good evening welcome to moral politics with bill alford i'm your host valerie to rico and this is our monthly series on christianity in the public square how would you feel if you found out that your local neighborhood grade school your public grade school had become a religious recruiting ground would it be ok if it was your church how about if it was mormons or muslims would it matter to you if it was catholics or right to troll for converts on a public grade school grounds if you think that you're wrong here with us tonight is a north seattle parent john letter your daughter's school and quite by accident found out that there was something going on there called the good news club what is the good news club where basically a good news club is sunday school that happens right in the public school and it was happening in my daughter's school back in two thousand h she was a first grader and basically it has all the elements of sunday school that you would expect to  find it's basically you know singing songs scripture memory learning about the bible in this case everything you would expect to see in sunday school happens in a good news club and it was happening after school on a friday afternoon right after classes in my daughter's public elementary school in this case was low heights elementary in seattle so but it's after school that's not actually happening as a part of the school program well it's not exactly part of the school program but it's happening right alongside all of the school sponsored afterschool activities all of the p t a sponsored afterschool activities it's happening in a classroom in this case it was a kindergarten classroom it's happening right after school and basically the good news club students who are going to their their sunday school essentially in in the public school we're we're meeting in the cafeteria right alongside the the other groups that the chess club and in the math club who are meeting to have their snacks and they were virtually indistinguishable from any of the school or p t a sponsored after school activities so you think the children though could tell the difference absolutely not i mean if you walked into that cafeteria and you saw you know one group of students over here and another group of students over there the good news club you would know which was the school sponsored after school club and the p t a sponsors after school club which was the why in which was the boys and girls club and which was the good news club you wouldn't be able to now but you know they call it the good news club because they want it to sound like an after school activity like the math club or the science club but it's not a club it's sunday school well but i think a lot of people would say look like kids in our culture could use a little bit of character education spiritual education having the chance to learn some bible stories you know kind of part learn about argued judeo christian heritage that doesn't sound all bad well it isn't it isn't bad at all the question is whether it should be happening in a public elementary school or not and in this case though you have to also look at the kind of bible study the kind of religious practice that was going on in the good news club so what kind of what kind of bible study is a well if you sort of have to go back to who is sponsoring it to really understand what what was going on and who is the good news club is  evangelical fundamentalist brand of christianity that is espoused by the c e f the child evangelism fellowship this is a national organization that's been around for quite a long time since the one nine hundred thirty s but only starting in the one thousand nine hundred two they really start to push in a major way with their some of their legal partners to get into the public schools and they were able to succeed in two thousand and one there was from court decision that got them the right to run facilities and public schools so you're saying what you're saying that the supreme court said they have the right to go on to public schools and try to convert kids the supreme court said that they have to fix the right to go into the public schools and rent school space if that district if that school district is making their space available to other to other community organizations no they did not say they have the right to proselytize or to convert public public school kids to their brand of christianity but in fact that is exactly what they do when they move into a school and unfortunately it's not being properly checked by either the courts or the it you know i i kind of think it's i think it's very wrong i mean basically as a parent it's it's my job to oversee my children's religious exposure basis at trinity united methodist in ballard and my children get their religious education as i think is proper in a church not in a public school where he goes i would think a lot of people would listen to you being offended at the thought of you know kind of sunday school bible school happening at a graceful and they think well he must be anti religious no i'm not anti religious at all  and neither is my family and what i'm trying to do is to protect my children and my rights as a parent to be overseeing and directing my children's initial indoctrination the the issue is where is the proper place for this kind of education to take place and i strongly believe it's proper not in not in a public school where we have  lots of people of varying different face and non face but in the community where we're properly belongs i think you have to look at it see if the child evangelism fellowship and what they believe to get a sense of of the evangelical and proselytizing nature of their work so what what do they believe child of angeles and well they are the purpose of the good news club and you can go to their web site c f on line dot org and you can find this for yourself that the purpose of their good news club is to evangelize boys and girls in the cost will of jesus christ  well it's a very kind of fairy tale version of christian faith and and that's a little bit understandable given that they're focusing on five to ten year olds who really don't have the capacity to  basic story one of the things that they do in these good news clubs is they they hand kids these little puzzle toys they're called flipper flappers yeah there are a lot of fun you can you can you can flip them around him and i gave one to my daughter once not telling her what it was or what the story is behind it and she played with it for twenty minutes she thought she thought it was a lot of fun it really captured her attention but the idea is is a pretty simple one if you hand this to kids it cost fifty cents and they bring it to school it's going to start a conversation well what's that what's yet with the congress the conversation that they have around this little toy is one which you see you see this yellow yellow circle that's supposed to represent the wealth of christian faith the the god's love and then and then if you turn to the black heart the black heart is supposed to  represent the heart of sin that is in all children that they're born with so they're basically teaching this idea you're going to hell because you have a heart of sin and she would unless you adopt some simple rules and they have to be simple because  only five or six years old obey your parents love jesus christ adopt cheesus christ as your savior for the rest of your life and go to church if you do those simple things then  salvation so what they're looking for children to do and a good news club is to make a case what they call a salvation commitment where they agree to adopt these these these four basic rules and to and to basically  move on to two to a world in which there ensconced in the church so you so to a christian church and i happen to be familiar with that church that i don't think that that church would say you have to be saved by kind of christian tradition your church doesn't teach those things well absolutely it doesn't and but when you when you do teach those things to very small children and you do it in a public school i mean think about how the child reaction to that how do they react  thing i can see how they react because it's happened in our school you know they basically say ok i'm saved i mean that's of asian community but all my friends in my school they haven't made that salvation commitment so they're all going to go to hell they're not going to they're not going to get to live with jesus after they die like like like i will because i haven't made that commitment they haven't made that commitment like you got five year or so so while heights looking at their friends and thinking their friends are going to be tortured forever that's basically it so of course they're going to try to draw them in they're going to try to take that message to them and say i want you to be saved like me because i want to live with you in with and with jesus after we've done so so the message itself is evangelical the message tells children to try to reach out to to other kids but there's other things that c f does in addition to the message that clearly is designed to reach the out and the school becomes a fertile ground for doing just that you know there's a lot of different ways in which they do this in the supreme court in this kind of legal gray area whatever it is if it was said these guys are going into our public schools their goal is to get converts among five six seven eight year old children you're saying that that the supreme court said that's ok we can't stop them you know absolutely the supreme court to say that's ok you know in a way it's kind of sad because c f is pretty systematically misrepresented what the supreme court actually said in its does in its decision a supreme court say as you understand as as i understand it in reading justice clarence thomas decision it was a six to three decision it was very controversial there were five different decisions rendered among nine justices they couldn't agree on how to decide this case i mean that's pretty unprecedented but justice thomas wrote the majority opinion and he he basically said look if a school district makes its facilities available to anyone to any community group they can discriminate as to whether that community group is religious or not ok that's what he held but he then went on to say there's no issue here about the establishment clause of the constitution there's no issue because the c e f in the case that was before the court had taken great pains to separate itself from the school they weren't holding their their their their good news club in the classroom they weren't involving teachers they weren't involving staff they weren't they were doing it well after school they weren't advertising  any of the school communications he noted all of those things in his decision so and is that what happened while like the exact opposite happened while i said the exact opposite happens every time c f goes into that into a new school how did it work at your school at our school what they did is they came in they immediately tried to embed themselves in kind of the legitimacy of the school they the first thing they did is they they sent home a flyer in kids mail advertising themselves w approval and a lot of parents immediately object is saying ok what is this good news club and why is it here because we now ask for it and two why are you using kids mail to get the word out about this outside group that wants to hold an after school club at our school and the principal immediately reacted said oops we should've done that from now on i'm changing the policy i'm going to review everything that goes out and kids mail and i'm not and you know that's never going to happen again they're not going to use  it so that what that was the first thing the next thing they tried to do is they tried to sponsor an ad in the p t a s auction pamphlet we have a big fundraiser at the it's a it's an auction happens every year so another way of saying this is integrated into the school where they are to the school community we're trying to reach parents and get the word out so they wanted to have a full page ad in the auction catalog and a bunch of other parents basically said to the p t a now you can accept their ad because then it will look like they're part of the school and they're not and that's what the supreme court said they couldn't they couldn't do exactly and so so in that case that was that that was the second example the most egregious example of them over and then they were also putting up signs in the hallway and we had to deal with that for the most egregious example was when the leader of the good news club who is this woman from a local church and evangelical church called u an evangelical church in in ballard she she decided she wanted to start volunteering in a kindergarten classroom and she started volunteering four days a week and you kind of garden classroom as a teacher as a teacher's helper  and and this this was really problematic because suddenly you had church lady the person who is leading sunday school who's now volunteer ng and looking like a teacher to a five year old in the classrooms  suddenly it looks like teachers are volunteers in this case are participating in the good news club and leading the goodness quite another way it's all part of the so so clearly it crosses the line of making to the student the good news club look like it's part of the school curriculum and that as a psychologist i would say there is no way a five year old can tell the difference between a volunteer and the teacher and the staff and i mean it's all the same to them they're all adults right  and so they couldn't see the difference there were a lot of parents in the classroom who said you know this woman is not working with my kid and they had to move her to another kindergarten classroom and this kept happening to eventually the principal had had to ask this woman to not fall into here anymore because it wasn't working she couldn't work with any of the any of the parents kids because they all kept saying we don't want to work with so what you said though the school can't do anything about it what can i well that there's a lot of things that the school district you know needs to do in order to really make sure that that these these divisions that need to take place between the good news club and the rest of the school are solidified one is that they need to make sure that teachers and staff don't participate in the good news club in any way and that includes right on down to helping a kid get to the good news club meeting place i mean they they really can't go anywhere near the good news club once they do that then it looks like the good news club is part of the school's curriculum and and then they also need to take great pains to make sure that there's no perception of any endorsement or the practice religion they need to make sure that the all the schools communications vehicles all the p t a s communications vehicles are free of any information about the good news club it cannot be just simply added to the list of after school activities because then it becomes part of the of the school's sponsorship so what do you want what do you want parents to know about well i think think i i think part of it is i need tell parents what we were able to do with this story we we pushed back and because immediately they came in and crossed all of these lines that the court established that that school policy really came in and crossed all these lines and we pushed back and we got the administration at the school to stop some of the most egregious practices god go and to not to not take these ads and do all of these things and we know the club hasn't gone away it's still there but the second year that they came back with one hundred eighty degree change from that first year they had clearly decided consciously they were going to change their strategy radically in oil heights elementary school they did not put advertise at all not even on the community bowl board where they're allowed to advertise they didn't advertise anywhere in the school and they also were moved from a classroom to to a portable so farther away from the mainstream and they accepted that so basically we've come to an uneasy standoff where because parents push back against the good news club and see we were able to change the rules in a way that we can live with we don't like them but we can live with it and they were not able to cross immediately cross the line of trying to integrate themselves into the rest of the school and they and they have remained somewhat isolated from ever from the rest of the school ever sense so so i guess the message for parents is if you're vigilant and you press pack you can change their behavior in a very fundamental way and we shown that you know it's another another major so i would guess that there are some parents who would like to have their kids getting sunday school on the school grounds who are getting kind of their room some religious education during the week but but and it sounds to me like maybe by pushing back you've kind of gotten to a point where the kids who are going to the club would be those kids that it's not that they're on campus with the kids in the classroom recruiting kids right and trying to convert kids well c f is smart they don't move into a school unless they've got a core  group of parents that are going to send their kids and i mean that they need to have a critical mass before they're actually going to make it make a move into a school and basically it's to generate that original critical mass they haven't grown from what i've seen have anywhere from six to twelve kids participating on a weekly basis and it's pretty much stayed there so and that's i think that's been helpful i think the awareness raising has as as has been helpful i think also just keeping them sort of isolated from their school has been helpful so so there's there's you know that there's a group of parents that clearly you know are going to participate no matter what and the reason that they're participating is because they want to establish a presence in the public school i mean they could easily have their good news club down the street at the local evangelical church it's within walking distance of the school that we offered to buy them a van to help them buy a van if they would just get out parents spiritual tradition child it is just two words that shouldn't even go together i kind of feel that way too but but i think my fundamental point is this is just an inappropriate activity in the school when you press c f what they say is look the supreme court has said we have a right to be here but you know as americans we need to be able to distinguish between what our legal rights are and what's the right thing to do and those are two completely different things and in this case yeah c f has a legal right to rent space in a public school but does that make it a good idea for us to be having religious instruction inside the public school as an after school activity i think not i think it's a really bad idea and it doesn't it doesn't really matter whether it's evangelical christians or any other religion it just doesn't belong in the public elementary school it's not an appropriate activity in that venue if they want to evangelize go stand on the corner and evangelists you know go stand in the public park if that's where you want to be the man in the public well if this was a more minority religion even farther afield i mean i think you know fundamentalist fundamentalism in this kind that what you're describing is a minority religion in seattle but what if it was scientologists or if it was who knows  was hindus with a let them would they let him go yeah i mean i think that's that's the interesting part here is since two thousand and one any religious organization has had the freedom to walk through this door but only one has so what you're saying i scientologists would have the right to form clubs on how blic schools according to the supreme court's yeah mission in two thousand and one they're they're free to do that they're free to rent space and have an after school club just like c f but nobody has so you've got to ask yourself why not why only c f why is everybody else seem to get it except the christian evangelical group you know everyone else seems to think as i do it's not a very good idea to try to move into a public elementary school but apparently only this group seems to think it is a good idea i mean there's something about this particular form of religion that that lends itself to that kind of thinking that somehow everybody else doesn't seem to doesn't seem to think in those terms it's all right there in their name isn't it smiled evangelist right we're going to reach children we're going to bring the unchurched into our church and thanks to clarence thomas we can now do that in a public elementary school  and they're doing it they're doing it every day john is there anything else you'd like to say to our audience as we're wrapping up we've got like one minute here well i guess i guess the biggest thing is that i really i really don't want them you know getting in between me and my child and my child's initial indoctrination into religion and by bringing their form of religion into the public school and by teaching this evangelical message to children that's precisely what they're doing you know we really need to to think about whether this is the appropriate activity that needs to happen the public school and parents have the opportunity to really make a change and to fight back and to and to make a difference thank you for joining us tonight it's been my pleasure