Here’s a link to an article that appeared in Time Magazine, June 4, 2001-- “Saving The 7-Year-Old: A missionary group devoted to small children fights to gain access to public elementary schools”
“A few minutes after 3 o’clock on a spring afternoon, a color poster of a crucified Jesus hangs in front of the art classroom in a public school in Pennsylvania. For the next hour, three adults will guide 21 children between the ages of 4 and 12 through songs they know by heart (Good News, Jesus Died for Me!) and a Bible lesson (Heaven’s a perfect place. And Jesus wants you to live there!). It sounds and feels like Sunday school, but it’s Wednesday. This is the meeting of Pleasant Gap Elementary’s Good News Club, a weekly event on school property, run by an outfit called the Child Evangelism Fellowship. …criticisms have focused on the searing imagery featured in club meetings: kids learn that nonbelievers will burn in everlasting fire and that Satan is real.”
The article tells us that a 5 year old Jewish boy attended three sessions without his parents’ knowledge. They’d signed him up for an after school day care program. The program managers let the children go to these … revival meetings for tots, or whatever you want to call them. Without asking asking for parental permission, or even informing the parents.
They give out a lot of candy at these gatherings.
Does anyone think that this is a legitimate way to seek converts?
To me, it sounds like some serious lawsuit material.
I have been saying for years, and I will continue to say that a child of that age has no concept of god, christ, heaven or hell. I cannot even conceive of telling a 7 year old that if they are not good and are not saved they will be burning in hell. What are they trying to do, give the kids nightmares? I have known people who wont let their kids watch an old Dracula movie on television, yet will let some minister preach fire and brimstone and all the horrors of hell at them. Where is the logic in this? Were this a school MY children were attending, I can assure you there would be more lawyers swarming around the place than the evangelists could shake a bible at.
A 7 year old should be happy and carefree…not worrying about his immortal soul.
Robert Anton Wilson had an amusing essay in one of his books (they all do tend to blur together) on how one of the teaching nuns in his school as a child was the cause of years of insomnia and nightmares. She’d told the class the Satan did things like sneak into the rooms of wicked unrepentant children while they were sleeping and pour ground glass into their eyes, you see.
Young children are perfect targets for conversion, because they haven’t yet or have only just begun to learn such things as critical thought. Things like that cause no end of trouble to trying to convert adults, so conversion attempts have to target those who never learned it or are emotionally vulnerable enough at the time that the powers of it aren’t operating well.
Whether or not that’s “legitimate” is…not debateable for me. It’s downright disgusting. But it’s not going to go away anytime soon.
Naturally no one here believes this is a legimate way to seek converts. However I don’t dissagree with the idea of a little kid having a concept of god. Its just when adults try to force their own opinions on the kids thats bad.
You honestly believe that if people don’t follow you, they will burn in Eternal Hellfire. You, as a caring person, don’t want that to happen. So, you try to convince people.
The problem is that people who have a preconceived notion about the world tend not to be convinced so easily. So, go to the people with an open mind. Children.
There is a reason we start talking to kids about things like drugs and sex and guns and why you shouldn’t be doing any of those things. We scare them and then they develop a neurosis and don’t go shooting their cousin when they find a gun under their uncle’s bed. We scare them so that they can live a normal life.
For a fundie, it is a logical extension. If we tell kids to “Just Say No” and “Don’t Play with Guns”, why can’t we tell them that Jesus died for them? Scare them so that they can be a Christian and go to heaven.
It doesn’t matter what their parents think – their parents are old and set in their ways and hard to convince. They are the equivalent of Rick James and his $5000 a day cocaine habit. They may be atheist junkies. They won’t change until their world is shattered.
Granted, this is the complete antithesis to my personal beliefs, but I would think that it makes perfect sense for any right thinking fundie.
I agree with Edwino that fundamentalists (all religions) think they are doing children a favour when they seek to convert them at an early age.
However, this practice is simply the abuse of young minds receptive to absolutely everything. The same way we shield children from sex, drugs, death, etc., I believe we ought to shield them from religion in order to encourage the formation of a healthy critical mind (who can then subscribe to whatever beliefs he/she wants when she is properly equipped with critical tools).
I firmly believe in Timothy Leary’s 11th Commandment:
Thou Shalt Not Alter Thy Neighbor’s Consciousness Without Their Permission.
He means you shouldn’t secretly drop GHB in your date’s drink. He also specifically means that compulsory indoctrination is unethical. Children aren’t capable of giving consent, therefore you should never forcibly indoctrinate them into anything.
Oh, that’s not even one cut above horse manure. Unless you care to provide proof that NOBODY on this site feels that there’s a legitimate way to seek converts. Whatever “proof” you have tor that assertion will be invalidated by the presence of even one person who believes there’s a legitimate way to seek converts. Since I believe there is, you’re “proof” can’t pass muster.
Well, I can’t say that I’m thrilled with these people’s tactics. Obviously, the words “informed parental consent” should be tattooed on their foreheads, and I’m not wild about hellfire preaching either.
BUT I think that some kids can really be helped by having a structure such as religion to cling to, especially when they have no structure at home. A relative of mine is a pretty good example. At age 10, he joined a church with his older sister, who was 16. Yes, their parents knew about it and gave their permission. His parents were also both alcoholics. Today, he exhibits some classic personality traits of an Adult Child of Alcoholics–but he is not an alcoholic himself, and has done a great job of raising a family which has escaped from the destructive patterns of alcoholism. It is my opinion that going to church from a young age, with people who cared about him and who taught him that God cared about him too, probably helped him to a) not start drinking himself and b) learn how to live life without the behavioral patterns his parents taught him.
Now, as we all know, anecdotes are not evidence; but I think a case exists here. I say that religion for kids can be beneficial, with the reservations of parental consent and a reasonable church that teaches about love and kindness, not hate and hellfire. Probably I should also add a requirement for older kids, 9 or 10 or something–it seems obvious to me that 6 and 7 is probably too young for independent investigation of churches. Just because you all think that religion is pretty much an unmitigated evil that deforms young minds doesn’t mean everybody does. If the parents agree, where is the objection?
There is absolutely evidence that “gettin’ religion” is a good way to enlist children with self-confidence, self-control, and discipline. There is also a lot of very good evidence that suggests that converting children that young is madness. Take Catholic schools for instance. I think they’ve produced more atheists than good Catholics since they started popping up (not to mention drug addicts, alcoholics, and other all-around miserable types).
I think the way this particular program went about recruiting was extremely wrong and probably illegal. These people obviously should have gotten parental consent before sitting these kids down to what sounds, essentially, like a Sunday school class.
No offence taken, but don’t be so quick to jump to conclusions. I happen to be both totally disgusted with that sort of conversion and yet also (at least for now) would proclaim myself a Christian. As such I’m only partially convinced that religion is an unmitigated evil that deforms young minds.
Ok, Cumber, I’m sorry, but from most of the above postings, that was the feeling I got.
Whilst pottering around and getting my breakfast, I remembered that I myself did quite a bit of religion exploration at age 8 or so. I was pretty interested in what other people did at church, and was encouraged by my parents to learn about other religions (after all, my dad spent half his childhood riding his bike to different churches). Among other things, I went to summer Bible school with a neighbor, and to weeknight church meetings with a school friend. They had a girls’ club called the Missionettes, with blue uniforms and everything. Oh, how I wanted to be a Missionette–until I realized that Missionettes did stuff I wasn’t interested in doing. I was a Missionette for about 5 minutes.
Anyway, looking back on my 8-year old self, I was no dummy, and I was interested in learning about people and religions. I wonder how dumb and gullible most 8-year olds are; are kids really willing to believe anything a friendly fundie tells them? I suppose it depends on the kid, but I kind of doubt it.
Ok, Cumber, I’m sorry, but from most of the above postings, that was the feeling I got.
Whilst pottering around and getting my breakfast, I remembered that I myself did quite a bit of religion exploration at age 8 or so. I was pretty interested in what other people did at church, and was encouraged by my parents to learn about other religions (after all, my dad spent half his childhood riding his bike to different churches). Among other things, I went to summer Bible school with a neighbor, and to weeknight church meetings with a school friend. They had a girls’ club called the Missionettes, with blue uniforms and everything. Oh, how I wanted to be a Missionette–until I realized that Missionettes did stuff I wasn’t interested in doing. I was a Missionette for about 5 minutes.
Anyway, looking back on my 8-year old self, I was no dummy, and I was interested in learning about people and religions. A lot of young kids are. I wonder how dumb and gullible most 8-year olds are; are kids really willing to believe anything a friendly fundie tells them? I suppose it depends on the kid and the age, but I kind of doubt it.
Does anyone think it’s legitimate to use the elementary schools to seek converts into politicized science? See an excellent article Politicizing Science Education by Paul R. Gross: http://www.edexcellence.net/library/gross.html
Well, theres a difference between children picking up values from a parent and the parent threatening to disown the child if he/she acts a certain way. Forcing is when the parents actively try to mold the child into what the parents want.
