Scrutiny of Miracle Hill's faith-based approach reaches new level

Beth Lesser and her husband were foster parents for 10 years before moving from Florida to the Upstate.

When she moved here, she decided she wanted to volunteer to mentor children in foster care, so she contacted a local group for assistance. An employee with the local nonprofit Miracle Hill was among the trainers for the program.

After training and completing background checks, Lesser said protestant Christians were given an application and told that they could work with the staff at Miracle Hill. Others were given the option of working with the state Department of Social Services, she said.

Lesser, who is Jewish, said she wasn't given the opportunity to work with Miracle Hill, which has a significantly higher pool of children. In the end, her options for mentoring were limited, she said. The reason? She was told by Miracle Hill staff that she wasn't selected because she didn't share the organization's Christian beliefs.

"To say we can go somewhere else is like saying you can’t use this state-funded hospital, but you can go to the one down the street," she said.

The organization, which began in 1937 and has also faced scrutiny over its hiring practices that include employing only staff with certain religious beliefs, is now in jeopardy of losing its right to work with foster families.  

“The issue, as we see it, is that we’ve been threatened that if we don’t open our Miracle Hill foster care families to non-Christians, we can no longer recruit foster families and we can no longer support them,” Reid Lehman, Miracle Hill's president and CEO, said. “We think that’s a religious liberty issue.”

Miracle Hill is the largest provider of foster families in South Carolina for foster children who do not have significant special needs, Gov. Henry McMaster said. If the organization continues to insist on only working with potential mentors and foster parents who share its religious beliefs, the nonprofit risks not receiving millions of dollars it has received over the years from the state and federal government for its fostering program.

Lehman said the state agency has made it clear that it wants Miracle Hill’s foster care program to stop recruiting only Christian families because it believes screening on the basis of religion is unacceptable under state regulation and federal guidelines. The issue has drawn the attention of McMaster. In recent letters to Miracle Hill and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and as part of his reelection campaign, McMaster has said Miracle Hill should receive a waiver so it can continue to receive state and federal money for its foster care services.

“As governor, I am protecting religious freedom for all South Carolinians, and I’m working tirelessly to keep Miracle Hill operating at full force,” McMaster's letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says.

More:South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster defends Miracle Hill's Christian requirement

Karen Wingo, a spokeswoman for DSS, said there are 11 church-affiliated or Christian-based child placement agencies in South Carolina, but Miracle Hill is the only one that has religious requirements for foster parents.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services could not be reached for comment.

Foster care in South Carolina

South Carolina faces a shortage of foster parents for more than 4,000 children in the state.

Miracle Hill recruits 15 percent of foster families in the state, McMaster said in the letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Shelly Gromer, of Greer, said if she loses the option of Miracle Hill, she doesn’t know if she’ll continue being a foster parent.

“Taking a child into your home and fostering a child is a very difficult thing,” Gromer, a mother of three, said. “I have chosen to be a believer, and Christ is like at the center of everything I do. I pray about everything. I want to surround myself with people who are like-minded."

The staff at the community services agency prays about which child is going to be placed with you, Gromer said.

“That’s what keeps me being able to do it,” Gromer said. “If you have to take that out of it, I would probably have to consider if I can do it because it might not be something I can handle."

Miracle Hill provides about 100 families each year, Lehman said. That number is achieved in part because of its religious approach, Miracle Hill's supporters say.

Steve and Esther Cruice, of Taylors, said they chose to become licensed foster parents through Miracle Hill five years ago because they share the same beliefs as the Christian organization. The Cruices, parents of four adult children, said Miracle Hill's support encourages them to recruit others to become foster parents.

The nonprofit knew of concerns more than a year ago

In a letter that McMaster wrote to Lehman, Miracle Hill's CEO, the governor wrote that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requires the state DSS to run its foster care program according to set federal standards, and the federal agency reserves the right to recoup any money paid to the state in the event of noncompliance.

For its fiscal year ending June 30, 2017, Miracle Hill spent $1,038,000 supporting its foster care program, Lehman said. Funds from DSS were 47 percent or $721,332 of the money the organization spent on foster care for the seven months ending Jan. 31, 2018, he said.

Lehman said he does not know what percentage of the DSS funds are federal dollars.

DSS contacted Miracle Hill in January 2017 and said the nonprofit needed to survey all of its foster care providers to be sure no one was discriminating in its recruitment of foster families, Lehman said.

“We found that a little weird because we’ve been doing this for 29 years and no one has ever raised the issue with us before,” he said. “No one has ever suggested that we couldn’t recruit Christian foster families.”

Lesser said after Miracle Hill refused to allow her to mentor a child because of her religious beliefs, she filed a discrimination complaint with DSS last year. 

She said the nonprofit's stance should disqualify it from receiving state funding because the organization is discriminating on the basis of religion and all eligible foster parents and mentors should have the same options.

Lehman's response: Miracle Hill supports the right of any healthy adult individual to become a foster parent.

When someone of a different faith contacts the organization about becoming foster parents, his staff connects them with other foster care providers.

More:OPINION: Miracle Hill Ministries is needed now more than ever

McMaster said in his letter that he believes the licensing and participation of faith-based entities in the state foster care system is a constitutionally-protected practice.

Miracle Hill also believes its paid staff should be Christians. Sometimes when someone applies for a job and they’re asked to share the story, their faith journey, they say: “You can’t do that. That’s illegal under federal law,” Lehman said.

“It is for most employers but it’s not for religious employers,” Lehman said.

Miracle Hill protected its hiring practices last summer, when it received a proposed state contract saying it could not discriminate in hiring on the basis of religion, Lehman said.

“They modified the language to say we couldn’t illegally discriminate in hiring on the basis of religion,” Lehman said. “That sounds like mincing words but it was a recognition that religious organizations have the right under federal law to hire people consistent with their faith.”