| The goal of this research is to study how French-speaking conservative protestants from Quebec evaluate the compatibility between their religious beliefs and the laws and regulations limiting corporal punishment of children. The specific issue is how they resolve eventual conflicts between their beliefs derived from the Bible and the legal framework. Several verses from the Bible, in particular Proverbs 22:15, prescribe corporal punishment with a rod in order "to drive it far from him" a supposedly innate child's inclination to evil. Hence, many members of conservative Protestant groups use objects (wooden spoons, sticks, rods) to inflict corporal punishment to their children. This practice puts them in contravention of article 43 of the Canadian Criminal Code, which limits and frames the use of physical punishment, as well as with Quebec's Youth Protection Act, that protects children from mistreatment, or whose security or development is or may be in danger.;From the analysis of the data, we derived three different attitudes of the protestant groups considered in the study when contradiction arises between religious doctrine and the law: conciliation, with an effort to accommodate religious beliefs to the precepts of the law; omission, which results in a passive disobedience of the law, and a challenging attitude vis-a-vis the authorities where disobedience to the laws is considered a form of militancy. Different elements are taken into consideration in the decision-making process that leads to the different attitudes.;In addition to its original goals, the research constitutes a detailed description of the doctrine of corporal punishment of children by conservative protestant French-speaking congregations from Quebec and several examples of its practices.;Keywords: Physical punishment, physical discipline, children's discipline, conservative Protestantism, Fundamentalism, article 43 of the Canadian Criminal Code, Children's rights, physical punishment doctrine.;The study applies a hybrid qualitative methodology based on a series of nonparticipant observations in situ of the religious services and doctrinal workshops at four conservative protestant congregations (two Evangelical churches, a Pentecostal one and a Baptist one) and interviews with 39 French-speaking members of such congregations from Quebec. Observations and interviews were supplemented with documentary analysis of material written or consulted by these groups. |
