{"id":25624,"date":"2024-12-13T15:46:23","date_gmt":"2024-12-13T20:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=25624"},"modified":"2024-12-13T15:46:23","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T20:46:23","slug":"a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/12\/a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts","title":{"rendered":"A Christian Counselor Strikes Back After Being Fired For Marriage Posts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Adobe Stock | Inset: Gozen Soydag \/ Facebook<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A Christian counselor and social media influencer in the UK is seeking legal action after she lost her position at a private Catholic school. Gozen Soydag, 37, had been hired at St Anne’s Catholic High School for Girls in Enfield, north London where she worked as a consultant pastoral manager for year 10 students in 2022. In February 2023, Soydag was summoned by staff administrators who informed her there had been complaints about her social media accounts. Soydag runs several Instagram accounts that deal with traditional views on marriage and Christian living, with an emphasis on submission to husbands. Soydag has over 30,000 followers across her accounts.<\/p>\n

According to a statement<\/a> from Christian Legal Centre (CLC), which is representing her, Soydag was then notified that some of her posts had caused \u201coffence\u201d to an anonymous complainant and was forced to take several posts down. One post in particular that was shown at an employment tribunal earlier this week involved a video Soydag shared of a woman in a headscarf discussing how she submits to her husband. In the video, the woman says<\/a>, \u201cMy husband is my boss. My husband is number one. If my husband tells me ‘Hey sit down’ I will sit down.\u201d She goes on to say, \u201cSo I tell women out there, you want a man in your life? You want to be happy? Figure out what you would do when you are happy because I am happy. My husband does so many great things for me. I obey him, I respect him and I let him be the man that he is. I chose a man I wanted to follow. I chose someone to lead me and that’s why I will do anything for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soydag stated that the school\u2019s assistant head teacher, Jo Sanders, accused the post of being \u201cprovocative like Andrew Tate.\u201d Andrew Tate is a controversial social media influence who speaks on masculinity, and has been accused of promoting abusive and dismissive views of women. He is also currently being investigated for accusations of alleged human trafficking<\/a>. When asked if she agreed with the woman\u2019s outlook on marriage, Soydag responded that there was a misunderstanding of \u201cthe beauty of submission.\u201d \u201cIt does [align to my beliefs] to the extent where there’s love and a choice to agree to yield to her husband’s choices. However, it’s clear here she’s not Christian- she’s Muslim. So, in its entirety it does not fully line up but some of it does line up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

When she was confronted about the video in 2023, Soydag agreed to take it down. When asked to set her account to private, she informed the school it would take around two weeks before the algorithms would no longer connect her to the controversial post. However, the next day, her birthday, she was let go by the school. During the first day of the employment tribunal, Soydag stated she had not seen any policies by the school about keeping social media accounts private. \u201cThis isn’t a private social media account, it’s a ministry, it’s the way I serve my community, the way I encourage, uplift. Most of it is for encouragement to benefit, help and it is mostly around the word of God,\u201d she said. Soydag has said she had never encouraged any of her students to seek out her accounts. Soydag and her legal representatives are seeking damages for breach of contract and wrongful dismissal according to the Equality Act 2010. Soydag has stated that her beliefs align with the school\u2019s mission statement CLC Chief Executive Andrea Williams said the school\u2019s dismissal of Soydag’s was \u201canother example of schools capitulating to secular orthodoxy under pressure,\u201d and that, \u201cGozen was doing a fantastic job in a tough area of London, supporting young women in a Catholic school, until someone complained about her beliefs expressed in her own time.\u201d A decision has not yet been released from the tribunal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Christian counselor and social media influencer in the UK is seeking legal action after she lost her position at a private Catholic school. Gozen Soydag, 37, had been hired at St Anne’s Catholic High School for Girls in Enfield, north London where she worked as a consultant pastoral manager for year 10 students in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":25615,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-religious-freedom"],"yoast_head":"\nA Christian Counselor Strikes Back After Being Fired For Marriage Posts<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/12\/a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Christian Counselor Strikes Back After Being Fired For Marriage Posts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Christian counselor and social media influencer in the UK is seeking legal action after she lost her position at a private Catholic school. Gozen Soydag, 37, had been hired at St Anne’s Catholic High School for Girls in Enfield, north London where she worked as a consultant pastoral manager for year 10 students in…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/12\/a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-12-13T20:46:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2024\/12\/woman-fired-marriage_credit-Adobe-Stock_Inset-Gozen-Soydag-Facebook.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"900\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Cecilia Buchanan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Christian Counselor Strikes Back After Being Fired For Marriage Posts","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/12\/a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Christian Counselor Strikes Back After Being Fired For Marriage Posts","og_description":"A Christian counselor and social media influencer in the UK is seeking legal action after she lost her position at a private Catholic school. Gozen Soydag, 37, had been hired at St Anne’s Catholic High School for Girls in Enfield, north London where she worked as a consultant pastoral manager for year 10 students in…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/12\/a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2024-12-13T20:46:23+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1200,"height":900,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2024\/12\/woman-fired-marriage_credit-Adobe-Stock_Inset-Gozen-Soydag-Facebook.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Cecilia Buchanan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/12\/a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/12\/a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts","name":"A Christian Counselor Strikes Back After Being Fired For Marriage Posts","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/12\/a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/12\/a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2024\/12\/woman-fired-marriage_credit-Adobe-Stock_Inset-Gozen-Soydag-Facebook.jpg","datePublished":"2024-12-13T20:46:23+00:00","dateModified":"2024-12-13T20:46:23+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f0820942b588b1bdba133d7ca3c8eb6e"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/12\/a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/12\/a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/12\/a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2024\/12\/woman-fired-marriage_credit-Adobe-Stock_Inset-Gozen-Soydag-Facebook.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2024\/12\/woman-fired-marriage_credit-Adobe-Stock_Inset-Gozen-Soydag-Facebook.jpg","width":1200,"height":900,"caption":"Adobe Stock | Inset: Gozen Soydag \/ Facebook"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/12\/a-christian-counselor-strikes-back-after-being-fired-for-marriage-posts#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Christian Counselor Strikes Back After Being Fired For Marriage Posts"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f0820942b588b1bdba133d7ca3c8eb6e","name":"rdewing","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/61e\/61e772313b3ddff45ee0c1a275e8dfc5x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/61e\/61e772313b3ddff45ee0c1a275e8dfc5x96.jpg","caption":"rdewing"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/rdewing"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25627,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25624\/revisions\/25627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}