The Followers of Christ Church in Oregon embrace the belief that prayers are all you need. If your child becomes ill or sick, then just pray them better, no calling on doctors.
Of 78 children buried in the church cemetery from 1955 to 1998, at least 21 could have been saved by medical intervention, according to a 1998 analysis by The Oregonian.
While the church itself was founded in 1880 and is part of what could best be described as being part of the faith-healing Pentecostal movement, it is very obviously no longer 1880. Back then the survival rates of young children was grim; no modern medicine, no antibiotics, no vaccines.
What is unknown from that time is the infant mortality rate because Oregon did not even begin collecting statistics until the 20th century. However, the US National infant mortality rate was about 150–200 deaths per 1,000 live births (15–20%). I should also add that for more remote areas such as Oregon, it was higher.
To put that into stark terms – if you had 5 kids, then on average at least one was not going to survive. We often forget how bleak and traumatic life once was in a world without antibiotics, modern sanitation, vaccines, and accessible health clinics. This was not some far distant past, but instead was really not all that long ago. In 1880, you had prayer, and that is all you had, there was nothing else. If your child died, it was his will, and if your child recovered, it was perhaps deemed a miracle.
It is no longer 1880. Today in Oregon the infant mortality rate is about 4–5 per 1,000 – that’s a very dramatic change from how it once was.
Tragically, this group still live as if there was no modern medicine and that prayer was all you could do.
Faith vs Intervention – Conflicts
Medicine 101 – you cannot treat patients without their informed consent. If an adult refuses life-saving medical care for religious reasons then that is their choice. Even if you argue that they are gripped by a religious delusion, it is still their choice.
However …
Yes, you can see where this is now going.
Infants and very young children can’t make an informed consent decision, and so generally that duty falls to parents. Where do things then stand if the parents refuse all medical care for infants?
On one side you have ethics frameworks – International human rights law (e.g., the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) emphasizes that children have a right to health and medical treatment when it can prevent death or serious harm.
On the other side you have religious freedoms – parents generally have wide latitude to raise children according to their values and beliefs, including religious ones.
So what happens legally and ethically when these conflict?
Where a child’s life is at risk most ethicists and courts argue that the child’s right to life and health overrides parental religious freedom.
Where there is no immediate threat to life and it involves the refusal of a therapy, such as a vaccine, then society tends to lean towards allowing the parental religious freedom to prevail. That itself may have a consequence, for example a school refusing to accept unvaccinated children, but it’s still a choice.
What has previously happened in Oregon?
The law was clear. Where parents had refused life-saving medical care and that had resulted in the death of a child, there was a valid and accepted defence against any homicide charges – spiritual treatment.
Motivated by the long ongoing string of the pointless death of infants, the Oregon Legislature removed that defence in 2011 via HB2721.
Thereafter, parents faced homicide charges. If they failed to get life-saving medical care for infants that died then they went to jail. For that specific church, it worked out like this …
- In June 2011, Timothy and Rebecca Wyland were convicted of first-degree criminal mistreatment and sentenced to 90 days in jail for using faith healing instead of seeking medical care for their infant daughter.
- On September 29, 2011, a Clackamas County jury unanimously found church members Dale and Shannon Hickman guilty of second-degree manslaughter in connection with the September 26, 2009, death of their infant son David, less than nine hours after his birth.
- etc…
So why am I writing about this now?
Because it keeps happening and so fast forward to the very latest example.
September 2025 – church menbers Taylor and Blair Edwards go to jail
Back in June 24, 2023, Hayden Edwards was born at home, and then two days later he stopped taking milk. After a bit he turned blue and stopped breathing, so his mother Taylor tried to revive him with some cold water. That appears to work, but he once again stopped breathing and tragically died.
Because of their religious beliefs they did not seek out any medical care, but instead had invited other church members to come and “pray and anoint the sick baby” with oil.
Reminder: It’s not 1880, this is 2025.
An Oregon City couple who failed to seek medical help for their sick newborn in 2023 will serve 30 days in jail and five years of probation as a result of the baby’s death. Clackamas County Circuit Court Judge Michael Wetzel sentenced Taylor and Blair Edwards on Monday after the couple pleaded guilty to criminal mistreatment.
Because of what happened, the father has apparently changed his mind …
Blair Edwards expressed remorse before the court Monday, acknowledging that he and his wife were wrong to not seek medical care for their son, Hayden. He said he now encourages other members of the church to do so when necessary.
“We cannot enforce our perspective on others in our community, however, we desire that these words will be considered, including by those in our community, that the death of our son Hayden has provided this recognition that medical care for the purpose of preserving life is a value that we understand is important,” he said.
I’m honestly not sure if that is sincere, or if he is telling the court what he thinks they need to hear. The above is basically a statement composed in conjunction with the court and is designed to send a message. In all probability those that actually need to hear it will most probably refuse to listen because it is just the Devil testing their “faith”.
The following image is a screen capture from a KCBY report (that you can find here and is dated Sept 8, 2025) of the parents.
What has now happened is that they have been sentenced to 30 days in jail. As explained by District Attorney John Wentworth …
“We have and will continue to prosecute members of this church or any other person who fails to seek necessary medical treatment for a child in their care.“
Yes but why just 30 days?
A bit more detail explains that …
The prosecutor said the medical examiner ruled Hayden died from hyperbilirubinemia, an excessive amount of bilirubin in the blood, which leads to jaundice.
Amos said the medical examiner also said that she could not say “with medical and scientific certainty” that medical intervention would have saved the boy.
Untreated jaundice can lead to a potentially fatal condition known as kernicterus, a form of brain damage. The condition is rare in the U.S., Amos said.
He told the judge that even though “the statistics suggest strongly that there was a very, very high probability that by taking Hayden to the doctor, he could have survived,” prosecutors worried they could not prove the couple’s failure to call for medical help led to their son’s death.
The child, he said, “was surrounded in a bedroom by people who loved him very much, but it’s those same people who sat there for over five hours and refused to do anything to help that young child, that helped that young baby. That is why they’re here. They did nothing to save that child.”
In other words, it’s 30 days for failing to provide care. Since they can’t prove with 100% certainty that lack of care resulted in the death, then that has been a factor in the sentencing.
A Few Further Thoughts
People will do stupid things to themselves for religious reasons, and if that results in real harm to themselves then so be it, that’s their choice.
However, if the deeply religious do stuff that results in a life threatening outcome for a minor, then yes, society not only should, but must intervene.
This is just the latest example of something like this happening to members of this one church. The last time in happened in 2018 the parents ended up in jail for 6 years because it was very clear that their neglect resulted in a death. Did that send a message to the members of this church that they can’t do this?
Nope, clearly not, because here we are once again.
Past experience is an indicator of future behaviour, so I can safely predict that we will be back here to repeat all this once again at some point.
You might indeed be tempted to consider that common sense is something that could one day prevail, but often when some strands of religion are passionately embraced, you will quickly discover that common sense is rendered so damn rare that finding it amongst the flock is akin to finding somebody with a superpower.