The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children

The author of the book is Katherine Stewart, an American journalist and novelist who wrote for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and The Village Voice at the time of the book's publication.[1][2] She investigated the GNC when a club formed at the public elementary school her daughter attended, which led to the beginning of the book.[3] Three years prior to the book's publication, Stewart published an article in the alternative newspaper Santa Barbara Independent which contained text identical to that in the book.[4]

In May 2012, she published an article in The Guardian in which she compared the teaching of the parent organization of GNC, Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), of 1 Samuel (15:3), in which God commands Saul to destroy the Amalekites, to teaching a justification for genocide to schoolchildren. CEF responded that "[t]he goal of [CEF] is the proper teaching of this passage, which is not an instruction in genocide".[5]

The book examines the Good News Club (GNC), an after-school program which primarily targets students between the ages of four to fourteen[6] in elementary schools in the United States, and the national goals of evangelical Christianity in and about public education.

The book consists of twelve chapters and a conclusion. Chapters one through six focus on the social and formal organization of the clubs.[7] In chapter one, for instance, the author examines a GNC form in an elementary school in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle led by a volunteer school aid and members of an evangelical church.[8]

As the GNC takes hold in the elementary school, parents worry that their children are being proselytized to, and students and minorities at other schools at which GNC operates feel ostracized by the students in the club trying to convert other children.[9] Moving to Manhattan in chapter five, the author uses her experiences of viewing a school rented by a church for use during after-school hours as a jumping board to view "planted" churches, in which the churches "operate independently, [but] typically maintain ties to an existing religious organization or network" and use schools after-hours for religious purposes.[10]

Chapters seven through nine examine the evangelical movement's literary strategies;[7] traveling to Texas in chapter seven, for instance, Stewart observes hearings of the State Board of Education (BoE) on which textbook policy for older children is voted.[11] Chapter eleven sees the author go through a GNC volunteer application, which requires adults to pass a criminal background check and abstain from unscriptual conduct.[12] The book's final chapter examines an overarching imperative to "defund and ultimately eliminate" the public schools by evangelical Christians, according to Stewart.[7] The author calls the public school system "one of the largest and most successful collective efforts in [American] history" in the book's conclusion.[13]

Stewart giving a lecture on "The Good News Club" in Monterey, California in 2013

Reviewers of the book praised its research, while calling its language occasionally hyperbolic and more of a "call to action than to contemplation". Reviewing the book for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, freelance writer Alexander Heffner summarized Stewart's work as suggesting fundamentalist Christianity gained an undue influence in education, itself characterized as nonreligious. Heffner called Stewart a gracious narrator respectful of the persons she interviewed for the book, and the book "an important work that reveals a movement little discussed in the mainstream media".[14] Kirkus Reviews called it "compelling investigative journalism about an undercovered phenomenon" though it also described the book as the strongest form of advocacy journalism.[1] Publishers Weekly called Stewart's research thoughtful but her writing at times hyperbolic.[15]

Howard B. Radest gave the book a positive review in The Humanist, praising in particular her writing style;[16] associate professor of education at Anderson University Jeff Trotter[17] described Stewart's writing style as easy in the Journal of Education and Christian Belief. Trotter summarized the book as painting an intriguing image of a Christian agenda, though failing to distinguish between individuals' goals locally and the goals of the national organization. He praised the book's research, and said given the combativeness and hyperbole in America around public education, it would be easy to dismiss the book as exactly that, though to do so would be mistaken.[18]

In The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, John E. Tropman of the University of Michigan's School of Social Work examines the book in the context of "values imperialism" and states evangelical Christians may pursue such as outward indicators of inward grace, based on the assumption God would not let a saved person fail. Tropman then suggests the book useful in sociology of religion courses, and calls the book more of a "call to action than to contemplation".[7] Writing for The Women's Review of Books, assistant director for the Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Illinois Chicago Veronica I. Arreola called Stewart's identification of whitewashing at a Texas school district astonishing and precise. Arreola went on to say that the book was not one that opposed Christianity or religion, but one that examined how GNCs waste public educational funding and try to upend the separation of church and state in the United States in public schools.[19] David Austin Walsh of The Baffler described Stewart's 2020 book The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism as a sequel to The Good News Club.[20]

• Separation of church and state

• Stewart, Katherine (2012). The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children. PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1-61039-050-7.