School of Doubt | Going Up Against the Good News Club: An Interview with Dan Courtney

 One tactic of cultic indoctrination,,,

But the most important discovery that demanded my attention was one particular club activity I found. In this activity a child, as young as 5 years old, is singled out. The child is presented with an envelope and told that they have earned what’s in it. After some discussion the child opens the envelope and finds the word DEATH written on a piece of paper. The instructor tells the child “…you have earned death – separation from God forever in a terrible place of punishment…”

After I picked myself up off the floor, I sent the lesson to a mental health professional (a psychotherapist) and simply asked for their opinion. He described, in a very basic sense, how children need to feel good about themselves and feel safe to grow into well adjusted adults, and how presenting this lesson to a child undermines that entire process. He was quite blunt in saying that this lesson is, “incompatible with mental health.”

Another example of church planting,,,

There are so many issues it’s hard to single one out – The Good News Club is part of a broader religious right push to actually destroy public education; they use children to evangelize other kids in the school as a way to bypass objections from parents that don’t share their extreme beliefs; they intentionally use schools so kids think the message is sanctioned by the school – but for me the one overriding issue is the psychological abuse of the kids. Parents expect schools to be a place that is safe for their kids, and then in comes this group claiming to be nothing but fun and games, when in fact they’re causing real, long-term damage to innocent children. And this isn’t just my opinion, but rather a broadly accepted view in the mental health community, and backed up by the real human tragedy of lives spent in shame and fear.

On the 2001 Good News Club vs. Milford Central Schools,,,

Aside from the broad legal issue in which religious speech was granted unprecedented privilege, it’s rationally indefensible.  The majority opinion in this case concluded that children – as young as 5 years old – would not perceive the message provided to them in a school classroom immediately after the regular school day as sanctioned by the school. In other words, we’re supposed to believe that 5 year olds can distinguish between official school instruction and the instruction of a private club in the very same room, often by instructors that volunteer in the classroom during the regular school day. This is preposterous on its face.

School of Doubt | Going Up Against the Good News Club: An Interview with Dan Courtney