Word: faithfully
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Whether it is denial, lingering shock or stout prairie faith, such optimism was as relentless as the river, even after a week without running water or plumbing. Residents would call a radio station, ask about a certain block of a specific street and learn that their house was under 8 ft. of water. "Well, alrighty then. Thank you very much...
...probation. Last week the Nixons were found guilty of the same charges in the death of their 16-year-old daughter Shannon, who fell into a diabetic coma after four days of dehydration and nausea, dying on June 21, 1995. The Nixons, members of a tiny sect called the Faith Tabernacle Congregation, had refused to call a doctor on both occasions, convinced that all disease comes from the devil and that only God can cure illness. Charles Nixon, the dead children's grandfather and the pastor of Altoona's 140-member Faith Tabernacle congregation, clarified the sect's tenet...
...Nixons were devastated by the loss of their daughter. But their faith was unshaken: it was God's will to take Shannon. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania law held them responsible for her death, even though their lawyer, Steven Passarello argued that Shannon was more than able to decide for herself whether she wanted to follow the sect's doctrine or seek medical help. William Haberstroh, the prosecuting attorney, countered that a life-or-death situation demanded parental intervention even for a mature minor. The judge's instruction that the case was one of law, not of religion, practically sealed the verdict...
...Faith Tabernacle, founded in 1897 and centered in Philadelphia, has run up against the law before. In 1983 two members were convicted in the death of their two-year-old son, based on a 1944 Supreme Court ruling that also influenced the Nixon case: "Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow that they are free ... to make martyrs of their children before they have reached the age of full and legal discretion...
...months. None of her children has been delivered with medical assistance. Haberstroh is under no illusions that even a harsh penalty will change the Nixons' beliefs. A police detective who interviewed the Nixons reported that the family saw the trial as "an instrument of the devil testing their faith." But Haberstroh is determined to follow through, if only for the sake of the surviving Nixon children. "Diabetes is often an inherited illness," says he. "If one child had it, others may well have...