The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children

[Deep13]

http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9781586488437-0

This is a new book by Katherine Steward about the stealth infiltration of Evangelical Christianity into public schools. I don't mean into the curriculum, but the active recruitment of students into evangelical, conservative Christianity. She's talking about it on Gay USA on Free Speech TV.

[Dawson Leery]

1. Mark Crispin Miller on this matter:

[MarkCharles]

4. Thanks for the video link! n/t

[patrice]

2. Career track for the next generation of preachers.

"The call" has always seemed kind of suspect to me.

A white-collar job with ALL kinds of social, psychological, and financial perks? "Hey, I have received the call to the ministry!"

[cbayer]

5. I can tell you, as a PK

(preacher's kid), there weren't really any significant perks.

Long hours, high expectations, little money.

[patrice]

6. Yeah, maybe I should have said something about church size.

I was in a position once in which it was impossible not to hear a small church leader turn his little church/congregation over to a mega-church operation as he had found it impossible to keep going by himself. Not long after doing so, he came in with a blue-tooth on and was apparently pretty much on-call for anything and everything after that.

I remember the days when practically every one of my Catholic mother's friends used to dream aloud about a son or daughter with a vocation. I don't imagine it is much different in Protestant denominations, mistakenly or otherwise.

[cbayer]

7. I think you are right about the shysters and snake oil salesmen (and women),

but most mainline preachers have really tough jobs.

I don't know a single other PK who chose to follow in their father's footprints, though I am sure they exist.

[patrice]

8. I'm also a little freaked out by how many people seem to regard church as a place to

learn how to be a performer of somesort.

There could be an authentic ministry in that sort of thing, but so many . . . ?

Liturgy often feels a little too show bizzy to me. What are people thinking? It's a little like toddlers-and-tiaras. But then I suppose that's to be expected when you can drive down a city street and see signs for restaurants with "Church TV".

[patrice]

3. And the "beauty" of this approach is that as long as it comes from a student, there's not much the

school can do to stop it.

Kids like it, because it's an excuse to socialize that their parents approve of, so they can have all kinds of fun.