There is more religion in America's public schools today than there has been for the past one hundred years, says journalist Katharine Stewart. Her latest book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children describes the aggressive tactics used by this 'ministry' of the Child Evangelism Fellowship to evangelize (convert) school children to Fundamentalist Christianity in America's public schools.
In the book she contends
the movement driving this agenda is stealthy. It is aggressive. It has our children in s sights. And its ultimate aim is to destroy the system of public education as we know it.
The Good News Club is an after school activity, based inside the school. Under the guise of Bible Study, it conducts an
exciting Bible lesson using colorful materials from CEF Press®. This action-packed time also includes songs, Scripture memory, a missions story and review games or other activities focused on the lesson's theme.
As with all CEF ministries, the purpose of Good News Club is to evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and establish (disciple) them in the Word of God and in a local church for Christian living.
So maybe that's not so bad. They're teaching young children (as young as 4 or 5 years old) how to be good people, right? Says Ms. Stewart:
Many of the initiatives I looked at rely to a surprising degree on misdirection and deceit of one group or another. The Good News Club itself, for example presents itself to parent and administrators as an outside group. But it creates the false but unavoidable (and, as far as I can tell, intentional) impression in young school children that its form of religion is officially endorsed by the school. It describes itself with nonthreatening labels such as “nondenominational” and “interdenominational,” which makes people think it’s broadly Christian, when in fact it’s highly sectarian. And it pretends to offer “Bible study,” when really it’s about indoctrinating kids in a fundamentalist form of religion. Anyone who doubts that should read the Statement of Faith on their workers’ applications.
But since parental permission is required, is there really anything wrong with conducting the classes on school property? The group pays a nominal 'custodial fee' in lieu of rent to the school, so in essence it amounts to a state subsidy. They avoid all the costs they would incur by having to own or rent their own facility. By contrast for example a local (NY) PTA incurred over $100,000 in fees for similar use of school facilities. Furthermore, administrators of the Good News Club have turned down offers of adjacent church space for their activities, capitalizing on the blurring of the distinction between church and school. They capitalize on the impression that what the children have learned in 'school' is therefore true and correct.
But Stewart soon discovered that the Club's real mission is to convert children to fundamentalist Christianity and encourage them to proselytize to their "unchurched" peers, all the while promoting the natural but false impression among the children that its activities are endorsed by the school.
Cautions reviewer Marnie Shure about the groups tactics:
If you think “strong-arming” is too forceful a term for what may at first sound like constructive (and rather secular) moral teachings, consider this quote from the founder and president of the Liberty Counsel:
Knock down all of the doors, all of the barriers, to all of the 65,000- plus elementary schools in the country and take the Gospel to this open mission field now! Not later! Now!
In their true form, these organizations are not only breaking down the doors to public schools — their ripest recruiting centers — they are also breaking down the generally accepted notion of elementary religion classes teaching children only the most vague and generic lessons in morality. But that is, of course, the guise the CEF chooses to operate under, and it is in this stealth that they’ve had their greatest advantage.
A parent’s very ability to raise their children with a given set of values or beliefs is being undermined daily by a group whose whole salvation is contingent upon the numbers game: recruit x amount of lost sheep, ascend x miles farther into Heaven. Parents and their children deserve better. And that’s why everyone has a stake in how this book is received, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
Is this legal you ask? Actually, yes. The Supreme Court ruled in 2001 in Good News Club v. Milford Central School that excluding such activities represented an unconstitutional violation of speech rights, and discrimination against their viewpoint.
From the CEF website:
IS IT LEGAL?? No—not for adults. But it is completely legal for students! It is a God-given loophole!
—from the Life Book Movement, a division of Gideon’s International whose stated mission is to “saturate 91,957 high schools with God’s word” through peer-to-peer evangelism.
Can we really teach the Bible in public schools?
Yes! The Gospel has been taught freely in public schools all over the world for some time. Now children in the U.S. have that opportunity, too! In 2001 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Good News Clubs v. Milford Central School that Good News Clubs can meet in public schools in the United States after school hours on the same terms as other community groups. Children attend Good News Club only with their parents' permission.
In an earlier New York Times Op-Ed piece, Stewart talked about the danger she perceived from these groups and how they go beyond teaching 'Bible studies' to kids:
A number of the new churches are the work of national “church-planting” organizations attracted to New York by the combination of cheap space and the opportunity to save the city from its apparent godlessness. Some are closely associated with national groups known for their hostility to “government education.” The church that meets at my daughter’s school is associated with a movement that instructs its members to pray for a Christian “reformation” of American education and for the election of like-minded political leaders.
The Good News Clubs numbers in public schools went up 728 per cent in the ten years since the Milford decision. And church-planting in New York City’s public schools went from 0 to 160 over the same period. Stewart’s research estimates that 3,410 Good News Clubs alone are currently in operation at elementary schools around the country.
In an unintended irony, the CEF says you can get involved, by "pray[ing] for the children and teachers in the club".