UPDATE::No More ‘Jesus Pizza:’ Court Tells Colo. Cowboy Church To Hit The Trail | Americans United

The Cowboy Church of the Crossroads may no longer meet in a public high school, according to the terms of a new settlement. ABC 7 reports that a federal court issued a consent decree that requires Florence, Co.,-based church to find a new home.

The settlement ends a legal battle between the Fremont RE-2 School District and a former teacher over Florence High School’s alleged promotion of the church.

According to Robert Basevitz, Florence administrators had allowed the church to rent its facilities on Sunday and granted its pastor, Randy Pfaff, broad access to students during the school day.

In his complaint, Basevitz described what amounts to a laundry list of constitutional violations. School administrators distributed the church’s literature to students and advertised its events over an official public address system. Pfaff was allowed to use a classroom during the lunch hour to host something students called “Jesus Pizza.” The content, as you can likely gather from the name, was exclusively religious, and offered pizza as an incentive to participate.

The school even allowed the pastor and his flock to host a daily prayer circle in front of its entrance. The circle became so large, Basevitz alleged, that it eventually blocked the school’s entrance.

No More ‘Jesus Pizza:’ Court Tells Colo. Cowboy Church To Hit The Trail | Americans United

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

Jewish Teacher Sues Colorado School District Over Evangelical Events on School Grounds | Alternet

Remember this,,,

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.

The following is a perfect example of such methods.

A Colorado teacher has filed a federal lawsuit against the school district where he works, alleging the district’s only high school illegally promotes Christianity in conjunction with a nearby evangelical church.

Robert Basevitz, a former teacher at Florence High School, named the Fremont Re-2 School District, district superintendent Rhonda Vendetti and high school principal Brian Schipper in a suit filed on Tuesday, which claims both the school and district condoned prayer and Bible study on campus. Basevitz, who is Jewish, has accused the district of creating an unwelcoming environment by affiliating with Randy Pfaff, a pastor at The Cowboy Church at Crossroads and reportedly a regular fixture at Florence High School.

According to the Denver Post, Pfaff’s church rents space in the Florence cafeteria for its Sunday morning services, and also hosts regular prayer before school each day as well as Bible study during lunch. The pastor has maintained that all religious activities on campus are voluntary, though Basevitz’s suit claims the school makes announcement about church-affiliated events over its intercom system. Basevitz’s attorney, Paul Maxon, also asserts that the administration condoned the handing out of Bibles and pamphlets with references to Scripture.

“Public institutions are supposed to be equally welcoming and accepting of everybody … but Mr. Basevitz didn’t find a welcoming atmosphere,” Maxon said, adding, “This is not one or two isolated incidents. On a single day, there were no less than five school-sponsored religious events … That is a pervasive involvement with religion, which is illegal."

Jewish Teacher Sues Colorado School District Over Evangelical Events on School Grounds | Alternet

Updated to add:  Colorado Public High School Basically A Church, Saving Kids With Jesus Pizza

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

ADDENDUM::So, I just had to do a we bit more digging

So the initial posting mentions Michele Bachmann whom we all know and love (unless you been living in a cave) and Bradlee Dean, whom I have posted about before. 

My "history" with Dean goes back to the mid-90s when he broke into the Christian "spreechting" circuit after founding the non-profit Christian organization "You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide International," a highly controversial youth speaking organization.  Again unless you have purposefully been avoiding the news, you are at least aware of his antics.  He is pails with Bachmann (or was, that seems to have cooled off some) but his most famous brainfart, being the dumb ass who attempted and failed miserably at suing Rachel Maddow, PhD. Political Science and Rhodes Scholar, for quoting him directly. He currently has a writing gig with WorldNuttersDialy.

There is enough information out there on the interwebs about both Bachmann and Dean to make re-hashing a tedious and boring job.  What I want to focus on, or maybe I should say, what  I'm being compelled to focus on, is Bob Frey and his unusual connections and source of his stupidity.

The following is culled from New Bluestem Prairie, a progressive site out of Minnesota.

Some background,,,

Long an associate of anti-sodomy crusader Representative Glenn Gruenhagen, Frey serves as Gruenhagen's campaign committee chair.  Gruenhagen and Frey led Citizens For Academic Excellence, a group that fretted about historical documents being altered and the evils of school-to-work, multiculturalism, diversity and violence prevention.

His son Mike Frey, pastor of the Northern Light Baptist Church, serves as Frey's campaign committee chair; the pastor testified against marriage equality last year in testimony called "outrageously inaccurate" by the Huffington Post.

,,,He believes in God-given inalienable rights to individuals, freedom with the responsibility to protect it, a Constitutional Republic form of government, the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of Minnesota, and the Republican Platform.

“There are assaults taking place on our children, families, and businesses, by the progressive left that needs to stop. It’s time for me to elevate the fight and do my part for Carver County and my family,” said Frey,,,

Here's the interesting crazy stuff,,,

Bluestem has been sent a video file of "Sodomy, Health, Money, and HF826" created by the Pro-Marriage Amendment Forum. The PMA Forum is a group created in 2012 by representative Gruenhagen and his "ex-gay" gay friend Kevin Petersen.

According to our source, who lives in the district, candidate Bob Frey is distributing a PMA Forum DVD that repeats much of the same content against "sodomy" from Mike Frey's [testimony on marriage equality] . 

An excerpt and the full video is available at Bluestem.  I would suggest the excerpt as the full version may destroy any remaining functioning brain cells you may have.  Yes it is that bad, think the Regnerus Study (which by the way is in the news again!!)]

The video,,,

In the forty-minute video, the speaker repeats many claims from Mike Frey's 2013 testimony to the (see below) about the messy mechanics of "sodomy" and the menace he perceived stemming from it, then moves to accusations that the anti-bullying bill is part of a plot on the part of "elites" to promote infect children with AIDS for the profit of doctors and the drug industry.

Where does Frey's pastor son fit into this crazy mix? [Not so crazy if you look at it through the lens of dominionism; convoluted may be a better term.]

Ignoring the younger Frey's inane testimony for the moment, consider this, "City Pages linked the younger Frey to a Carver County Church in Waconia,,, and Bluestem connected the church that PLANTED  Frey [First Baptist Church in Rosemount via the Baptist Church Planting Ministry],,, to anti-marriage equality campaigns [the Minnesota Family Council's Marriage Protection Fund] in "Church that planted Mike Frey in Waconia gave $5,000 to MFC Marriage Protection Fund in 2012.""

 What my conspiratorial, dominionist obsessed, mind is thinking,,,

"Planted" or "church planting" is an interesting term/concept.  Now not knowing the full background of Frey's church, "a young church," according to their website.  I am hesitant of comparing it to the dominionist idea of "steeplejacking".  The attacking or the literal hijacking of mainstream churches in order to eliminate progressive voices in mainline denominations.  But it does make me wonder.

If you look at the biblical rationale behind the "planting" ministry, the Great Commission and Paul's example at Ephesus, you may see a similarity.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:16-20, NIV)

"Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God.  But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.  This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord. (Acts 19:8-10, NIV)

One of the foundations of dominionist ideology is Mathew 28:18, “Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ,,, [t]hat’s what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less…"

What is interesting to note, Earl Jessup, the founder of Baptist Church Planting Ministry, "chose to resign and expand his ministry in church planting.  In August of 1993, Dr. Jessup founded Baptist Church Planting Ministry and is currently the General Director."   According to Theocracy Watch, 1991-1993 were pivotal years in the Reich's takeover of the GOP.

Remember this, ",,,[w]hat the Christian right spends a lot of time doing," says Marc Wolin, a moderate Republican who ran unsuccessfully for Congress from San Francisco last year, "is going after obscure party posts. They try to control the party apparatus in each county. We have a lot to fear from these people. They want to set up a theocracy in America."

Sounds a lot like what "church planting" is all about.