Three Elementary Students Suspended For ‘Disruptive’ Preaching
April 23, 1988
MARION, N.C. (AP) _ Three elementary school students who were following their father’s profession of street preaching were suspended for disruptive behavior after they allegedly shouted at other students and called teachers ″whoremongers.″
Duffy Strode, 10, was suspended for five days, while Pepper Strode, 7, and Matthew Strode, 5, were suspended for three days.
″I have pled with this man,″ school Superintendent David Ricketts said of the children’s father, David Strode. ″We’ve given them every opportunity to comply with the rules. This is the fourth or fifth violation.
″I know it looks crazy to suspend the kindergartner, but the preaching is not the issue,″ Ricketts said.
Strode said the children are not disruptive, that they are ″just preaching Scripture.″
Eastfield Elementary principal Jim Gorst said the words may be scriptural, but refererences to his teachers as whoremongers had created some stress. The Scripture the children are using is Hebrews 13:4, which says, ″Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.″
The students, who were suspended Thursday, returned to their preaching just outside the school gates twice Friday. But the appearance of an officer from the McDowell County Sheriff’s Department - requested by Gorst - ended the preaching.
Gorst said it was the first time in his seven years as principal he had suspended a kindergartner.
Gorst said the two boys and their sister were suspended for disruptive behavior and refusing to come into the school building between 7:30 a.m. and 8 a.m. Thursday.
The children, he said, were ″screaming. They were just screaming at people.″
David Stroke said he had contacted an attorney.
″They may be within their rights,″ Strode said of school officials’ suspension of the chidren. ″If they are, we’ll just have to take it.″
School board attorney Penn Dameron, who had witnessed earlier preaching by the children, said he found it disruptive.
″The children who are being yelled at were clearly disturbed,″ Dameron said. ″Eastfield has a policy against disruptive behavior, and if children are being upset, we have to treat it as disruptive behavior.″
Ryan Duffey Strode (born May 25, 1977) is an American former street preacher who, as a 10-year-old child, became the subject of nationwide controversy in the 1980s for his idiosyncratic style of preaching. Strode's sermons were characterized by bellowing rote-learned excerpts from the Bible; in particular those pertaining to Hell and sin.
Duffey Strode and his family made national news in 1988 when then-10-year-old Duffey, his 6-year-old sister, Pepper, and their 5-year-old brother, Matthew, began preaching outside their Marion, North Carolina elementary school. The children's idiosyncratic style of preaching consisted of shouting biblical passages concerning Christian views of Hell and sin at their classmates. Oprah Winfrey, Larry King, and at least 15 other television talk-show hosts sought interviews with the preaching children who had become a source of controversy in their mountain town.[1]
After six months of media attention and many school suspensions,[4] Duffey Strode's parents, David and Robin Strode, agreed to keep their children away from the school and educate the three themselves.[1][5]
As an adolescent, Duffey began dating Kim Ellington, a girl who attended New Manna Baptist Church, the Marion, North Carolina megachurch that had previously thrown the Strode family out. He left home in June 1997 to live with a punk rocker friend and the Strode family would not speak to him for 10 months. In November 1997, Duffey and Ellington, then aged 20 and 19 years, respectively, were married at the Marion Community Center, where the Strode family had once faced hundreds of angry townspeople at a filming of The Sally Jessy Raphael Show. David, Robin, Pepper, and Matthew Strode did not attend the wedding.[1]
Duffey Strode
Born
Ryan Duffey Strode
May 25, 1977 (age 45)
United States
Nationality
American
Occupation
Street preacher
Spouse
Kim Ellington
(m. 1997; div. 2020)
Children
Rachel Strode
Elijah Dallas Strode
