Posted by
CRB on Sunday, February 05, 2012 3:20:52 PM
The title sure is provocative, isn't it? It is no surprise that some on the far left side of the radical opinion scale would hold this view. They follow the atheism of the French enlightenment rationalists who sought to establish a society which was free of religious influence. I did not say dominance. They went further and attempted to purge their society the presence of religion. This is an historical matter that has been documented, and upon which there is no disagreement.
One of the many useful texts on this matter is "History of Europe from the commencement of the French revolution", volume 1, page 26:
... the Jacobins of Paris founded their influence on the ridicule of every species of devotion, and erected the altar of Reason on the ruins of the Christian faith. Nor was this "irreligious fanaticism," as Carnot has well styled it, confined to the citizens of the metropolis: it pervaded equally every department of France where republicanism was embraced, and every class of men who were attached to its fortunes. Everywhere the churches, during the Reign of Terror, were closed: the professors of Christianity were dispossessed, and their rights overturned ...
We are, of course, not at any point which resembles the Reign of Terror. There is nobody knocking at my door, let alone breaking in, to dispossess me of life and liberty. The "American Jacobin" (as I would like to call it) is different. Dispossession seems to be arriving incrementally. It is carried by avowed secularists who seek not liberty (which is the product of the republicanism of government which the Jacobins, like today's Democrats, denounce) but an alternative form of government. Theirs is an emphasis on "
direct democracy" and its commensurate removal of class -- the liberty to succeed. Though not all use this same language or employ it to the same ends, the principle remains intact despite its various applications.
This Jacobin attitude, anarchist at its core (a claim also having a sound historical foundation), can be seen at work in the US. There are those whose effort it is to keep churches, or the individual religious voice, either silent or out of public influence on matters of politics and social concerns. Even stopping specifically religious speech is not outside of their agenda.
One cannot help but see the paranoia seeping out of their pores as the complaints become specific and focused. Here is a for instance: Child Evangelism Fellowship has been sponsoring neighborhood "Good News" clubs with the wordless book for decades. It is a way to spread the redemptive message of the gospel to children everywhere. At the heart of their effort is the evangelical perspective that the gospel knows no bounds -- not even governmental. There is no concern as to whether some government our court might establish a "gospel free zone." The gospel message is to be given to all, with the nner work of the Holy Spirit taking it from there. The gospel is not a political message.
CEF also sponsors after school events. But this bothers some. They do not like "equal access" for religious content. So they make stuff up out of whole cloth.
Like this:
Now, it appears the movement has found another way of imposing its
religious views in the public schools; through thinly disguised
after school Bible study programs.
Amazing. Now those of us who know how false this is can only sit back and laugh. "Imposing" and "thinly disguised" ring of a paranoia level deserving of serious therapy. Really.
But even within this paranoia comes a glitter of unintentional truth. The author of that last statement quotes a comment regarding the matter of equal access:
Religious-based after school programs burgeoned after the Good News Club
v. Milford Central School (a K-12 school in upstate New York) Supreme
Court decision in 2001. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the 6-3
majority, "laid out a philosophy that essentially destroyed the postwar
consensus on the separation of church and school," Stewart reports.
Religion was now redefined "as nothing more than speech from a religious
viewpoint."
Note the term "postwar." That is important for those who study history. This nation was never intended to be like Jacobin France -- free of religions. There are no defined religion-free zones. And there were none created until after WWII. That shift is notable in history, and it is useful to hear a leftist acknowledge the concern. As Mark Noll noted in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, the religious liberty afforded by republicanism as a system of government was ideal and workable. They were compatible.
But it's not like leftists would
ever distort history and pretend that religious liberty is of no consequence in a free society. Na.
Of course the implication to be drawn from Berkowitz' post and the quoted material is that religious live belongs within the four walls of the church. One poor parent apparently remarked that "They distributed flyers. They were doing everything they could to have as big a presence on campus as possible." What a serious problem -- religious liberty even outside of class time!
Of course the fear runs deep:
"This is an old organization with ties to well known evangelical mission
groups," Talk2Action's Rachel Tabachnick told me in an email. "But CEF
has mastered stealth evangelism of children, one of the goals for
infiltrating society from the grass roots up, instead of top down."
There is an expectation (or anticipation, I don't know which is more suitable here) that church work is magisterial rather than popular. I some ways it is both. But in either way, we might sum up her expression "infiltrating society" as
militant. "The church militant" has been our theme for almost 2,000 years. I don't see that changing any time soon.
Another leftist
writes similarly:
The author, Katherine Stewart [of an "expose" entitled The Good News Club], embarked on her investigation of what's
going on in our public schools with the best possible motivation to
expose the truth -- she became alarmed by what was happening in her own
kids' school. She then traveled the country interviewing both other
parents like herself and experts on the stealth "Good News" movement,
resulting in a book that is not only full of well documented facts, but
tells the personal accounts of parents who, like herself, have seen
first hand what these innocuous sounding "Bible study" groups are really
all about and the tactics they're using to lure and indoctrinate
America's children into the fundamentalist Christian mindset.
Again we see in this author a high level of fear and paranoia. There come coupled with a strange attitude. You see, the book is "full of well documented facts" even though the author admits "I haven't read the whole book yet."
Of course the writings of pseudo-historians like these makes for good blog content. But the real issue here is that the church must maintain its gospel militancy. To be too vocal politically has led many of us to a distortion of our message. Likewise we are able to intelligently confront the errors of those who misrepresent us and our effort. One need only read a little of the church fathers to see some of these complaints, many of which resulted in death for believers. Complaints of treason -- being unpatriotic to Rome and emperor -- abounded. Along with these were the complaints of sexual impropriety on a corporate scale. But whether or not we are able to correct the errors is secondary. Our message is redemptive and does not know any bounds. It is global and public -- something significant in fulfilling the Abrahamic covenant and participating in the expansion of the Kingdom.