"Good News" Club: Everything Wrong With Fundamentalism

[Rageaholic]

Has anyone here ever encountered these people? They apparently go to public schools to indoctrinate children and feed them toxic, self loathing theology (promising them games and snacks). This site covers this group and exposes their tactics.

Now, I haven't heard of any "good news club" until reading this, but this type of evangelism is not new to me. Jack Chick tracts are nothing but scare tactics in comic book form. Also, Ray Comfort (the Banana guy) is big on hell and damnation too. A lot of these guys put a lot of emphasis on sin and trying to get people to feel like they're horrible people deserving of hellfire. To them, your average joe who's worst sins are swearing at stupid drivers deserves hell just as much as a serial killer like Ted Bundy.

It's such a depressing way to view the world that I don't know how anyone can function believing this.

[Andrew B]

It reads like cult meetings or something. This is nearly horrifying, that this would be done to children.

[Andara Bledin]

Wow. The Wikipedia page paints a pretty awful picture.

All this "lost child" and "sinful nature" crap. Didn't they get the memo that Christ's death washes all of that away?

(memo = New Testament)

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Thing is, you have to be able to defend children at the school level from this and per Good News Club vs. Miford Central School you can't do that.

The only way to attack a club like this would be to poison the well. That is, the Church of Satan or some group that would be irritating (and make no mistake, I'd find them very irritating) needs to employ the same tactics to essentially force the hands of the Conservative judiciary that approved it to back track.

It's just a bad ruling honestly but since liberals in the US seem to want to shoot themselves in the foot like it's going out of style, I don't see them being in power at the right times to fix it.

[Andara Bledin]

That is, the Church of Satan or some group that would be irritating (and make no mistake, I'd find them very irritating)

Totally OT, but what, in particular, do you find irritating about Church of Satan?

I mean, other than pushing things to full retard in order to protect freedom of religion, that is...

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

I find most people who take time out of their day to try to mock other people's sincere beliefs annoying. It doesn't mean I don't find them clever or preferable to others, but it's just a different flavor of evangelism for me. Regardless of how short my fuse is with Christians that do it, I can't pretend I'm not seeing it when they do. I just tend to find it more clever and humorous. Oddly enough I don't mind comics when they do it, but then comics don't try to embed themselves in the public square so there's a difference for me.

And you're right, off topic and not really trying to go there.

[Rageaholic]

I don't know much about Satanism, but I don't think many people follow it, and aside from a few lone nutcases, it's not much of a threat. It doesn't have the vast influence that Christianity does. That's not to say that Christianity as a whole, is evil. There are many Christian groups who are the polar opposite of the Good News Club, but that doesn't change how damaging the good news club can be when they use such a well known and practiced religion to promote child abuse (which is what it is).

[fireheart17]

The only way to attack a club like this would be to poison the well. That is, the Church of Satan or some group that would be irritating (and make no mistake, I'd find them very irritating) needs to employ the same tactics to essentially force the hands of the Conservative judiciary that approved it to back track.

We have a slightly similar thing going on over here, but if there's enough demand complaining from parents, the school will offer other religions for "scripture" (there's a whole explanation around this, but the short version is that it's legislated that schools offer up to a certain amount of "special religious instruction" per week in a few states. Because it's a state thing, it gets around the "favoured religion" argument in the constitution) Many schools offer Baha'i as a way of satisfying parents who aren't Christian or religious, but are that deluded to believe that a religion will teach their child values and good behaviour (Seriously, this is the only logical reason I can think of for the school I work at to offer this-they have 90 kids from K-2 and their "scripture" choices are Catholic, Mixed Protestant (translation: Christian fundies) and Baha'i, with ethics on offer for the Year 2's and other activities on offer for the K-1 bunch).

I know that Baha'i is an actual religion, but I doubt that it would be so popular as a religion in schools, especially given that the last census ranked it lower than a number of other religions.

There have been stories though of parents offering to do something FUN during scripture time and over time that attracts more kids, to the point where the school is forced to stop offering the program. Or in Victoria Australia, a vast number of schools swapped over from an "opt-out" system to an "opt-in" system and they found that the number of enrolments dropped heavily. It was enough to get quite a few schools to stop offering the program.

Totally OT, but what, in particular, do you find irritating about Church of Satan?

I mean, other than pushing things to full retard in order to protect freedom of religion, that is...

I think the point he was trying to make was that when you put ANY other religion up against Christian fundies, people are going to complain and demand that the program be shut down, because if you're going to allow Christian fundies access to children in schools, then you had better allow other religions into schools too.

There's been a couple of stories floating around in my neck of the woods (see above for a better explanation) of school chaplains handing out Bibles to the kiddies in their first week of secondary school (year 7/8 depending on state). One parent apparently took matters into her own hands and asked if she could hand out some literature of her own. The principal agreed, so the next day, the parent started handing out copies of some other religious book (one version I've heard of involves the Qur'an). When the expected backlash occurred, the parent called out the principal for their hypocrisy, explaining that she was exercising her religious freedoms by handing out the Qur'an and if the principal had no problem pushing Christianity onto the kids, then why did he suddenly have a problem with a parent "pushing" Islam onto the kids?
The next day, both the Bibles and the other literature were returned .

[Andara Bledin]

I think the point he was trying to make was that when you put ANY other religion up against Christian fundies, people are going to complain and demand that the program be shut down, because if you're going to allow Christian fundies access to children in schools, then you had better allow other religions into schools too.

Well, that is rather the point, though, isn't it? In the US, we have it set out quite clearly a separation of church and state, specifically to avoid the 'one true religion' and 'tyranny of the majority' that comes up in a democratic society.

Unfortunately, we have too many who are threatened by any other religious representation, and who would much rather have nothing at all, then have their own viewpoints challenged in any manner. But that's not the fault of those pushing for greater exercise of freedom...

[fireheart17]

Well, that is rather the point, though, isn't it? In the US, we have it set out quite clearly a separation of church and state, specifically to avoid the 'one true religion' and 'tyranny of the majority' that comes up in a democratic society.

We do actually have a section in the Australian constitution which prohibits this (specifically about "religion of the state"), but it only tends to get brought up whenever there's a policy that clearly favours one group over another. For instance, the chaplain legislation.

Basically, the current PM's plan was to give $245 million to schools to have a chaplain present. This program previously allowed for secular welfare workers OR chaplains. Abbott simply made it chaplains only. It would've seemed like a fairly innocuous thing, as schools might've chosen to find a chaplain that was pagan for instance.

THEN it came out that the funding in question was actually going to six different groups that would provide the chaplains...all of which happened to be Christian. One guy went ahead and launched a challenge against the High Court using the above-mentioned passage in the Australian Constitution. It was effective and Abbott's intended policy was scrapped. It still exists, but now the states have been "forced" to sign up for it instead (with a couple of states refusing it, the chaplains in those states have resorted to basically emotionally blackmailing the students)