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Good News Clubs' evangelism in schools is already subverting church-state separation. Now they justify murdering nonbelievers

 

 

The Bible has thousands of passages that may serve as the basis for instruction and inspiration. Not all of them are appropriate in all circumstances.

The story of Saul and the Amalekites is a case in point. It's not a pretty story, and it is often used by people who don't intend to do pretty things. In the book of 1 Samuel (15:3), God said to Saul:

"Now go, attack the Amalekites, and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."

Saul dutifully exterminated the women, the children, the babies and all of the men – but then he spared the king. He also saved some of the tastier looking calves and lambs. God was furious with him for his failure to finish the job.

The story of the Amalekites has been used to justify genocide throughout the ages. According to Pennsylvania State University Professor Philip Jenkins, a contributing editor for the American Conservative, the Puritans used this passage when they wanted to get rid of the Native American tribes. Catholics used it against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics. "In Rwanda in 1994, Hutu preachers invoked King Saul's memory to justify the total slaughter of their Tutsi neighbors," writes Jenkins in his 2011 book, Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can't Ignore the Bible's Violent Verses (HarperCollins).

This fall, more than 100,000 American public school children, ranging in age from four to 12, are scheduled to receive instruction in the lessons of Saul and the Amalekites in the comfort of their own public school classrooms. The instruction, which features in the second week of a weekly "Bible study" course, will come from the Good News Club, an after-school program sponsored by a group called the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF). The aim of the CEF is to convert young children to a fundamentalist form of the Christian faith and recruit their peers to the club.

There are now over 3,200 clubs in public elementary schools, up more than sevenfold since the 2001 supreme court decision, Good News Club v Milford Central School, effectively required schools to include such clubs in their after-school programing.

The CEF has been teaching the story of the Amalekites at least since 1973. In its earlier curriculum materials, CEF was euphemistic about the bloodshed, saying simply that "the Amalekites were completely defeated." In the most recent version of the curriculum, however, the group is quite eager to drive the message home to its elementary school students. The first thing the curriculum makes clear is that if God gives instructions to kill a group of people, you must kill every last one:

"You are to go and completely destroy the Amalekites (AM-uh-leck-ites) – people, animals, every living thing. Nothing shall be left."

"That was pretty clear, wasn't it?" the manual tells the teachers to say to the kids.

Even more important, the Good News Club wants the children to know, the Amalakites were targeted for destruction on account of their religion, or lack of it. The instruction manual reads:

"The Amalekites had heard about Israel's true and living God many years before, but they refused to believe in him. The Amalekites refused to believe in God and God had promised punishment."

The instruction manual goes on to champion obedience in all things. In fact, pretty much every lesson that the Good News Club gives involves reminding children that they must, at all costs, obey. If God tells you to kill nonbelievers, he really wants you to kill them all. No questions asked, no exceptions allowed.

Asking if Saul would "pass the test" of obedience, the text points to Saul's failure to annihilate every last Amalekite, posing the rhetorical question:

"If you are asked to do something, how much of it do you need to do before you can say, 'I did it!'?"

"If only Saul had been willing to seek God for strength to obey!" the lesson concludes.

A review question in the textbook seeks to drive the point home further:

"How did King Saul only partly obey God when he attacked the Amalekites? (He did not completely destroy as God had commanded, he kept the king and some of the animals alive.)"

The CEF and the legal advocacy groups that have been responsible for its tremendous success over the past ten years are determined to "Knock down all doors, all the barriers, to all 65,000 public elementary schools in America and take the Gospel to this open mission field now! Not later, now!" in the words of a keynote speaker at the CEF's national convention in 2010. The CEF wants to operate in the public schools, rather than in churches, because they know that young children associate the public schools with authority and are unable to distinguish between activities that take place in a school and those that are sponsored by the school.

In the majority opinion that opened the door to Good News Clubs, supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas reasoned that the activities of the CEF were not really religious, after all. He said that they could be characterized, for legal purposes, "as the teaching of morals and character development from a particular viewpoint".

As Justices Souter and Stevens pointed out in their dissents, however, the claim is preposterous: the CEF plainly aims to teach religious doctrines and conduct services of worship. Thomas's claim is particularly ironic in view of the fact that the CEF makes quite clear its intent to teach that no amount of moral or ethical behavior (pdf) can spare a nonbeliever from an eternity in hell.

Good News Clubs should not be in America's public elementary schools. As I explain in my book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children, the club exists mainly to give small children the false impression that their public school supports a particular creed. The clubs' presence has produced a paradoxical entanglement of church and state that has ripped apart communities, degraded public education, and undermined religious freedom.

The CEF's new emphasis on the genocide of nonbelievers makes a bad situation worse. Exterminist rhetoric has been on the rise among some segments of the far right, including some religious groups. At what point do we start taking talk of genocide seriously? How would we feel about a nonreligious group that instructs its students that if they should ever receive an order to commit genocide, they should fulfill it to the letter?

And finally, when does a religious group qualify as a "hate group"?

• On 11 June, the online edition of Guardian Letters published the following response from the Child Evangelism Fellowship:

The story of Saul and the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:3) is found in any version or edition of the Bibles of the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant faiths since the first manuscripts were inscribed. Only a misinterpretation of the cited passage could be used to buttress genocide (How Christian fundamentalists plan to teach genocide to schoolchildren, 30 May).

The goal of Child Evangelism Fellowship is the proper teaching of this passage, which is not an instruction in genocide. Though truly many brutal acts appear in both the Old and New Testaments, including the torture and crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans, nothing could be more un-Christian than the promotion of genocide of any group of human beings under the New Covenant introduced to the world by Jesus Christ.

CEF and the Good News Clubs would never teach children that God would instruct them, or anyone today, to commit genocide.

Reese R Kauffman
President, Child Evangelism Fellowship

Katherine Stewart replies:

Though I welcome Mr Kauffman's comments, I regret to note that he seems to be unfamiliar with his group's teaching materials. Nowhere in the lesson plan on the Amalekites does the CEF mention the "New Covenant" and its prohibition on genocide. Mr Kauffman claims the CEF "would never teach children that God would instruct them, or anyone today, to commit genocide". And yet the CEF's lesson plan on the Amalekites tells children that God wanted Saul "to go and completely destroy the Amalekites – people, animals, every living thing". It also repeatedly tells children that the Amalekites deserved punishment for their "sinful unbelief".

To be precise, the thrust of the CEF's lesson is to teach obedience – that if God tells you to kill unbelievers, or do anything else for that matter, you must do exactly as he says. "King Saul should have been willing to seek God for strength to obey completely," the lesson plan on the Amalekites reads, and in three separate places it instructs teachers, "Have children shout 'God will help you obey!'"

There are many ways to teach the Christian faith to young children, many of which do not involve teaching obedience through the tale of the genocide of the Amalekites. Readers of the Guardian and parents of American school children are entitled to know which variety of the Christian religion the CEF is promoting in its public school clubs

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comm...-plan-teach-genocide

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i've never seen such a wide "margin" in what's is acceptable and what's being done!

the extreme rt. wing of politics is getting even more extreme.. pushing their beliefs on everyone... one day, in the not so distant future, muslim will be the dominate religion in america...

i bet , when those rt. winger's grandchildren are forced to bow toward mecca and pay, at school, religion will be removed from the classroom.

Originally Posted by yoda:

i've never seen such a wide "margin" in what's is acceptable and what's being done!

the extreme rt. wing of politics is getting even more extreme.. pushing their beliefs on everyone... one day, in the not so distant future, muslim will be the dominate religion in america...

i bet , when those rt. winger's grandchildren are forced to bow toward mecca and pay, at school, religion will be removed from the classroom.

****************************************

America has never been so dumbed down stupid.

Why are you obsessed with me and what I post? Why do you post on the political forum and make threads there? Do you vote? Why? Why are you obsessed with the democratic party? Religion is a force in this country and only an idiot would not keep their eye on the fundies like you and "your brother" bill. You wish we would just go away, then you could pull more crap like the topic of this thread. You've been told over and over why atheists post here. Christians post on atheist sites, and I bet you and your "brother" do too.  

Originally Posted by Gingee:

It is not my fault that you are obsessed with God. I did not have anything to do with that. You think maybe it might just be a little thing called "Your Conscience".

===============

My conscience is clear. Too bad you can't say the same.  If you try harder you might find someone that gives a flip about what you think. I doubt it, but you could try. Neither you, bill, or any other gawdbots will tell me where and what I can post. BTW, would YOU like a little whine with your cheese? Now run along and LSWGLT.

More on this loony tunes group.

http://www.zcommunications.org/contents/185382

 


While the Supreme Court’s 1962 decision banning prayer in public schools may have removed God from the classroom, Bible study programs (aka sectarian training sessions) are alive and well in thousands of afterschool programs in public schools across the country.

In January 2009, Katherine Stewart, a novelist and journalist, learned that her children’s school in Santa Barbara, California had recently added a Bible-study class to its list of afterschool programs, called, innocuously enough, “Good News Club.”

Curious as to what these Good News Clubs were about, Stewart investigated and discovered that they were part of a nationwide effort—sponsored by the conservative Child Evangelism Fellowship—which aimed to “take back” America’s public schools. Backing this effort, Stewart found, were three Christian Right enterprises: the Alliance Defense Fund, the Liberty Counsel, and the American Center for Law and Justice.

Since the Supreme Court’s 1962 decision, conservative evangelical Christians have been at war with public education. Many conservatives point to that decision as the harbinger of America’s moral decline. For years, Christian Right organizations and their leaders have railed against teachers’ unions, opposed tax increases to improve public education, and have even gone so far as to encourage Christian parents to withdraw their children from public school. A major right wing strategy has also included running stealth school board candidates and taking control of the decision-making process in numerous school districts.

Religious-based afterschool programs burgeoned after the Good News Club v. Milford Central School (a K-12 school in upstate New York) Supreme Court decision in 2001. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the 6-3 majority, “laid out a philosophy that essentially destroyed the postwar consensus on the separation of church and school,” Stewart reported. Religion was now redefined “as nothing more than speech from a religious viewpoint.”

The Supreme Court’s decision essentially made it seem as if the sponsoring organization, the Child Evangelism Fellowship, was not a fundamentalist Christian organization that claimed salvation was only available to those who believed in Jesus as their savior, but just another group offering a religious viewpoint. The decision essentially allowed religious organizations access to the same public school facilities as other religious groups.

“Unfortunately, the Supreme Court upheld the right of CEF to meet in public schools at the end of the school day,” Rob Boston, Senior Policy Analyst with Americans United wrote in an email. “In some parts of the country, the group is creates the impression that it is a school-sanctioned, extended daycare program.”

Stewart explains in her book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, that doing the research for the book took her to “dozens of cities and towns across the country…[where she] found religion-driven programs and initiatives inserting themselves into public school systems with unprecedented force and unexpected consequences.”

Stewart found: “student athletic programs turned into vehicles for religious recruiting; “services [taking place] at dozens of the hundreds of school facilities that double as taxpayer-financed houses of worship; and “children...[who] have been subject to proselytizing in classrooms and school yards.”

Stewart also met with school board officials who are “rewriting textbook standards to conform to their religious agendas.” She talked with many of “the people promoting and attending ‘Bible Study’ courses that turned out to be programs of sectarian indoctrination” and “sat in on training sessions with instructors for the Good News Club, which now operates in nearly 3,500 public elementary schools around the country.”

One parent described how members of a newly-formed Good News Club in an elementary school in Seattle, Washington, “Came in like a bunch of gangbusters.... They started putting a Statement of Faith in kids’ mailboxes. They distributed flyers. They were doing everything they could to have as big a presence on campus as possible.”

Stewart cited numerous examples of the impact of Good News Clubs in public schools, including instigating culture clashes between children with different faiths and from different ethnic backgrounds. In many cases, young children who cannot yet read are fooled into thinking the Bible sessions are official school activities.

Good News Clubs were set up by the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), a worldwide organization founded 75 years ago in Warrenton, Missouri by J.I. Overholtzer, a person who, according to the CEF website, “dreamed of an army of child evangelists encircling the globe.”

The ministry is in 175 nations and “reach[es] over 10 million children in face-to-face ministry annually.” The ministry also runs the Truth Chasers Club, Camp Good News, Military Children’s Ministries, Ministry to Children of Prisoners, and wonderzone.com, a site that “allows trained counselors to disciple children in a real-time, interactive environment.”

Perhaps Stewart’s most eye-opening experience came while attending CEF’s May 2010 triennial National Convention, held at the Shocco Springs Baptist Convention Center in Talladega, Alabama. The vast majority of the 450 or so attendees were affiliated with CEF, including senior officials, staff, regional leaders, and heads of CEF’s youth, military, and prison ministries. Stewart highlighted a phrase she kept hearing: “We’re going to kick in the doors of every public school in the country.”

“This is an old organization with ties to well-known evangelical mission groups,” Rachel Tabachnick wrote in an email interview. “But CEF has mastered stealth evangelism of children, one of the goals for infiltrating society from the grass roots up, instead of top down.”

Tabachnick, an independent researcher, writer, and speaker on the impact of the Religious Right, added, “CEF is a good example of how stealth evangelism” operates successfully in hundreds of communities across the country.

The Child Evangelism Fellowship “targets very young children,” Americans United’s Rob Boston said. “The group has even produced a ‘wordless book’ for children who are too young to read.”

“Religious nationalism has now become part of American political theater and we take notice of it mostly during election campaigns,” Stewart writes. “When it shows up in our backyard, in our schools and local communities, we reach instinctively for our First Amendment, interpreting the whole matter in terms of whose rights are being respected and whose feelings are being hurt. The most important issue before us, however, is not just a question of the rights and feelings of individuals.

“The fact is that there is a movement in our midst that rejects the values of inclusivity and diversity, a movement that seeks to undermine the foundations of modern secular democracy. It has set its sights on destroying the system of public education—and it is succeeding. Unless we confront that fact directly, we may well keep our rights but lose the system of education that has long served as the silent pillar of our democracy.”

Best is not obsessed with god, but one cannot disregard the corrosive effect of the pious in current politics.

 

It's a matter of the defense of the rational mind, you see.

 

When the powerful Creationist/Intelligent Design faction insists on having their mythology taught in school as science, the rational element must mobilize.  When the religious nutcase element browbeats politicians to actively reject stem cell research, the progressive must counter with reason and science.

 

When the fundamentalists make abortion illegal in every case, including the life of the woman, the compassionate must organize.

 

Best is rowing against the current of Alabama, and I admire Best for it.  It's required.  It cannot NOT be done.

 

DF

Originally Posted by Bestworking:
Originally Posted by Gingee:

It is not my fault that you are obsessed with God. I did not have anything to do with that. You think maybe it might just be a little thing called "Your Conscience".

===============

My conscience is clear. Too bad you can't say the same.  If you try harder you might find someone that gives a flip about what you think. I doubt it, but you could try. Neither you, bill, or any other gawdbots will tell me where and what I can post. BTW, would YOU like a little whine with your cheese? Now run along and LSWGLT.

You must care what I think or you wouldn't be responding to what I post. If your conscience was clear you wouldn't be obsessed with talking about God. It is God that keeps tormenting your soul for rejecting Him and He will never stop. You can keep trashing God all you want He gives you that choice while you're on this earth under the influence of satan but when you die you WILL face His judgement.

You must care what I think or you wouldn't be responding to what I post. If your conscience was clear you wouldn't be obsessed with talking about God. It is God that keeps tormenting your soul for rejecting Him and He will never stop. You can keep trashing God all you want He gives you that choice while you're on this earth under the influence of satan but when you die you WILL face His judgement.

===============

If you get some sort of comfort out of thinking that I or anyone cares what you think, I say "whatever blows your skirt up." It doesn't take a lot of effort to respond to you. It's not like you are a deep thinker or even mildly challenging. Nothing is tormenting my soul, and I'm not bothered in any way by your mythical boogeyman. Here's a helpful fact for you-relax, there is no such thing as satan either. 

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