Peter Greene notes that 2021 has been a year of attacks on public education, and he introduces us to an organization that is a little-known but influential player behind the scenes. It has actively sought to destroy teachers unions and to bring Christian beliefs into the classroom. That is, their version of Christian beliefs.
He writes:
The Christian Educators Association is not a new player (you may have heard the name before–we’ll get to that shortly). They were founded as the National Educators Fellowship in 1953 by Dr. Clyde Narramore, an author of over 100 books, most focusing on psychology. He even had a syndicated radio show with his wife Ruth. His shtick was psychology steeped in Christian belief, and he eventually launched and led the Rosemead School of Psychology which has since been folded into Biola University, a private evangelical Christian university in La Mirada, California (we’ll meet them again). Biola was founded as the Bible Institute of Los Angeles by the president of the Union Oil Company of California, based on the model of the Moody Bible Institute, later broadening their programs (including an education department)…
In 1984 they changed the name to Christian Educators Association International, and in 1991, then-leader Forrest Turpen continued restructuring the group to be “an alternative to teachers’ unions, at a time when unions were embracing values more and more hostile to the Biblical worldview.” I was teaching then; I’m not sure what exactly they were upset about (Outcome based education?) Turpen led the group from 1983 till 2003, expanded membership, and went after the secular unions. As always, the mission was unequivocally evangelical; when he died, friends noted his “dogged determination to see the gospel proclaimed to the children of this nation.” After his death, CEAI set up the Forrest Turpen Legacy Grant, asking teachers “Do you dream of impacting your school for Christ?” Grants were awarded for Bibles, tracts, t-shirts, and transportation costs to visit the Ark Encounter, all for various school clubs.
Of one thing you can be certain, the CEAI wanted the schools to be religious. But they also had a political goal: to weaken the teachers’ unions, which they considered godless. CEAI was behind a lawsuit intended to free teachers from any obligation to pay dues. Their plaintiff was Rebecca Friedrichs. She represented teachers who wanted to collect the benefits negotiated by the unions without paying dues. As Greene explains, her case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, but was deadlocked when Justice Scalia died. The next anti-union case, Janus, completed the mission.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What a RACKET.
If we were playing Jeopardy it’d be: What is a racket?
An oxymoron?
lol
We should never forget that public schools were trying to recover from a pandemic and the sole focus of these “warriors for children” was creating a ‘critical race theory’ panic and using it to disrupt and distract public schools from the work of recovering.
Once again, zero benefit to public school students, but lots and lots of benefit to professional political operatives and certain politicians.
They simply don’t work on behalf of our students. They contribute nothing of value and right now they are actively harming students who attend public schools with this political campaign.
No productive or practical contribution, no real ideas other than “public schools suck”.
At some point I hope public schools break from “reformers”. There’s no upside at all for their students. They either break from the anti public school movement or they won’t survive and it would be a shame if public education died in the US. The public will regret it.
For many years we managed to have a clear line between church and state. The wall between the two has been eroding one court case at a time. Now that the lines are blurry or in some cases obliterated, right wing Christians want to demolish the common good.
Right wing Christians want to establish Christian Sharia law in America.
Yep!
many pushing for Old Testament “law” as a foundation—imagine
Another “public” charter schools defends against a civil rights claim by claiming the charter school is not public but is instead a private company:
“In August, a divided three-judge panel ruled in Peltier v. Charter Day School, Inc, that girls who attended North Carolina’s Charter Day School did not have a constitutional claim because the school, although chartered by the state to provide free public education, is privately operated and thus not a state actor. (The panel held that the girls — who told poignant stories about being afraid to play on the swings at recess or even crawl on the floor during an emergency drill, for fear of showing their underwear – could bring a gender discrimination claim under Title IX.)”
Is ed reform ever going to address this? I know they’re forbidden from criticizing any charter school but shouldn’t they at least explain to the public how they characterize charters as “public” when it’s convenient for charters and then switch to “private” when charters want to violate civil rights?
There are hundreds of ed reform groups with thousands of full time employees. None of them are allowed to analyze this and explain why it keeps happening, not even the charter and voucher promoters in universities and colleges?
None of the well compensated analysts at Gates or Walton or Koch will touch this? They’re all promoting charter schools. Shouldn’t they be thinking about how a completely privatized system might look like once they succeed at their goal?
Echo. Chamber. Only charter/voucher cheerleaders may be employed in ed reform groups. No dissent or real analysis permitted.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/en-banc-4th-circuit-will-review-skirts-only-dress-code-charter-school-girls-2021-10-20/
Mostly I think Corporate Capitalism — the Church of the Invisible Hand on Your Wallet — long ago discovered Evangelisn’ts are the class of citizens most easily manipulated to carry out their Neo-Feudalist Totalitarian Agenda.
Well said!
Yep!
This is precisely the case, Jon. I concur with rt and Senor Swacker. Well said!
Bingo.
The wonderful part about America is, nothing stays behind a curtain forever. And the alliance between the economic right and the religious right , their motives and their methods have been well document. Not by the inquisitive press but by the participants themselves who love talking to that press about their accomplishments and how they did it.
It was always about economics and the religious right was always complicit in the assault. The assault on Abortion rights birthed in a response to interrogation. Segregation and racism tools to exploit the working class supplying cheap labor from Blacks and Working class Whites as long as those Whites had a little more than the Black man .
Defeating almost every major union organizing drive in the South along racial lines. Having those states to use as a bludgeon against manufacturing labor elsewhere long before offshoring became a factor.
Funded by Koch , Devos , the Bradley Foundation. ….
Damn Obama look what you wrought on the Nation . Tough to beat being President.
Nothing behind the curtain? The Trumpsters have torn down the curtain. They don’t care about being exposed. Their dear leader exposes himself all the time, according to multiple reports.
Steve Nelson.
Even before Trump that curtain was falling. The stories that a dejected working class was responsible for the election of Trump, gave cover to the deep involvement of the religious right. And like Trump they have deep ties to Eastern European authoritarian demagogues and oligarchs
.
Joel-
A few rhetorical questions- what is the dominant faith of the religious right in Eastern Europe? Which faith do the conservative judges on SCOTUS adhere to?
Relative to Trump’s appointment of conservative U.S. appellate judges, which religious organization gave an award for those appointments to Leonard Leo, who is a leader of the Federalist Society? Btw- Leo has 9 children.
Media reported that 30% of current appellate judges (lifetime tenure) were appointed during Trump’s 4 years.
“Ron Filipkowski
Anti-mask activist Marlena Pavlos-Hackney told the Zeeland (MI) School Board that she contacted the local Sheriff to stop their “unconstitutional” mandate, but he wouldn’t help her, so she is going to call in the Michigan Militia.”
Working hard to “improve” public schools, as always. Just such a huge benefit to public school students all over the country.
When the scores for this school come out, the entire focus will be on the failure of school, and the blame will be assigned by the same people causing the chaos and wasting months and months on these ridiculous protests.
100% negative for public school students. Ed reformers launch a political campaign, they lose. Every time.
In my last school, there was a young man–ex Marine–who taught history and headed up the Young People’s Christian Fellowship club at the school. He was constantly firing off all-staff emails ranting about his political views, and he taught a U.S. history that would be enthusiastically approved by Trump’s 1776 Project. Then, his students would come to my American Literature class, in which I did a lot of history and history of ideas as reflected in the literature, and be exposed to a very different take on our nation’s history. I do not pretend that I was teaching objective history. There are LOTS objective statements that can be made about historical events, and historical accounts must be founded on these, but there is no such thing as objective history. It mattered that I chose to teach about the Mystic and Fort Pillow Massacres, for example–to make these focuses of my instruction. This worked. A nice balance. Gave the students a lot to think about.
I hasten to add that this young man at least got his facts straight, even if his cherry picking and his generalizations about the facts were, to my mind, abominations. There was another history teacher in the school with similar politics (and religion, which tend to go hand-in-hand) who didn’t. I would flat-out tell my students, when they mentioned something false they had learned in this second guy’s class, which was often. “No, he’s wrong, and here are some sources.” I had no qualms about doing that.
Milton, the Areopagitica: Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?’
Christianity, Islam, Jewish religions, the Abrahamic ones, are based upon 2,000 year old Middle Eastern tribal myths that have little to no basis in reality yet 80% of the people in this country have been brought up forced to believe in such absurdities without question. If one questions those myths one is considered to be the unkind, insensitive, and ultimately condemned by said religions and historically have been not only routinely ostracized but killed for challenging said faith beliefs.
The pure insanity of those faith beliefs are what forms the basis for the vast majority of Americans world view. No wonder those who have been subjected to that indoctrination from the cradle on up believe so many modern insanities and absurdities.
These xtian nutjobs want to turn this country into an xtian caliphate and they not only distort history but faith-believe that they have their sky-daddy’s will in mind and hearts. Oh so pure. Until this country breaks free of these xtian nutjobs and the rest that faith believe nonsense this country will continue to have huge divisions politically speaking as those wackos insist on being considered the supposed sane and chosen ones. Sad, indeed very sad.
As I often note, indoctrinating children into religion is child abuse.
Yessir!
Of course, all these other ancient belief systems are mere superstition, unlike Christianity, where G*d becomes a cookie, uh, wafer.
Not to overstate the case (or worse, overshare, as the neologism has it), but this story stimulates my gag reflex.
RE: the Christian Educators Association International (CEAI), when Forest Turpen died, the CEAI he restructured, friends noted his “dogged determination to see the gospel proclaimed to the children of the nation.”
I do not see any difference between the CEAI’s mutated and “dogged” view of Christianity and the Taliban’s twisted fanatical fundamentalist obsession with 7th century Islam.
The gospel as translated and taught by more than 200 Christian denominations in the United States with the obsession of fanatics is based on a literal translation of a Bible written by metaphorical thinkers in other languages.
“Literal language means exactly what it says, while figurative language uses similes, metaphors, hyperbole, and personification to describe something often through comparison with something different.”
“One of the most frequently asked questions about how to read the Bible is how to tell whether statements in the Bible are to be understood literally or figuratively. The question arises in part because the Bible is a large collection of ancient books written in other languages by people living in other cultures. Anyone who has ever visited another country knows that sometimes the language barrier is not just about decoding the words but recognizing how they are used. A visitor to England from Nepal might well be puzzled by hearing that someone had ‘lost his marbles,’ even if he understood what the word marbles normally meant.”
“Literal language means exactly what it says, while figurative language uses similes, metaphors, hyperbole, and personification to describe something often through comparison with something different.”
https://bib.irr.org/recognizing-figurative-language-in-bible
Anyone, anywhere that calls themselves a Christian that followed a literal translation of the Bible is allowing themselves to be misled by false prophets, something the Bible warns us about.
Matthew 7:15 ESV / 1,788 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
https://www.openbible.info/topics/false_prophets
I just want to add a little comment that the photo Peter included of the intersection of Church and State Streets was evocative. Where does he find such great shtuff all the time?
Peter Greene is a treasure.
Not all Christians are Evangelical. You can have a Christian ethic without being a literalist of the Bible. If anything, many of us are appalled by the actions of the Christian Right which are the opposite of the teachings of Christ.
I’m just wondering if these same leaders mentioned in the article above are also anti vaccine, anti mask. If so, they represent the all around evil we are fighting in this country.
Yes, the outcry of The Real Christians®™ against the Reich Wing Propheteers has been positively deafening …