ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Friday, April 4, 1997                  TAG: 9704040069
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-2  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: LITTLE ROCK, ARK.
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS| 

BAPTIST ELDERS SHUT DAY CARE, CITE BIBLE CHURCH: MOM'S PLACE IS AT HOME

The church said families could get by on one salary if they gave up such things as big TVs and nice vacations.

A Baptist church board says it shut down its day care center to get mothers to stay at home because working mothers ``neglect their children, damage their marriages and set a bad example.''

Now 27 parents are without day care and state officials are rushing to license another facility to replace the center at the First Baptist Church of Berryville - a small town in northwest Arkansas.

``This is not `Happy Days' and we are not living in the 1950s,'' Katrena Alexander, 44, who runs a manufacturing company with her husband, said Thursday.

Alexander's daughter Keanna was enrolled at the church's day care for a year before it closed two weeks ago. The girl cried when she heard the news.

``I don't know of too many people here who can survive on one person's salary, especially if that salary is minimum wage,'' she said. ``This is just something that shouldn't have happened in this decade.''

On Feb. 14, members of the First Baptist Church's Corner Stone Day Care board sent a letter to parents stating that the church would close the center in the spring and reduce its tuition until its closure.

In a letter that followed, the church said that while it was sensitive to the plight of single parents, it could not continue the center because its existence encouraged mothers to work outside the home.

The letter added that families could get by on one salary if luxuries such as ``big T.V.'s, a microwave, new clothes, eating out and nice vacations'' were forfeited.

``God intended for the home to be the center of a mother's world,'' the church said. ``In Titus 2:5, women are instructed to be `discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good and obedient to their own husbands.'''

The center closed March 14.

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