E-Proselytizing At Public School
5 March 2009 by Stardust
This is really stooping low, to stalk children at school to get their MySpace information and email addresses in order to proselytize to them online and invite them to church activities, even offering to pick them up without parents’ consent.
From Sandhya Bathija at Americans United:
E-Proselytizing At Public School?: MySpace Missionaries Spark Complaints In Washington State
It’s the age of MySpace and Facebook, text messages and e-mail, and for some fundamentalist evangelists, maybe even e-proselytizing.
According to reports from two Washington state newspapers, a local middle school student recently received this MySpace message from a 19-year-old church youth leader.
“Hey, 628 tonight! 6 o clock, free espresso for visitors. Super rad games and activities. Hang out with cool people. Plus you are really cool so it would just make it that much cooler. Are you going to be there? If you need a ride, I can hook it upJ”
“628” is Turning Point Church’s youth group for sixth through eighth graders, and youth group leader Emily Masten sent that message to Rianne Olver’s 11-year-old daughter after meeting her at Totem Middle School in Marysville, Wash.
Olver, concerned that an adult was soliciting her child and offering to pick her up without parental permission, filed a complaint with Marysville School District.
“To me, it’s really disturbing to know there are adults at the school sitting down with the kids saying, ‘Hey, can I have your MySpace and your phone number,” Olver told the Everett Herald. “It’s a huge red flag. It’s really creepy.
And it IS creepy! Who knows who these people are. Are they screened like teaching and assistant staff are screened? I had to be fingerprinted and a background check in order to teach children and be around them.
The public school allows church volunteers to serve as informal mentors, keep an eye on students during lunch and plan games and activities, Assistant Superintendent Gail Miller told the Herald.
Mentors are not permitted to mention religion unless students bring up the subject, and they are not supposed to ask students for phone numbers or MySpace information, she said.
But apparently, they have a secret motive for their volunteering, and while the church of course play innocent and states they tell their volunteers to “follow the rules”, they really are glad for the “witnessing” their volunteers are doing.
Turning Point Senior Pastor Mike Villamor claims he tells the volunteers to follow these rules. The church has sent representatives into the schools for years, and vows it is looking into the incident to figure out what went wrong. He also insists the congregation just wants “to give every person an opportunity to hear about how much God loves them,” and has no desire to recruit anyone.
But it appears Turning Point’s people are known for doing just that. Four years ago, Nick Poling, a former Totem Middle School student, said emissaries from the church would hang out in the school’s open-air hallways and hand out Bibles.
“[They said] that we should all to go to Turning Point Church because it’s a cool place to be,” he told The Stranger. “They were out there waiting for us when we came out for the buses.
“I just was kind of confused,” said Poling, “as to why the administration would let them do that.”
On one hand Villanor states that his church has no desire to recruit anyone, and then he contradicts himself by saying that their church “just wants to “give every person an opportunity to hear about how much God loves them.” The truth is they are being sneaky and scheming just to spread their religion to unsuspecting children. It’s pathetic,and could be downright dangerous.
5 March 2009, on 5:44 pm
On one hand Villanor states that his church has no desire to recruit anyone, and then he contradicts himself by saying that their church “just wants to “give every person an opportunity to hear about how much God loves them.”
Well, that’s parr for the course. The ten big no-nos are all important but hey, if they get in the way of spreading the sky daddy fables, they become expendible. Lie, cheat, steal all in the name of gawd.
5 March 2009, on 6:31 pm
If an adult makes arrangements to “pick up” a child and hide that from the child’s parents, that is called kidnapping, and any such adult should be prosecuted as felons. If they have planned ahead with other church members for such a deception then they are engaged in a criminal conspiracy and should all be prosecuted as felons.
If non-students are passing out religious literature on school grounds without express permission of the school’s administration, that is called trespassing, and they should be cited & removed by police officers.
If they are doing so with the express permission of school administrators, that is an example of “establishing” a certain religion as being favored by the government. That is in violation of Federal Law and brings the possibility of civil action against the governing entity responsible for those schools.
5 March 2009, on 6:39 pm
Jaycubed, you honestly think religious people care? These are the same folks who tried to argue that the Establishment Clause prevented the pedophiles in the churches from facing any kind of prosecution.
And if those things did happen, and I wish they would, the only thing you’d get is a huge news day where every religious nutso with a voice would be crying persecution while the video of the good Christians just trying to spread the good news are put in the back of a cop car while in handcuffs. As super rad as that would be.
I’m going to go do something horrible to myself for saying super rad.
5 March 2009, on 7:28 pm
It doesn’t really matter what religious people care about, it matters what they do. Let them whine as the cuffs are slapped on them. Whining is what they do best.
And I suspect most parents who call themselves christian wouldn’t be any less upset that their child was taken without their permission by someone else just because they call themselves christians.
Believers often tend to get pretty upset at the thought of exposing their children to the practices of different cults.
And, money talks! Imagine lawsuits against a church for attempting to kidnap children to religiously indoctrinate them against their parents wishes. Lawyers would drown in their own drool.
5 March 2009, on 8:21 pm
I agree 110%, Jaycubed. I’d be dancing in the street if the law came down on these people. I can only imagine the cry for justice if some evil atheist tried this, or how about if it was a Muslim?
But life has shown me that all are not equal under the law. You or I would be labeled either a sex predator or would be getting measured for a striped jumpsuit if we did this.
5 March 2009, on 10:42 pm
That’s some very creepy crap – and I agree with AtheistUnderMask that all hell would break loose if atheists or Muslims did the same thing!
Very creepy.
6 March 2009, on 7:32 am
Ah sounds again like the normal double talk you get from religion. I figure that the administration of the school is, if not members of the church, they are at least involved in religion heavily. I have noticed that anymore the schools are becoming the true battlegrounds for the religious that wish to force their beliefs on others.
6 March 2009, on 12:31 pm
I have noticed that anymore the schools are becoming the true battlegrounds for the religious that wish to force their beliefs on others.
Yep, they are zeroing in on the children. Not only do parents now have to worry about drug pushers, pedophile predators, etc. , now they have to worry about the religious predators who are eager to brainwash your child into their cults. And that’s what many of them are. I know from experience those couple of years I went to the Baptist church as a teenager, the adults would talk against parents who were not “Saved” nor went to church and act as some sort of surrogate parent to those kids who were from dysfunctional homes or who were simply at odds with their parents for whatever reasons. The god botherers didn’t even care if they were making the homelife and family relationships worse for those kids as long as they kept coming regularly to the brainwashing sessions.
6 March 2009, on 2:46 pm
This is just another predatory organization. Not unlike anyother. They use deception and coersion to win people over. But in this instance it must be done with the tacit approval of the school officials. It would be nice to see that some parent(s) come forward and object. But in many cases doing so would just be a form of social suicide. Or maybe not. Given the circumstances it could be handled throuh a lawyer and noone would be the wiser. Threaten a school that has a low budget with a lawsuit and surprises do happen.
6 March 2009, on 3:36 pm
It doesn’t matter whether xians can use the internet to proselytize in schools since the Obama administration is still giving the religious right easy access to students minds. BOOOOObama!
“Feb. 26 – In releasing his 2010 budget outline today, President Obama indicates that his administration will continue funding abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education, an approach that has repeatedly failed to reduce teen pregnancy. By stressing abstinence and faith-based partnerships and avoiding specific language regarding comprehensive sex education in his new budget, the president is signaling that he may continue the failed and religion-driven policies of the Bush administration.” from http://www.secular.org/
6 March 2009, on 3:57 pm
^^ Lynda, I was reading that too, earlier. Well, looks like “Change” ain’t happening as far as Bush’s religious bullshit agenda goes.