JSUFYF: Killlll the unbeliever...Killllll

Yes, that's what the Good News Clubs are going to teach their young captive audiences next school year. They get to learn about how Saul disobeyed God by not killing all the Amalekites. Saul's mistake was to spare the Amalekite king and the Amalekite livestock. (See 1 Samuel 15 for the story.)

And, yes, I said "school year." The Good News Clubs, the indoctrination arm of Child Evangelism Fellowship, have as their specific purpose to evangelize children in the public schools. And we're not talking teenagers, either. We're talking elementary school kids. 

Katherine Stewart has been following the Child Evangelism Fellowship for some time now and published a book earlier this year called The Good News Club:  The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children. In an op-ed piece for the UK Guardian (one of my very favorite newspapers), she writes:

 In the most recent version of the curriculum, however, the group is quite eager to drive the message home to its elementary school students. The first thing the curriculum makes clear is that if God gives instructions to kill a group of people, you must kill every last one:

"You are to go and completely destroy the Amalekites (AM-uh-leck-ites) – people, animals, every living thing. Nothing shall be left."

"That was pretty clear, wasn't it?" the manual tells the teachers to say to the kids.
Even more important, the Good News Club wants the children to know, the Amalakites were targeted for destruction on account of their religion, or lack of it. The instruction manual reads:

"The Amalekites had heard about Israel's true and living God many years before, but they refused to believe in him. The Amalekites refused to believe in God and God had promised punishment."

The instruction manual goes on to champion obedience in all things. In fact, pretty much every lesson that the Good News Club gives involves reminding children that they must, at all costs, obey. If God tells you to kill nonbelievers, he really wants you to kill them all. No questions asked, no exceptions allowed.
Asking if Saul would "pass the test" of obedience, the text points to Saul's failure to annihilate every last Amalekite, posing the rhetorical question:

"If you are asked to do something, how much of it do you need to do before you can say, 'I did it!'?"

"If only Saul had been willing to seek God for strength to obey!" the lesson concludes. 

A review question in the textbook seeks to drive the point home further:

"How did King Saul only partly obey God when he attacked the Amalekites? (He did not completely destroy as God had commanded, he kept the king and some of the animals alive.)"

link

It's not like using this particular story doesn't have real-world import. In 1994, Hutu preachers used the story of Saul and the Amalekites to whip their congregants into a frenzy against the Tutsi, leading to the Rwandan genocide.

I'm not a fan of the Good News Clubs because I believe young children should not be indoctrinated with religion on the school grounds, even if it is after school. I think this is a huge hole in the wall separating church and state. 

And this specific lesson...well, how are you going to know if it's really God telling you to kill the unbelievers? In Saul's case, it wasn't that he, Saul, heard directly from God, it was Samuel the prophet who heard from God and told Saul what to do. Isn't that the way it always is? The modern-day analogue is the Hutu preachers who told their congregations they'd heard from God that the Tutsi had to be slaughtered. Or, closer to home, the pastor in the pulpit down at First Church of We're Saved and You're Not preaching to his congregation that the ho-mo-SEX-uals are so totally evil and something must be done about them. We know where that leads--to little kids singing songs about gays not going to heaven.  And that's just for starters.

For that, we award the Child Evangelism Fellowship and its Good News Clubs the following Jesus Facepalm:

The Child Evangelism Fellowship apparently missed the lessons on loving your neighbor as yourself and who is your neighbor, starring the hated Samaritans, during Sunday School growing up.

(post title with apologies to Charlie the Unicorn at 1:17)

(hat tip to Alecto at Free Jinger).