Book Recommendation: The Good News Club

[GeoBQn]

There's a new book out, The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children by Katherine Stewart. It's about the ways that conservative and fundamentalist Christian groups try to infiltrate public schools through programs like the Good News Club, "church plants" using public schools for Sunday services, Bible elective classes in high schools, and "character education" curriculums. While there is nothing inherently wrong with a Biblical literature elective or students forming a before-hours prayer group, what is wrong is when these are initiatives by national organizations, crafted so that they appear to be arising out of the local school community and skirt free speech and religious exercise laws, with the agenda of turning public schools Christian or dismantling them altogether.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Good-News-Clu ... 503&sr=1-1

[QAF_Rocks]

I've had that on my wish list for a while!

[GolightlyGrrl]

I just checked my library system's website, and this book is at several branches. I'm definitely putting "The Good News Club" on my reading list. Thanks.

[CynicMom]

It was an interesting book and the author makes some interesting points/anecdotes. However I thought her overall tone was too biased and inflammatory. That book would have made one or two really great articles. It also had a few typos. <--Coming from someone who doesn't like Good News Clubs.

[skrmom]

I was in Youth for Christ and Campus Crusade for Christ in high school. No one was ever forced to attend a meeting or accept literature from either club. Campus Crusade met off campus as a matter of fact

We also had Bible as Literature as an English Elective along with Mythology (one semester of each)

As I said, it was an ELECTIVE. A student could also take creative writing as an English elective.

[QAF_Rocks]

I was in Youth for Christ and Campus Crusade for Christ in high school. No one was ever forced to attend a meeting or accept literature from either club. Campus Crusade met off campus as a matter of fact

We also had Bible as Literature as an English Elective along with Mythology (one semester of each)

As I said, it was an ELECTIVE. A student could also take creative writing as an English elective.

What does that have to do with Good News Clubs? We're not talking about elective high school clubs or classes here. We're talking about an evangelical group whose sole purpose is to target elementary school children from non-Christian families for conversion.

[Rosa]

skrmom, Campus Crusade for Christ isn't one of the stealth-Christian groups. It's groups with innocuous names that don't say they're Christian, just that they are "wholesome" or "family-based" or "help kids make positive peer connections" and then sneak Christian content in.

Or claim to be "world religions" and actually only be Christianity. Or "Western Philosophy" that is actually a history of Christianity.

[Witsec1]

skrmom, Campus Crusade for Christ isn't one of the stealth-Christian groups. It's groups with innocuous names that don't say they're Christian, just that they are "wholesome" or "family-based" or "help kids make positive peer connections" and then sneak Christian content in.

Or claim to be "world religions" and actually only be Christianity. Or "Western Philosophy" that is actually a history of Christianity.

Didn't Campus Crusade for Christ change its name to "Cru" or somthing like that?

Bible as literature classes are fine, as long as the full range of critiques is allowed, and questions about authorship, and how the various manuscripts were included in the canon, etc. I suspect that most evangelicals/fundies would not like that, though, which is why it isn't it taught. And that's a shame.

[Cannelle]

I live in a county where the ACLU just settled a lawsuit with the schools over, among several things, allowing youth pastors to come in and proselytize during lunch, passing out religious material during class, having religious material prominently displayed in the classroom, singing religious songs during choir concerts, etc. It hasn't changed much, but you bet your hind end this stuff happens. It's awful.