The Good News Club

The Religious Right likes to accuse the Liberals of indoctrinating our school children,  Rick Santorum is calling for government and even state governments to get out of the business of funding public education, if you disagree with them then you should read this book......

  "If you are a freethinker, a liberal, a religious moderate, a member of any religion other than evangelical Christianity, or simply someone who appreciates that these United States are a free nation, formed under secular principles and under secular laws, then you absolutely must purchase and read this book.

If you are a fundaloon (a Fundamentalist Christian Lunatic), then you do not need to read this book. You already know what you and your anti-democracy fascists are up to.

The Good News Club is one of many organizations within the evangelical Christian movement that was formed and is dedicated to "breaking down the doors" of America's public schools. Their methodology is outlined here, but is acknowledged by the various leaders and funders of this "club". There is nothing secret there, but the "stealthy" part is that when they do approach a school with their series of "after-school" bible studies, they sanitize their approach as being non-denominational and inclusive, when it is anything but.

According to Ms. Stewart, In Post-War (WWII) America, public education and interpretation of the First amendment's Establishment Clause were based on three pillars:
1) That the public schools should remain secular
2) That peer pressure is intimidation
3) That religious activity INSIDE the schools would be construed as being the SAME as religious activity BY the schools
Recent Supreme Court decisions by an ACTIVIST CONSERVATIVE court, led by Thomas and Scalia, have shredded the basic principles of the First Amendment. They have deliberately, as part of their fundamentalist Christian ideology, destroyed the Establishment Clause and made religious activity part of the Exercise of Free Speech Clause. Thus, the Establishment Clause has been rendered redundant or meaningless.

This movement is organized and well-funded. The various evangelical legal arms have a 300 million dollar per year budget. And they are concerned with only one issue: getting their version of their specific religion into the public schools and hopefully into control of those schools, and eventually our nation. By comparison, the ACLU has a budget under 100 million dollars, and they have dozens of concerns and battles to fight. In fact, at times, the ACLU has actually supported the free speech rights of the religious fanatics!

States Matthew Staver, founder of the Liberty Counsel, which provides legal counsel for the Child Evangelist Foundation (CEF--runs the Good News Clubs) and other Christian Nationalist organizations: "We're fighting against spiritual powers. Behold there is a battle between two nations...Satan is a strategist of war. He hates Jesus Christ...and especially someone who wants to introduce someone else to Jesus Christ, specifically the most strategic link that we have among us, children age five through twelve...If that's the truth, why would we be unaware that that would be the most strategic face of Satan?"

If you are a parent who does not believe in the literal truth of the bible, if you do not attend the "right" church (evangelical fundamentalist bible-believing), if you do not wish to live in a theocracy governed by selected Christian MALES who will decide all issues according to one singular apocalyptic interpretation of one version of the bible, if you do not wish for these deluded loons to have unfettered school-approved access to YOUR children and to all other children, then the above quote is and should be terrifying to you.

Ms. Stewart writes in a clear straightforward manner and is a parent herself. In fact, it was the experience of running into the Good News Club at her child's school that motivated her to research this subject and eventually write this book.

The battle for Reason and Reality is not over. The fundaloons see every one of the rest of us as minions of the Devil at worst, unsaved sinners at best. Their motives are clear, their reasoning is dishonest and delusional, but they are not stupid and they are not going to surrender. These are the home-grown versions of the Nazi jackboots and the Saudi "airplane pilots" who made 9/11 a date that has come to symbolize all that is wrong with extreme religion"

This is a review of the book on Amazon.com....Do you agree?