Editorial standards

Christian Pro Se publishes spiritual encouragement, practical education, safety material, referrals, and free tools for people navigating United States family courts without a lawyer. These standards describe how we prepare and correct that work.

Sources and claims

We prefer primary sources for law, government programs, professional standards, and official service information. For health, trauma, abuse, and pastoral-care claims, we look for established professional guidance and peer-reviewed research. Survivor-oriented and faith-community resources can add essential practical perspective, but we identify their role rather than presenting every source as equivalent evidence.

We distinguish study material from live referral information. Laws, court procedures, eligibility rules, phone numbers, and service availability can change. Pages should link visitors to the current authority for their jurisdiction instead of turning a dated summary into confident legal instruction.

Scripture and pastoral application

We read a passage in its literary and historical context before treating it as personally relevant. A doctrinally related verse is not automatically a safe response in a particular moment. We review proposed applications for shame, coercion, spiritualized certainty, promises the passage does not make, and pressure toward unsafe endurance, contact, mediation, forgiveness, or reconciliation.

Our interpretations and pastoral commentary are grounded in Scripture and informed by many sources from several Christian traditions, rather than the teaching of a single denomination. Where we find interpretations that differ, we try to remain with the ground they share and do not claim any one tradition’s reading as universal Christian agreement.

Forgiveness does not by itself restore trust, access, custody, contact, or a relationship. Submission, peace, unity, and reconciliation must not be used to excuse violence, coercive control, stalking, sexual coercion, economic control, threats, evidence interference, or disregard of a court order.

Abuse and family-court safety

We do not describe coercive control as merely a mutual communication problem. Safety can require individual advocacy, confidential planning, legal help, trauma-informed care, or culturally specific support. Joint counseling, mediation, confrontation, or renewed contact is not a default response to abuse.

We do not interpret a custody outcome as God’s verdict on a person’s worth, faithfulness, or parenthood. Scripture may offer pastoral support, but it does not replace current legal advice, representation, evidence preservation, or safety planning.

Use of AI-assisted tools

AI-assisted research and drafting can help compare sources, test consistency, and find gaps. It can also invent facts, flatten disagreement, miss context, and produce confident but unsafe language. Material claims should therefore be traceable to sources and reviewed before publication. Automated output is not treated as an authority merely because it is fluent.

Be Still is designed as support, not as a substitute for a pastor, chaplain, therapist, advocate, lawyer, emergency service, or trusted human presence. How Be Still works explains its passage-selection and safety process in more detail.

Corrections and updates

We welcome specific corrections through feedback. A useful correction identifies the page, the statement at issue, and a source that supports the change. Do not send names, case numbers, court documents, or identifying facts.

When a meaningful factual error is confirmed, we aim to correct the page rather than silently preserve it. Time-sensitive pages should show a review date when that date can be maintained accurately. Where the evidence is limited or disputed, we should say so plainly.