Fox and Friends Sunday can never be complete without defending the poor, persecuted Christians of America. Naturally, war sells and they entitle this very important recurring segment The Fight For Faith. Moises Esteves, the guest pleading the case for the promotion of non-secular clubs is the Vice President of USA Ministries, the organization that supports the Good News Club. Some lousy, atheist parent complained and is trying to rain on their religious parade, so of course, Moises decides Fox News is the best place to find like-minded, Jesus-loving people to sympathize with this persecuted Christian.
The Good News Club is anything but good news for those who don't want their children to be treated as if they've been born unclean, and unworthy of forgiveness, unless they believe in a 2,000 year old book of fictitious fairy tales. Originally heard on February 2001, SCOTUS rendered its decision on June 11, 2001 regarding the prohibition of religious clubs meeting on public school grounds. In the case The Good News Club v Milford Central School, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff 6-3 that the Child Evangelism Fellowship Organization had the freedom of speech right to set up evangelical clubs in public elementary schools (along with other after school programs). Separation of Church and State, basically over a technicality, has been effectively nullified.
Esteves, the Fox News' peddler of propaganda du jour, cited the unfortunate 2001 ruling as grounds for furthering his organization's religious objectives. The curriculum of The Good News Club is standardized to indoctrinate children. The strategy is based on the premise that what a child learns at school must be true, so a teacher instructing a class on mathematics and next class the same children are told “they are born sinners and must repent to the gospel of Jesus Christ” as if they are factual equivalents. The universally taught text of the Good News Club (GNC) has over 5,000 references to sin, 1,000 references to obedience, 1,000 references to punishment and more allusions to hell than Boticelli’s rendition of Dante’s terrifying underworld.
Both Kooiman and Morris, the Fox hosts on the weekend, defend Mr. Esteves' efforts because in the end, students need a parentally signed permission slip. It's just a pamphlet after all, right? Of course they all choose to forget the inevitability that there will a negative stigma attached to kids whose parents don't want their children to be indoctrinated into a faith laden with untruths, misogyny, bigotry, slavery and hate.
These secular children will face harsh criticism by both peers and their parents, who will be spiritually brainwashed to believe they are better than the atheist students. The kids attending the club would say that the religion of the Good News Club had to be true because they learned it in school.
The very same sanctimonious propagation of the Christian faith was the impetus for the Founding Fathers to establish a nation that valued the separation of church and state. With a right-wing Christian Supreme Court, expect more erosion of secular public schools replaced by a more Christian-based education. The Christian school fantasy of Jerry Falwell is far more likely to be realized today than just a few decades ago.
