How Christian fundamentalists plan to teach genocide to kids

[doggie]

well this is scary and of course they slipped it into schools.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... h-genocide

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:

[debrand]

"

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:

What the hell!! Seriously, that is terrible. I am going to have to research this group more because they sound dangerous.

[debrand]

I am reading the article and doggie didn't even quote the worst 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.

I don't understand not only how this is allowed in any school but how someone with a normal level of empathy could read that to little kids.

[SteampunkLovelace]

I don't understand not only how this is allowed in any school but how someone with a normal level of empathy could read that to little kids.

It was a fairly standard Sunday School story when I was growing up. No one ever, ever, tried to rationalize it either, the moral was that you should obey god completely. it wasn't until I got older that I realized how horrible these stories were, because if they are presented as normal to children, children will see them as normal. Which is terrifying.

[debrand]

It was a fairly standard Sunday School story when I was growing up. No one ever, ever, tried to rationalize it either, the moral was that you should obey god completely. it wasn't until I got older that I realized how horrible these stories were, because if they are presented as normal to children, children will see them as normal. Which is terrifying.

I was just taught that Jesus loves everyone. Apparently, my religious education was lacking. My family stopped going to church when I was in the fifth grade so maybe I would have eventually learned that Jesus loves everyone except THOSE people.

[louisa05]

It was a fairly standard Sunday School story when I was growing up. No one ever, ever, tried to rationalize it either, the moral was that you should obey god completely. it wasn't until I got older that I realized how horrible these stories were, because if they are presented as normal to children, children will see them as normal. Which is terrifying.

What denomination?

FTR, thanks to my parents' lack of devotion to any denomination and our frequent moves, I attended Sunday schools in all of the following denominations at one time or another: Presbyterian, Methodist, Christian (Disciples of Christ), "interdenominational" which leaned evangelical, and Lutheran (both ELCA and Missouri Synod). In my evangelical days in my 20s, I taught Sunday school in an Evangelical Free church--preschool for a year and junior high for a year.

I was NEVER taught this story in a Sunday school lesson and NEVER saw it in a Sunday school curriculum when I taught.

[SteampunkLovelace]

What denomination?

This was Church of Christ.

[PennySycamore]

I pass one of their offices every time I take my dogs to the groomer. These people really weird me out. Why do you need to start evangelizing kids as young as four? That's below the age of reason.

I read their wikipedia entry and the guy who started this gives some bullshit explanation of the Amalekite passage that it wasn't meant to teach genocide to children at all. Well, bullshit! Why teach little kids that passage at all?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Evan ... Fellowship

OT a bit, but my little 4 year old granddaughter was telling me about having to be Lazarus in Sunday School. She didn't like it one bit and I could tell it bothered her. When kids are that age they barely can conceive of death. (ETA: I unfortunately do know about teaching a 4 year old about death as one of my girls was that age when Katherine died. She just did not understand at all.) Why teach that story to really little kids? Why? This makes me angry.

[Trynn]

I'm not sure about Sabbath School, but at least in the Seventh Day Adventist schools in which I grew up, yeah, I was taught it in elementary school. The moral of the story was that we should always obey God fully.

I don't think, with children, that the whole genocide thing registers with a lot of them... at least for me, I was like, well yeah, God told him to kill all those people, and I do think that it bothered me a little, but not much, because I didn't see them as actual people. I don't think I'm explaining this quite well, but it's like when you read something in a book, and it doesn't bother you because it never really happened? Even though I was told it really happened, and I believed it, I never really stopped to think it was real because, as a child, I just didn't comprehend it.

Does that make sense?

I'm not saying all children are like this but it might explain why a lot of problematic elements of certain bible stories are overlooked.

[docmom]

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

Do you think that if we point out the similarities between this and Islamic jihad the fundies would get it? God tells his followers to kill all the non-believers... It is, after all, the same god.

[PennySycamore]

Do you think that if we point out the similarities between this and Islamic jihad the fundies would get it? God tells his followers to kill all the non-believers... It is, after all, the same god.

Unfortunately, fundamentalists don't think Allah is the same God they worship. Yeah, it boggles the mind.

[Janes Heir]

I'm not sure about Sabbath School, but at least in the Seventh Day Adventist schools in which I grew up, yeah, I was taught it in elementary school. The moral of the story was that we should always obey God fully.

I don't think, with children, that the whole genocide thing registers with a lot of them... at least for me, I was like, well yeah, God told him to kill all those people, and I do think that it bothered me a little, but not much, because I didn't see them as actual people. I don't think I'm explaining this quite well, but it's like when you read something in a book, and it doesn't bother you because it never really happened? Even though I was told it really happened, and I believed it, I never really stopped to think it was real because, as a child, I just didn't comprehend it.

Does that make sense?

I'm not saying all children are like this but it might explain why a lot of problematic elements of certain bible stories are overlooked.

Yeah, they have funny names, they are voiceless in the biblical record -- they don't have personalities. However, once the horror at the genocide stories was evoked in me, the "reasons" didn't make sense. "Even the kids and dogs had STDs from the rampant sexual perversion." Well, why didn't a merciful God heal and spare the poor innocent victims of child abuse?

[Trynn]

Yeah, they have funny names, they are voiceless in the biblical record -- they don't have personalities. However, once the horror at the genocide stories was evoked in me, the "reasons" didn't make sense. "Even the kids and dogs had STDs from the rampant sexual perversion." Well, why didn't a merciful God heal and spare the poor innocent victims of child abuse?

Oh yeah, when I was 14 that did occur to me. I was thinking in more like the 12-13 and under crowd.

Apparently if kids are having problems stemming from sexual abuse, the answer is to just kill them all. Sheesh!

[thoughtful]

I have started reading the book The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children, but had to set it aside to make sure I finish Pilgrim's Wilderness, since I own the former and the latter needs to go back to the library.

It sounds like they are generally an insidious, scary group.

[Becoming_Me]

I won't tell how because I don't want my family to find out that I am posting here, but I know a lot about CEF, if anyone wants clarification on anything.

[formergothardite]

I won't tell how because I don't want my family to find out that I am posting here, but I know a lot about CEF, if anyone wants clarification on anything.

Do they really teach this about genocide?

I grew up hearing about God killing whole groups of people including babies and children and that it was a good thing and it didn't really bother me as a small child. I think I had been so desensitized to God's violence and trained to not question so I didn't. But as I got older and thought about it and tried to imagine what it would have been like to be in one of the groups God wipes out or lets his people rape and enslave and I was horrified.

[OddlyAmused]

I just finished a graduate-level course on genocide and the motivations behind it so my main thought process reading that was, "what is this I can't even :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: "

Seriously, fundies? You actually want to justify genocide?

[upkacrane]

I just finished a graduate-level course on genocide and the motivations behind it so my main thought process reading that was, "what is this I can't even :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: "

Seriously, fundies? You actually want to justify genocide?

Even though not all fundamentalists might agree on actually killing God's enemies, most do believe heathens should be assimilated, that is to say, symbolically killed/destroyed. Also, as Kathryn Joyce convincingly argues (in Quiverfull), the militarist language many fundies use -Vision Forum anyone?- is a way to sublimate what is actually a political and literal take on Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.

I may be wrong but, to me, that doesn't sound very far from the Nazi's 'Gott mit uns' motto. If you're not with us, you're against us, and since we just so happen to be on God's side, it follows you are against God; ergo, your body deserves to die so that your soul can go to hell where it belongs.

Fundamentalism is a form of ethnicism. It may be connected with beliefs of actual racial supremacy or not, but the bottom line is always that fundamentalist religions give you a status of symbolic belonging to an ethnos, which, in turn, makes you 'one of us' as opposed to 'one of them'. And, obviously, we are so much better than them.

[OddlyAmused]

Even though not all fundamentalists might agree on actually killing God's enemies, most do believe heathens should be assimilated, that is to say, symbolically killed/destroyed. Also, as Kathryn Joyce convincingly argues (in Quiverfull), the militarist language many fundies use -Vision Forum anyone?- is a way to sublimate what is actually a political and literal take on Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.

I may be wrong but, to me, that doesn't sound very far from the Nazi's 'Gott mit uns' motto. If you're not with us, you're against us, and since we just so happen to be on God's side, it follows you are against God; ergo, your body deserves to die so that your soul can go to hell where it belongs.

Fundamentalism is a form of ethnicism. It may be connected with beliefs of actual racial supremacy or not, but the bottom line is always that fundamentalist religions give you a status of symbolic belonging to an ethnos, which, in turn, makes you 'one of us' as opposed to 'one of them'. And, obviously, we are so much better than them.

Definitely true. And it really doesn't surprise me that they would justify it-it just makes me angry. You pretty much covered everything I was coming back to say, only way more eloquently than I can right now (my brain is a little fried from writing the final paper for that class).

[DifferentGurl]

I'm not sure about Sabbath School, but at least in the Seventh Day Adventist schools in which I grew up, yeah, I was taught it in elementary school. The moral of the story was that we should always obey God fully.

I don't think, with children, that the whole genocide thing registers with a lot of them... at least for me, I was like, well yeah, God told him to kill all those people, and I do think that it bothered me a little, but not much, because I didn't see them as actual people. I don't think I'm explaining this quite well, but it's like when you read something in a book, and it doesn't bother you because it never really happened? Even though I was told it really happened, and I believed it, I never really stopped to think it was real because, as a child, I just didn't comprehend it.

Does that make sense?

I'm not saying all children are like this but it might explain why a lot of problematic elements of certain bible stories are overlooked.

I didn't know about genocide when I was a 7,8,9,10 in a parochial learning, learning about this Bible story. Heck, I don't remember being taught about Nazis when I was in the third or fourth grade ( except that the mostly German-ancestry Lutheran congregation had problems during World War 2, though I didn't know exactly why ). For a while, I think I thought that America was fighting only the Japanese during World War 2. If we were taught about Germany being one of the bad guys, I don't remember being taught about the Nazis and their crimes against humanity ( is it normal for third or fourth graders to not know about what the Nazis did )?

Anyways, like what Trynn said, I didn't associate genocide with what happened in the story. We were basically taught that we should always obey God to the T. I saw the Akkailates ( sorry if I spelled that wrong ) as evil and deserved to die for not believing in God or whatever. I didn't associate them as being real people. It's quite scary, considering how stories like that can make people think that "non-believers" as EVIL!!. Thoughts like that can lead to genocide.

[Trynn]

I don't remember being taught about ww2 in school at all. However, I read a lot about it outside of class, which is how I learned it. Soooo maybe that's normal?

[Becoming_Me]

Do they really teach this about genocide?

I grew up hearing about God killing whole groups of people including babies and children and that it was a good thing and it didn't really bother me as a small child. I think I had been so desensitized to God's violence and trained to not question so I didn't. But as I got older and thought about it and tried to imagine what it would have been like to be in one of the groups God wipes out or lets his people rape and enslave and I was horrified.

I am really sorry formergothardite, I wrote a post to answer your question but I can't make myself post it. I guess I am still struggling with what I feel about CEF. I have mixed feelings about them compared to Doug and the Maxwells whom I despise. I should have evaluated my feelings more before I said I would answer questions.

To make up for breaking my promise if you PM me and pinky promise not to tell anyone I will tell you how I know about CEF.

[formergothardite]

I am really sorry formergothardite, I wrote a post to answer your question but I can't make myself post it. I guess I am still struggling with what I feel about CEF. I have mixed feelings about them compared to Doug and the Maxwells whom I despise. I should have evaluated my feelings more before I said I would answer questions.

To make up for breaking my promise if you PM me and pinky promise not to tell anyone I will tell you how I know about CEF.

It's okay. Would you be open to saying why you don't think CEF is as bad as Doug or the Maxwells?

[Becoming_Me]

It's complicated, sorry.