The Good News Club, The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, by Katherine Stewart
Katherine Stewart
Author and journalist Katherine Stewart chronicles the toxic spread of Christianity by fundamentalist evangelical organizations in her 2012 book, The Good News Club, The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children. In it she describes the duplicitous tactics and divisive nature of these religious legal and educational groups. Intent on controlling – and even destroying – the public school system, these organizations peddle a destructive agenda with a goal of controlling American education, politics and culture. Before you sound the cry of “Alarmist!” listen to this podcast or read her book: Like a good student, Stewart has done her homework, and like a good journalist, she has done her footwork.
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Children will think that these groups are endorsed by the school, regardless of intent. Kids will be a captive audience if they sign up for these groups. Lure them in with friends, massive amounts of junk food, they think it’s the ‘truth’ if taught on campus. And very young children will find it almost impossible to communicate any weirdness they feel to their parents. I have read how some of these groups, especially ones targeting middle and high school students will hold massive ‘shock and awe’ events, with dynamic speakers, loud ‘Jesus rock’, basically just hype, hype, hype. This causes ‘episodic memory’ which is retained much longer than everyday occurrences. And, these groups use the facilities for free very often! Doh!!!
Hi Mary,
It quite possibly could be the same people as the Christian Child Evangelical group, or whatever they are called are very well funded, and claim to be in over 130 countries.
I also read in one of the NZ papers that the NZ Education Minister is a Creationist. Rather disturbing.
In defense of Ms. Stewart I think this interview was recorded over the Internet which always is less clear than a good telephone line. I skype my parents every Friday, and the same thing happens: tinny voice, both parties talking over each other’s words, both parties stopping to wait for the other person to finish. It did sound like she had a piece of candy in her mouth! I think she has done a great service to uncover this outrage that is happening right in our public schools.
Whilst I agree with all that she says,her presentational style makes it very difficult to focus on what she is saying rather than how she says it.The staccato strangulated voice is very tiring to follow,can i suggest she gets some tuition in public speaking to stop her continually saying uh!
Great interview. I live in New Zealand but I suspect there is the same sort of thing going on here to a lesser degree. We have evangalical churches here, heavily influenced by the USA, although not in large numbers. Our present government is changing the law to allow the setting up of Charter Schools which can be faith based. The teachers’ union, probably the strongest union in the country, is very much opposed. It is clear that Katherine is not an extremist or paranoid. Well done to her for bring this to our attention.