Good News Club

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Spot the link between Trump ally Sen. Josh Hawley and hot 5th Century Christian dispute?

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Spot the link between Trump ally Sen. Josh Hawley and hot 5th Century Christian dispute?

THE QUESTION:

How is Trump ally Sen. Josh Hawley linked with 5th Century Christianity’s hottest dispute?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

New York Times contributor Katherine Stewart doesn’t care much for conservative Christians.

Consider the subtitle of her 2012 book “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.” (Actually, these non-political after-school clubs operate openly, and participation is voluntary.) Last year, she wrote the timely “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.”

Stewart’s latest Times op-ed article (“The Roots of Josh Hawley’s Rage”) decries U.S. Senator Josh Hawley’s clenched-fist backing for President Trump’s attempt to have Congress overturn the 2020 election that culminated in the U.S. Capitol riot, Trump’s second impeachment and multitudes of criminal investigations.

The controversial 42-year-old is a Stanford and Yale Law alumnus whose rapid rise included clerking for Chief Justice Roberts and just two years as Missouri’s attorney general before winning his U.S. Senate seat. Pundits assume he’ll seek the presidency in 2024 if Trump does not or cannot run.

Hawley tells World magazine he is part of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, he was formerly a staff attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and some count him among Capitol Hill’s most devout figures.

Stewart makes the surprising assertion that to understand the senator’s role in the unprecedented furies of recent weeks we must look back 16 centuries to one of the hottest theological disputes in Christian history.


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Podcast: Why didn't @NYTimes mention complex political history of 'equal access' laws?

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The church-state roller-coaster at the U.S. Supreme Court just keeps going and we’re not done yet.

The main purpose of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) was to talk about my recent post about Chief Justice Roberts and his decision to switch sides and defend the high court’s abortion legacy. SCOTUS, on a 5-4 vote, took down a Louisiana state law that would have required doctors working in abortion facilities to have the same kind of admitting privileges at local hospitals and those who work in other specialty surgery centers.

Mainstream journalists didn’t seem interested in the personalities behind that law. To get those ordinary facts, readers had to go to religious and/or “conservative” websites. Thus, I offered this headline: “Conservative news? White GOP justice strikes down bill by black, female pro-life Democrat.” Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana, who signed the bill, is a Democrat, too.

Why did so many journalists ignore that angle? It would appear that those facts didn’t fit into the white evangelicals just love Donald Trump template. Why muddy the political waters with coverage of two Democrats — a black Baptist and a white Catholic?

Lo and behold, by the time we did the live Lutheran Public Radio show, the court had released another 5-4 decision that, at first glance, had little or nothing to do with the Louisiana abortion bill. Here’s the New York Times double-decker headline on that story:

Supreme Court Gives Religious Schools More Access to State Aid

Religious schools should have the same access to scholarships and funds as other private schools, the justices ruled, in a victory for conservatives.

Readers who have followed church-state issues will recognize a key fact that the Times team — to its credit — got into that headline: Secular and religious private schools should be treated the same.

That immediately made me wonder if the Times, and other major mainstream outlets, were going to realize that this “equal access” principle was crucial to the church-state coalition of liberals and conservatives that accomplished so much working with (wait for it) the Clinton White House.

That’s interesting, right?


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Scouts use this school for free, but Bible club must pay: What might be strange about that?

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The Indianapolis Star had an interesting church-state story recently. It concerns a federal lawsuit filed by a Bible-based club charged fees to use a public school for meetings, while other groups don't have to pay.

I thought the Star did a pretty nice job of treating each side fairly, and the story's lede is excellent.

However, one key aspect of the story disappointed me. It's like there was some kind of gap there, yes, linked to religion. More on that in a moment.

First, though, let's start at the top. This chunk of the story is very, very long, but you need to read it all:

What's the rent on a Pike Township classroom? Well, it depends on whom you ask.
The Boy Scouts will tell you it's free. So will the Girl Scouts, Girls Inc. and a character-building group called Boys II Men. 
Ask the Child Evangelism Fellowship, though, and they'll tell you it costs $45 each time you want to use a Pike Township classroom. 
CEF says the fee is too high -- and it's unconstitutional.


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Devil's advocate: Religion News Service reports on Satanist pitch

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The Satanic Temple has gotten lots of coverage from the Religion News Service. But its most recent story digs deeper into the group and its founder, Lucien Greaves. Which is not to say that the article doesn't have a laundry list of flaws. 

Most of the 1,600-word article is drawn from an interview with Greaves. Some of it is pasted from previous coverage. It makes some shaky claims about the causes of the Satanist movement. And it allows Greaves to attack Christianity again and again, without seeking out the other side.

This update does seem less servile than, say, the summertime feature in the Washington Post. It does more explaining, less campaigning. RNS seems to use a double peg. One is Greave's meeting with the Kansas City Atheist Coalition, seeking allies and kindred minds.  And Missouri is the home of the Child Evangelism Fellowship, which sponsors the Good News Clubs.

Hence the playful lede:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (RNS) Lucien Greaves is the Good News Club’s worst nightmare.
Greaves is co-founder of the Satanic Temple, a group dedicated to church-state separation. And his organization’s latest campaign in launching after-school clubs for children, Greaves told RNS before a recent talk in Kansas City, is not so much about indoctrinating children into Satanism — he doesn’t actually believe in the devil as a real being, much less one to be worshipped.
Rather, the After School Satan clubs, as they are called, are about making a statement against the government providing facilities exclusively for Christian after-school programs such as the Good News Club.
A side benefit is that the publicity surrounding the After School Satan clubs is likely to bring far more attention — and maybe public understanding — to the Satanic Temple than anything else the group could do.

So we have a good summary of Greaves' grievance: not so much a defense of his faith, but attacking activities of another faith. And we have the story's first flaw: calling The Satanic Temple the "worst nightmare" of the Good News Club. That may sound cheeky, but RNS doesn't interview anyone connected with Good News.


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'Sin' gets scare quote treatment in Portland, Ore.

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Be very, very afraid, Portland!

The Christians are invading Oregon — and they want to tell your children about Jesus.

That's scary stuff, I know.

But somehow I missed — until now — the newspaper story earlier this month about some residents' concerns about an after-school Bible study club. I promise this headline is from The Oregonian, not The Onion:

Evangelical Christian clubs coming to Portland-area public schools — opposition says curriculum is 'hardcore fundamentalist indoctrination'

If you need me, I'll be hiding under my desk.

Then again, it's probably best not to delay this dramatic news:

Hundreds of Portland-area residents are organizing to stop a network of Christian clubs from proselytizing to children on public school campuses.

The Good News Club has been controversial around the country, but Portland may be the first city to organize on such a large scale against the group.

"We think if people have enough information, they'll choose not to do it," said Robert Aughenbaugh, a co-founder of Protect Portland Children. His said the group purchased a full-page advertisement in Wednesday's Willamette Week.

The Good News Club's curriculum includes teaching children that every person is a sinner. In the eyes of many Christians, "sin" is any failure to meet God's standards. The Bible states, for example, that "all have sinned."

"We believe that these doctrines are harmful to 5-year-old children," Aughenbaugh said. "They teach fear. They teach shame."

Did you catch the scare quotes around "sin?"


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