Brainstorming tactics for students to resist school chaplains.
What guidance can we give students to resist and undermine proselylizing Evangelical school chaplains?
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Background: Evangelicals invading the public schools.
The Evangelicals are getting some of the state legislators to allow having schools employ them as school chaplains. Publically they are saying it is just to be additional counselors and not to proselytize, but investigations indicate otherwise.
Click on the following images for a report.
This is from a recent email sent out by the National School Chaplain Association. Wednesday, 3/6/2024.
Dear xxxx,
God was kicked out of education sixty years ago, which initiated the moral decay of our nation. Human secularism replaced the knowledge of God, and education became more about liberal indoctrination than learning. Our country is morally, spiritually, and financially broken. Depression, suicide, and drug overdose are at all-time highs.
Moms and dads have had enough. For decades, we have tolerated indecency and perversion with expressions like "to each his own." The more ground we gave, the more they demanded until we couldn't give any more.
Days of despair and discouragement are over. God's people are coming back more robust and more determined than ever. The silent majority is not silent anymore.
American society's resiliency is pushing back. Most recently, legislation funding school chaplains passed into law in Texas, and similar legislation is sweeping the nation, which is only possible because of your prayers and support.
It isn’t about couseling students in need, it is about a theocratic campaign to seize control of society. The idea that a school district would have religious zealots insert themselves into the concerns of troubled students is frightening.
We need to provide some guidance to students as to how to resist this onslaught. So I did some brainstorming and I am sharing it to get inputs and additional ideas.
This is just a rough list of brainstorming ideas.
Put in the comments what you think might be good ideas.
Resistance to School Chaplains
This is going to be a guide to oppose the efforts of pastors sent to the public schools by evangelical homophobic anti-feminist groups.
1. Don’t directly confront them. They have an argument for everything and anything. They have 20 centuries of rationalizing arguments behind them. It will establish them as superior to you in intelligence.
2. Avoid talking to them, and shut down immediately any conversation they might attempt.
3. Refuse to answer to them about anything you might have said or done. It is invading your privacy. You didn’t request them.
4. Work indirectly and unobtrusively to discredit them.
5. Always speak calmly and never lose self-control. Ideally, the chaplain will lose self-control.
6. To persuade, when possible, ask questions so that the listener comes to a conclusion himself of what you wanted him to understand.
7. Do background research on the chaplain, his pastor, his church, the organization which has assigned them to your school, and his church’s denomination. Make sure that you are following their social media. Pay particular attention to scandals, extreme things they have said. Communicate what you find back to you fellow students.
8. Set up Google alert to track each pastor, their church, and denomination, if any, on the Internet. https://www.google.com/alerts
9. Form a team of trusted friends to resist. When asked, deny its existence.
10. Make it known what the chaplain’s church feels about LGBT, abortion, and any weird stuff.
11. Make it known that their real agenda is proselytizing. Be alert to the chaplain accidentally revealing his intentions. Make sure students know that in reality they are being targeted not helped. We will have documentation on their intention to proselytize.
12. Always compare their publicly stated intentions to their private intentions.
13. In a review of the chaplain’s religious beliefs, find out who would his denomination expects to burn in Hell. Make sure those persons who the chaplain’s beliefs expects that they will burn in Hell, know that the chaplain’s beliefs are that they will burn in Hell.
14. Find out if the chaplain’s church or denomination has criticized any other religion, and if so, make sure that students who are members of the criticized religion know it.
15. Reviewing the chaplain’s denominational literature, find out what religions they condemn and make sure students who are members of those religions are aware of the Chaplain’s denominational beliefs.
16. Make it known how the chaplain’s beliefs are in defiance of science.
17. Find out if their denomination allows women clergy. If not, make that known.
18. Find out what their role is for women. If it is the typical subordination of women, make sure these beliefs are known.
19. Make it known who they denigrate. Religious groups, such as mainline denominations, non-Christian religions. LGBT.
20. Point out that they rationalize everything.
21. From the very beginning make it clear that they are predators seeking out the weak. As school chaplains they will have access to persons who are having emotional problems and hence are vulnerable to their proselytization.
22. Make it clear that they are parasites invading the student body. They can’t attract people on their own so they are parasites invading where students can’t escape because it is compulsory education. Liken them to parasitoid wasps.
23. Be very careful of libel. “It appears to me,” is a good phrase. Or just compare fact. “It raises questions in my mind,” “I don’t trust him,” are all descriptions of your own mental states. His arguments are very convenient.
24. Avoid personal attacks on the chaplain. Just focus on the facts.
25. Find out the religious affiliation and church of the principal, assistant principals, teachers. Find out if the school chaplains’ religion has said bad things about their religion. Also know who is friend and foe also. If they are members of the same church or denomination as the chaplain, ask them if they have ever met the school chaplain before. This makes the presence of school chaplains an uneasy thing for the school. People will wonder how their situation is impacted by their religious affiliation.
26. Find out the religious affiliation of your school district superintendent and school board members.
27. The moment the chaplains criticize anyone or group of students in regards to beliefs or behavior, call them religious police. The moment the chaplain’s expresses a view on how students should behave in terms of morality call them religious police.
28. If students are wearing religious t-shirts, you wear a Buddhist or Hindu t-shirt. If the chaplain asks questions call it religious harassment and call them the religious police. If they wear crosses, you wear Buddhist or Hindu symbols.
29. Observe which teachers are friendly to the chaplains. Make comparisons of these teachers to collaborators in Vichy France.
30. Don’t wear Satanic stuff. It reinforces their concepts of the universe and you have placed yourself inside their concepts.
31. Emphasize their four “self’s”: Self-serving, where they just rationalize whatever they do; Self-righteous, where they use their religious beliefs to claim to be morally superior and one of god’s special ones; Self-indulgent, since they don’t care how their beliefs might injury anyone, in particular LGBT, but others also, with lazy thinking; Self-aggrandizing, since they hope to be in a position to control society and tell people what to do.
32. Learn to use the Internet Archive to save webpages of the chaplain, his denomination, his church, his assigning organization might choose to delete to avoid exposure.
https://archive.org/
As a first step, save the webpages of his church.
33. Avoid printing out research from the Internet. Save it as PDFs.
34. In history class call attention to the Salem witch burnings, the Spanish Inquisition, the religious wars, and other historical crimes of religious people. Bring the Scopes Trial to the attention of students. In every class, in every curriculum think what might be used.
35.
What ideas do you have?
The thing that gets me is that this got passed through when even in the military they are mandated to have a chaplain there for each faith. This is one sided bias. The only suggestion I would have to know the schools guidelines for conduct. That's the only thing that's enforceable. They aren't teachers so you shouldn't have to listen to or engage with them.