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

How Evangelists Are Using 'Church Planting' to Retake Secular Boston | Alternet

There is a line burried deep within the article that explains it all. "When intellectualism falls out of Boston, the whole nation will be swept into revival.” They are admitting that to be evangelical you can't be intellectual.; we don't need another go at the Dark Ages, once was enough.

The business of evangelism is old, but its methods are constantly changing. In recent years, evangelism in America has undergone a little-noticed but profound change in its organization, tactics, and culture. There is no better illustration of the new way of doing business than the appearance of evangelical activists in Boston, of all places.

Boston isn’t a likely candidate for missionary activity, but evangelicals have long dreamed of capturing the birthplace of the American Revolution. Only in the past few years have they found an efficient means to launch their long hoped-for revival.

They call it “church planting.” Missionary preachers create and house new congregations, often in inexpensive or state-subsidized locales. Sometimes the church planters establish their own worship services at existing yet underused church buildings. Other times, they rent out or borrow space in community centers, movie theaters, hotels, and other facilities. One relatively new tool of the church planting strategy is the public school system. In public schools across the country, the new evangelists have discovered facilities that can be made available to churches at relatively low or no cost—except, presumably, to local taxpayers. In some places, including New York City, the churches have not paid any rent at all.

Church planting is happening across the country, and it is organized on a national scale. Its presence in Boston is evidence of its efficiency even in the toughest markets. It has been enabled by pivotal shifts in the interpretation of constitutional law. And it is driven by a subtle yet profound transformation in evangelical culture in America—a transformation in both the religion itself and in its organizations forms.

[,,,]
In many instances, church leadership promotes a Christian Nationalist version of American history that denies the Enlightenment roots of American democracy. The concept of “male headship,” found in the theological position papers of many of the religious organizations and sometimes referred to as a “complementarian” understanding of gender, underwrites a view of gender as Biblically based and hierarchical. (One such evangelical church document states, “Husbands should lead in the home, with wives intelligently submitting; likewise, in the Church, men alone should lead as the shepherds, that is, as Elders, with women diligently serving and leading in many other capacities.”) Church leaders overwhelmingly oppose abortion rights, and many reserve a special opprobrium for same-sex relationships. But in progressive areas such as Boston, pastors are often careful about how they convey controversial theological positions; many congregants may be unaware, especially at first, of the positions taken by church leaders.
,,,
 Of course, religious entrepreneurship is an American tradition. But turning public schools and other government facilities into houses of worship is a recent phenomenon. The process was made possible by a 2001 Supreme Court decision, Good News Club v. Milford Central School, in which the court ruled that a ban on an adult-led after-school religious club infringed the group’s first amendment speech rights. The decision dismissed Establishment Clause concerns and the idea that young children might falsely perceive the private speech of the religious group as coming from the school itself. As a result, approximately 4,000 fundamentalist clubs targeting kids in their earliest years of learning, called Good News Clubs, have been installed in public elementary schools in just over a decade. The decision also helped pave the way for church planting initiatives in public schools.

How Evangelists Are Using 'Church Planting' to Retake Secular Boston | Alternet

The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children, by Katherine Stewart

The Good News Club is making headlines once again, so I thought it important to blow the dust off this 2012 book release notice. It is n my ever growing list of books to read.

In 2009, the Good News Club came to the public elementary school where journalist Katherine Stewart sent her children. The Club, which is sponsored by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, bills itself as an after-school program of “Bible study.” 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.

The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children, by Katherine Stewart

ADDENDUM::Children's Christian ministry called 'psychologically harmful to children' | Christian News on Christian Today

Though the attached article is not quite as deadly as metzitzah b’peh from my previous post, it still falls under the guise of religious child maltreatment.  The unethical practice of FORCING faith (what some call hereditary religion) on vulnerable children.

A Christian nonprofit, Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), is facing opposition in Portland as it seeks to bring youth to Christ.

The group's "Good News Club" is being called "psychologically harmful to children" by a newly formed coalition – Protect Portland Children.

The Good News Club is a youth ministry in which children are taught about sin, Jesus, and holiness through engaging songs, games, and Bible stories.

On its website, CEF states that "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."

Critics of CEF and the Good News Club say the program teaches fundamentalist beliefs to children, and encourages fear, judgment, and divisiveness in youth.

Attorney and blogger Eric Ceynar wrote on his "Intrinsic Dignity" blog that the Club uses shame and fear indoctrination, thought control, attacks on science education, authoritarian conditioning, and deceptive marketing to negatively influence students.

Children's Christian ministry called 'psychologically harmful to children' | Christian News on Christian Today

See also:

Right-Wing Christian Group Tried to Convert This City's Kids — But They're Fighting Back