.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with purity culture and how harmful it is for youth. This girl was known to have had a boyfriend while pretty young, before the rest of us, but I want to emphasize she was only too young when looking through the lens of our church's social standards. She was probably around 13 or 14. I believe she got in a little bit of trouble for kissing or showing public affection.

Well, this friend ended up getting pregnant when she was 15, in the 9th grade, by a boy completely outside of the church / school / SDA bubble. So she was definitely in trouble at school, but I cannot remember what her punishment was. The actions of the church are what I find most disturbing.

My father was on the still all-male church board. They ended up discussing the pregnancy of the unwed 15 year old girl in their congregation during their board meeting, along with her history, and attempted to gauge her level of remorse. Then they held a vote on whether or not she should be removed from the church. As in, "She clearly doesn't seem sorry enough, let's reject her when she probably needs us the very most?"

In all my years going to my church before I left, I had not heard of anyone being asked to leave because of their sins aside from this friend of mine and an older man that was actually abusive towards young girls.

When my father told me about this board meeting, I immediately knew I didn't want to be a part of this religion any longer. But I wasn't allowed to make my own decision about going to church for another several years, until when I was a senior in high school.