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Lester Roloff
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== The Roloff Homes == Roloff began actively ministering to alcoholic and [[homeless]] men. His first mission house was established in Corpus Christi in 1954. Additional children's homes were eventually added throughout Texas, [[Oklahoma]], and [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]]. The first Roloff home for females, Rebekah Home for Girls, was established in 1968, which brought in young girls who were addicted to drugs, involved in [[prostitution]], serving jail time, kicked out of their homes, or in need of refuge. The only literature permitted to those living in the Roloff homes was the [[King James Version]] of the [[Bible]]. Television was forbidden, and only one hour of [[radio]] per day was permitted, to listen to Roloff's radio sermons. Daily church attendance was mandatory; each Roloff home had its own church and pastor on the grounds. Other policies, in accordance to the state, included windows being locked and alarm systems to prevent any truancy or escape. Contact with the outside world was denied except for monitored phone calls with parents. In addition, each dorm room had an intercom and loudspeaker. In December 2001, ''[[Texas Monthly]]'' reported on the (then closed) Rebekah Home:<ref>{{Cite web | url=http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/remember-christian-alamo?fullpage=1 | title=Remember the Christian Alamo| date=11 August 2016}}</ref> {{blockquote|Discipline at the Rebekah Home was rooted in a verse from ''[[Book of Proverbs|Proverbs]]'': "Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die." The dictum was liberally applied. Local authorities first investigated possible abuse at the Rebekah Home in 1973, when parents who were visiting their daughter reported seeing a girl being whipped. When welfare workers attempted to inspect the home, Roloff refused them entry on the grounds that it would infringe on the separation between church and state. Attorney General [[John Luke Hill|John Hill]] promptly filed suit against Roloff Evangelistic Enterprises, introducing affidavits from 16 Rebekah girls who said they had been whipped with leather straps, beaten with paddles, handcuffed to drainpipes, and locked in isolation cells—sometimes for such minor infractions as failing to memorize a Bible passage or forgetting to make a bed. Roloff defended these methods as good, old-fashioned discipline, solidly supported by Scripture, and denied that any treatment at Rebekah constituted abuse. During an evidentiary hearing, he made his position clear by declaring, "Better a pink bottom than a black soul." Attorney General Hill bluntly replied that it was not pink bottoms to which he objected, but ones that were blue, black, and bloody. Still refusing to submit his youth homes to state oversight, Roloff met with Hill, and with the Honeybee Quartet in tow, he prayed and wept for the salvation of Hill's soul. Unmoved, Hill pressed his case, and in 1974, a state district judge found Roloff in contempt of court and sentenced the preacher to five days behind bars. Roloff headed off to jail – as he would two more times during the state's long-running case against him – wearing a smile, with his well-worn Bible tucked under his arm.}} Some of the homes were temporarily closed in 1973 because Roloff refused on church-state issues to license the home through the state government. The institutions reopened in 1974 after Roloff successfully appealed to the [[Texas Supreme Court]], which ruled in Roloff's favor that it was unconstitutional to close the homes down. At one point, Roloff transferred ownership of the homes from his evangelistic corporation to his church, thus compelling the state to sue the "new" owners (and restart the entire litigation) while he kept the homes running. The [[Attorney General of Texas|Attorney General]] refiled the case and secured an injunction that tried to shut down the ministry. In 1975, the state passed laws that required the licensing of youth homes. Roloff was arrested twice for refusing to comply with this law. In 1979, in an incident known as the "Christian Alamo", Roloff urged churches and pastors across America who supported his ministry to come to Corpus Christi and form a human chain around the church to prevent the Texas Department of Human Resources from removing children from the homes. Even after his death, legal battles with the State of Texas continued, and ultimately the homes were closed in 1985. However, the homes reopened in 1997 after a new law was passed that allowed faith-based institutions to opt out of state licensing requirements. The law was subject to renewal in 2001 and was not renewed at that time (primarily on the basis that, of the then 2,015 faith-based institutions operating various types of child-care facilities, only a mere seven chose the opt-out provision), whereupon the homes were once again closed.
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