For those of you that are not familiar with this, I strongly encourage you to take the time and read this article. The Good News Clubs, run by the Child Evangelism Fellowship is actively going after elementary school children and trying to convert them – after they teach them that everyone who doesn’t convert is a sinner. The story of the Jewish child that was accosted by her Christian classmate is horrible. What’s worse, the Christian child was covertly recruited to do exactly what she did. She attended an after school brainwashing class at her public school. She was taught that everyone who not one of them was a sinner. So she relayed that sentiment to her Jewish friend.

Good News Clubs are sponsored by the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), a worldwide     organization founded in Warrenton, Missouri, more than 70 years ago. The declared mission of the CEF is to produce conversion experiences in very young children, and thus to equip them to “witness” for other children. “I was told that a child at five, if properly instructed, can as truly believe as anyone,” said Mr. J. Irvin Overholtzer, who founded CEF in 1937. “I saw that if there was any truth in this statement, there was a door of opportunity lying open before us.” As of 2008, according to CEF Vice President of U.S.A. Ministries Moises Esteves, there were approximately 3,410 Good News Clubs in public K-6 schools around the country.

This is a very serious issue that will most likely affect all of us at some point. What do you do when your child’s school tells other children that your child is a sinner and will go to hell? That’s exactly what happened to this six-year-old girl. The CEF has been doing this for some time all across the country. It was eventually brought to the Supreme Court but the right wing of the court out-maneuvered the left and the moderates. In writing the court’s opinion; right-wing-theocrat Clarence Thomas stated that is was all right for the CEF to indoctrinate children in public schools (Good News Club v. Milford Central School)!

All of us have a responsibility to our children to protect them from hatred and prejudice. They do not deserve to be mentally abused because of their parent’s ignorance. Religion has always been the supreme force for child abuse; this case clearly defines why. If these awful, divisive,  duplicitous people (Good News Clubs) are in your community or do come to it in the future, be prepared to fight them. Your child’s eternal future could depend on it!

Reading, Writing, and Original Sin: An Evangelical Group Sets its Sights on Santa Barbara’s Public Elementary School Kids (original article).