Not only are they too old, but boy bands of that kind are so passe, like 20 years passe. The 90s/ 2000s was the heyday of these acts, but they're all done and dusted.
Being hopelessly behind the times is kind of your average Christian organisation's stock in trade, really. But yeah, I was there to see the 90s and this sure ain't the 90s. For one thing, no-one wears parachute pants any more.
Technically a boy band just has to be young men, usually seen as under 30. NKOTB is still called a boy band, so is N*Sync and all the others and far from under 30. So, that's not a lie. If you can find a definition of boy band that says they have to be under drinking age to make your case, please do. AS a musician who wrote a book on boy bands (shockingly it sells well, which I didn't expect), I would be interested in who set that definition.
In this case you have no case, unless you change the definition of boy band and have one nobody else agrees with, including wikipedia.
So right now your argument is to lie about the definition of boy band to then accuse these christians of being liars about being boys.
Wow, was there nothing legit in this article to criticize? You had to make something up? That's hitting below the belt.
And, nobody has called you out on it, as it seems there's no musicians here.
So being an atheist means you can also be ignorant and make shit up to condemn folks to stuff they didn't do. Doesn't make you look better than a christian
I read Aaron Joy's tripe. His reading comprehension is ghasly. He's so far off the mark with what I actually said about boys/boy bands that I couldn't even bother to write a sole response to him taking down his points. Waste of time.
He got hot and bothered over the definition of "boy." Assuming he even bothered to read Hemant's article, this was his takeaway? This? *smh* And he was so upset that nobody here called me out for what I said. Could it be that no one else besides him disagreed with what I said? Sorry, but that's HIS problem. Not mine, not anybody else's.
He's posted to FA before. He seems to focus on me and no one else, for some strange reason. I and others here took him to task over what he said about the biblical deity (treating it as though it were real and could effect change) in his first post. Maybe he's still stinging about that. For a guy named Joy, he doesn't seem very happy.
"A boy band is a vocal group consisting of young male singers, usually in their teenage years or in their twenties at the time of formation." - Wikipedia*
I also feel I should point out that the designation may not go away, but as any boy band ages it most commonly become the subject of severe mockery specifically because the group is no longer 'boys' by any sensible measure. New Kids on the Block, NSYNC, and the Backstreet Boys have all suffered some amount of this effect, though in some cases it's more affectionate teasing than outright mockery.
"So right now your argument is to lie about the definition of boy band to then accuse these christians of being liars about being boys."
You completely missed the sarcasm tag.
"So being an atheist means you can also be ignorant and make shit up to condemn folks to stuff they didn't do. "
Being an atheist means we don't believe that any sort of god exists. What we are condemning, the lies that the "boy band" told, are when they actively proselytized at the school then publicly claimed that they did not. They were lying.
AJ thought I was accusing the 3 Heath Brothers of lying about being boys. I wasn't. The two paragraphs are separate. I was accusing them of being liars because they said they weren't proseltyzing to these kids when they clearly were. It's rather the point of Hemant's article (which apparently AJ never bothered to read).
Of course they are. Lying liars for Jesus are going to lie. It's as automatic to them as breathing.
Then they went to scrub their proselytizing intention from their public statements. All in service of the lie, so they can continue to decieve schools into allowing them access. Lying about what they did, then lying to cover up the lies. Is anyone here surprised? Didn't think so.
I don't buy that the school officials were unaware of the true intentions of the lying liars for Jesus. If they really were unaware, then parents should be storming the school board to demand answers as to why the simplest and most basic vetting was not done for an outside group to be given access to their children. Even the very weak thread of plausible deniability makes the principal look bad.
Bottom line: public schools should never allow religious groups in.
Both sides are lying. They both knew exactly what they were doing and thought they could get away with it. There's no reason for a christian boy band to be playing public schools when you can't swing a dead cat here in NC without hitting a christian school. Take your crap there, boys.
Who's kidding who here? Christian bands are about nothing if they're not about proselytism, or preaching to the converted. If the Three Heath Brothers weren't proselytizing then they weren't, to use a hackneyed phrase, executing their prime function. Any claim to the contrary is frankly specious.
They certainly aren't put together to make good music. Also, I'm dropping my kids off at a Drag Brunch before I'm letting those 'Mack the Knife' smiles anywhere within seventy times seven miles of them. They WILL hear good music there!
I mean when all their songs mention God or Jesus how is that NOT proselytizing? These people only have one mode and that mode does NOT just turn off automatically.
Reading stuff like this quite often will trigger memories of something I had not thought about in decades.
While reading this particular story, I remembered a similar type of band performing at our school. I was probably in middle school by then (?) maybe.
I don't recall hearing about this ahead of time, because I would have been looking forward to getting out of class. I just remember being kind of surprised when we were all herded to the auditorium.
The songs were secular, but I don't remember a single one of them. I was wondering why we had been let out of class for basically a dumb rock concert - usually there was some kind of official school-related thing going on (science fairs or presenting academic awards, for example).
Then it started - after every three or four songs, the music would stop and one of the band members would step forward and give his testimony about his coming to Jesus and being Born Again.
It was weird, cringe-worthy, and annoying. I got enough of that shit at church, and now here I was having to sit through it at school. After the show, they sold generic posters of themselves for $1, so yeah, that was a looooong time ago. And there were some free generic book marks with their band logo. I didn't take anything because I was standing in line waiting to be herded back to class, but a True Believer friend grabbed a handful of bookmarks and gave me one, gushing about how "beautiful" and "inspiring" the whole thing was. If I was uncomfortable before, this was downright anxiety-producing, because it made me wonder about my own salvation. Why didn't I feel the same way she did about all this? Was I not a real christian? What was wrong with me?
Once again, I had thoughts about ending up in hell, in a place where usually I encountered nothing even remotely religious. I wonder if any of the kids in that captive audience experienced the same thing, or if they saw through the manipulative BS.
I would rather be deaf than listen to these guys, but I suspect it's like 1960's bubblegum rock with theological pretensions. Religion and morality are not mutually exclusive, but they are very far from the same thing. One need only think about the countless horrors perpetrated by religious people in the name of their religion. Morality is one of those things most people think they understand, but trying to define it is like nailing Jello to the ceiling. If you need religion to be a moral person, then by all means keep going to church. It's a lot easier than thinking.
I remember my early days in the Catholic Church. It was during that time of threats about hellfire and eternal damnation that gave me pause. I wondered, “Why is missing church a reason to burn in hell? Doesn’t it matter if you are a good person? Would God burn me if I died in an accident before I could confess my sins?”
I suspect we were on similar journeys. Although I could not articulate it as a young child, from early on in my life I began to view Christianity as roughly equal parts comfort myth and revenge fantasy. The church always seemed to be more interested in controlling people on this earthly plane for reasons that nothing to do with actual decency.
I can remember once standing in line for confession. A boy was in the confessional and I could hear him telling the priest about all of the times he swore. I was gobsmacked. Why would anyone intentionally swear if it’s a sin?
One year later I was in public school and my question was quickly answered. I heard more cussing on the playground in one afternoon than I had heard in my whole life. It was simply the common vernacular.
Infinite punishment for what can only ever be a finite offense, is not how my idea of a loving God behaves. I would never worship such a God even if it could be demonstrated to exist.
Back in the 70s there were quite a few “Christian Themed” pop songs on regular rotation on AM stations. “Spirit in the Sky”, “Put Your Hand (In the Hand of the Man Who Stilled the Water)”, and a renditon of The Lord’s Prayer.*
Naive teenage me didn’t think much about it. Older cynical, cranky me would be very PO’d.
There's a subtle but important difference between songwriters that explore religious themes ('music first') and proselytizers using music as their entry ('message first'). Good music can absolutely be religious. Cohen's Allelujah springs to mind. Turn, Turn, Turn. Jesus is Just Alight With Me. Plus a ton of classical stuff. What makes most Christian rock crap is that they don't really put any effort into the composition beyond what is needed to carry their message.
And someone once said, Christian rock didn’t make rock better, it made Christianity worse. Or maybe Christian rock didn’t make Christianity better, it made rock worse.
There is a wonderful version of Amazing Grace, I think by Judy Collins and others, possibly a capella, recorded in a church with great acoustics, possibly in Boston?
Oddly, I was well into adulthood before I realized AG was a Christian song. I was mesmerized by the song itself and not the lyrics.
Whether it's a christian boy band or a secular, legit anti-drug outfit, schools should still remember the adage 'you get what you pay for.' You bring in amateur volunteers, you're going to get an amateurish product.
Christian bands like this boy band are part of a long-time effort by evangelical christians to 'get 'em while they're young'. They know that children of elementary school age are especially impressionable and least able to resist peer pressure. I'm calling BS on the school, the school board and the band for lying about the purpose of this performance in front of a captive audience without their parents' permission.
Let's not forget that these are the same kind of people who scream bloody murder if a school wants to hold a drag queen story hour, claiming it's a violation of parental rights.
??? I thought it was waxing their legs. ??? Because waxing pits sounds excruciatingly painful.
I tried a DIY bikini wax once when I was young and stupid. Ripped off the first strip, shrieked like a banshee, and dissolved into tears. Never did that again.
Given the track record of twentysomething proselytizers who want access to children, has anyone done a criminal background check on these men? Checked their browser histories?
I'm not saying their motives include child abuse, but there is definitely a nonzero chance of that.
There is something I don't quite understand. How can the school make it a mandatory event when it has nothing to do with the curriculum or a field trip ? Shouldn't the parents sign a form ?
Most US schools have the occasional all-school assembly. It can be some school spirit thing or (as this one was touted) for social/emotional learning reasons such as promoting an anti-bullying message. At the elementary level, kids don't have distinct 'classes' for the most part so as long as all the subjects get covered over the course of the day/week/year, the Principal has a fair amount of discretion to hold in-school events like this.
So that's all legit. Obviously, holding an anti-bullying assembly but sneaking in a Christian proselytization rally is not.
This is so alien to me. Here, it's forbidden (and enforced) to force participation in religious events for the private religious schools who partner with the government. They have to follow the same rules as public schools 🤔
Yeah, it should've been built right into the structure of voucher programs right from the beginning: if you take state money, you must follow state rules. The private nature and flexibility you gain is in covering extra stuff or providing additional specialized services, it is not in skipping stuff everyone is supposed to learn or in hiring unaccredited staff.
But, this particular case is a public school, so that's a digression.
That's how it worked at my school. Extra-curricular events during classroom hours required parental approval for kids who wanted to go, but that was a lifetime ago. These days, it seems to have been mostly discarded.
Ironic that the group chosen to give an anti-bullying message is Christian. And so much more that it seems to be an evangelical Christian group. History of all Christian religions and current teachings of a loud percentage of evangelical sects shows that Christianity is a global organized bully group. We’ve got the crusades and just constant violent conversions, we have a patriarchal culture that oppresses women and treats wives and children as property, biblical and the USA’s chattel slavery, the complete segregation of churches and Jim Crow and educational institutions, all that to current positions of conversion therapy and simple anti-LGBTQ sermonizing. This particular event was a form of bullying as well, while preaching against it, this musical group implicitly pressures children to conform through encouraging peer pressure, which is simply outsourcing the bullying to children.
Christians are the last people to be qualified for an anti-bullying campaign. Well, aside from Melania Trump, that is.
Attempts to bring this type of stuff into public schools under assorted titles happens quite often across the land. And the groups know exactly what they are doing too. Meanwhile we have the RW constantly accusing us teachers of indoctrinating students with a multitude of imaginary grievances. I’ve yet to see anything the RW imagines & accuses of us in 3 decades of teaching.
I started out teaching. I lasted three years and it was the most difficult and exhausting job I have ever held in my entire life, and I had previously worked three part-time jobs at the same time to pay my way through college.
Thirty years...I am more than impressed, I am awed. Not just because of the workload, but also because of the Mt. Everest-sized load of bullshit you now have to endure.
A "boy band" whose members are 26 and 28 (two are twins). Yeah, THERE'S truth in advertising. :S
Are they lying? They're Christians. Of course they're lying. I thought that their god hated liars.
You see, Yahweh doesn't count it as lying when it somehow benefits h̵i̵s̵ ̵m̵i̵n̵i̵o̵n̵s̵ ̵him.
Their god is the father of all lies, a trait it constantly projects onto Satan.
They're good ol' boys.
And about as appropriate for a 21st century public school assembly as the rebel flag.
🎼 Never meanin' no harm
Beats all you ever saw, been in trouble with the law
Since the day they wuz born....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei7XcUXphJk
I always wondered how the hell they could squeal tires on dirt roads. Somebody needed to clue in the sounds effects person.
I assume for the same reason Superman would laugh at bullets fired at him, then duck when someone threw the gun.
That’s what I was taught before my great escape.
Glad you made it out. I know it isn't easy.
They are, in fact, bearing false witness ALL DAY LONG.
And night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2XDORONuuY
God should be advised that allowing liars to spread His message may not really achieve His goals.
Not only are they too old, but boy bands of that kind are so passe, like 20 years passe. The 90s/ 2000s was the heyday of these acts, but they're all done and dusted.
Anybody else remember Menudo? Yeah, I know I'm dating myself.
Gave us Ricky Martin and “Livin’ La Vida Loca.”
Never heard of this one.
A Puerto Rican boy band that kicked boys out when they reached the venerable old age of 17.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menudo_(group)
Being hopelessly behind the times is kind of your average Christian organisation's stock in trade, really. But yeah, I was there to see the 90s and this sure ain't the 90s. For one thing, no-one wears parachute pants any more.
Technically a boy band just has to be young men, usually seen as under 30. NKOTB is still called a boy band, so is N*Sync and all the others and far from under 30. So, that's not a lie. If you can find a definition of boy band that says they have to be under drinking age to make your case, please do. AS a musician who wrote a book on boy bands (shockingly it sells well, which I didn't expect), I would be interested in who set that definition.
In this case you have no case, unless you change the definition of boy band and have one nobody else agrees with, including wikipedia.
So right now your argument is to lie about the definition of boy band to then accuse these christians of being liars about being boys.
Wow, was there nothing legit in this article to criticize? You had to make something up? That's hitting below the belt.
And, nobody has called you out on it, as it seems there's no musicians here.
So being an atheist means you can also be ignorant and make shit up to condemn folks to stuff they didn't do. Doesn't make you look better than a christian
Just wondering, is there such a thing as a man band? I don't believe I've ever heard of one, but you sound like someone who would know.
I read Aaron Joy's tripe. His reading comprehension is ghasly. He's so far off the mark with what I actually said about boys/boy bands that I couldn't even bother to write a sole response to him taking down his points. Waste of time.
He got hot and bothered over the definition of "boy." Assuming he even bothered to read Hemant's article, this was his takeaway? This? *smh* And he was so upset that nobody here called me out for what I said. Could it be that no one else besides him disagreed with what I said? Sorry, but that's HIS problem. Not mine, not anybody else's.
He's posted to FA before. He seems to focus on me and no one else, for some strange reason. I and others here took him to task over what he said about the biblical deity (treating it as though it were real and could effect change) in his first post. Maybe he's still stinging about that. For a guy named Joy, he doesn't seem very happy.
Ok, je vais m'y coller.
Nogodzounet adoré, how dare you hurt this boy* fragile snowflake ego ? Such a shame nobody here can't give a fuck.
*C'est lui qui a insisté.
He insulted everyone here for not calling me out, saying "there are no musicians here" (whatever the fuck that means).
Could it be that we are a band all in harmony while he's playing a different song in the wrong key?
OwossoHarpist must not count.
I have the genes of a musician. Somehow, it must count, right ? 😁
"A boy band is a vocal group consisting of young male singers, usually in their teenage years or in their twenties at the time of formation." - Wikipedia*
I also feel I should point out that the designation may not go away, but as any boy band ages it most commonly become the subject of severe mockery specifically because the group is no longer 'boys' by any sensible measure. New Kids on the Block, NSYNC, and the Backstreet Boys have all suffered some amount of this effect, though in some cases it's more affectionate teasing than outright mockery.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_band
"At the time of formation ..."
Does Wikipedia mean this to be the time God created the world, or does it merely mean the time the band came together?
"... the time God created the world ..."
So, some time after Keith Richards arrived.
Well, I guess you can just die on that hill. Showed us. 🙄
"So right now your argument is to lie about the definition of boy band to then accuse these christians of being liars about being boys."
You completely missed the sarcasm tag.
"So being an atheist means you can also be ignorant and make shit up to condemn folks to stuff they didn't do. "
Being an atheist means we don't believe that any sort of god exists. What we are condemning, the lies that the "boy band" told, are when they actively proselytized at the school then publicly claimed that they did not. They were lying.
AJ thought I was accusing the 3 Heath Brothers of lying about being boys. I wasn't. The two paragraphs are separate. I was accusing them of being liars because they said they weren't proseltyzing to these kids when they clearly were. It's rather the point of Hemant's article (which apparently AJ never bothered to read).
Not the brightest candle in the temple, is he?
𝑂𝑛𝑒 𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑙𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑡’𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝐺𝑜𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑎 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛.
Of course they are. Lying liars for Jesus are going to lie. It's as automatic to them as breathing.
Then they went to scrub their proselytizing intention from their public statements. All in service of the lie, so they can continue to decieve schools into allowing them access. Lying about what they did, then lying to cover up the lies. Is anyone here surprised? Didn't think so.
I don't buy that the school officials were unaware of the true intentions of the lying liars for Jesus. If they really were unaware, then parents should be storming the school board to demand answers as to why the simplest and most basic vetting was not done for an outside group to be given access to their children. Even the very weak thread of plausible deniability makes the principal look bad.
Bottom line: public schools should never allow religious groups in.
Both sides are lying. They both knew exactly what they were doing and thought they could get away with it. There's no reason for a christian boy band to be playing public schools when you can't swing a dead cat here in NC without hitting a christian school. Take your crap there, boys.
100% agree Joe!
Who's kidding who here? Christian bands are about nothing if they're not about proselytism, or preaching to the converted. If the Three Heath Brothers weren't proselytizing then they weren't, to use a hackneyed phrase, executing their prime function. Any claim to the contrary is frankly specious.
And, to be blunt, we are not fooled.
Troublesh00ter-Exactly! These bands are put together for proselytizing or they wouldn’t be called christian bands!
They certainly aren't put together to make good music. Also, I'm dropping my kids off at a Drag Brunch before I'm letting those 'Mack the Knife' smiles anywhere within seventy times seven miles of them. They WILL hear good music there!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TsL0DO-c1E
One of Ol' Hank's finest truisms!
I mean when all their songs mention God or Jesus how is that NOT proselytizing? These people only have one mode and that mode does NOT just turn off automatically.
Enjoy
https://youtu.be/kPFkGLCHGcs?si=LvPAsMXrNpOb6k4j
Ultra vomit is a parodic French band.
You have to want to be fooled to fall for this, Troublesh00ter.
Want to be fooled or simply don't care.
Fundamentalists want our kids.
Educated adults are almost impossible to convert.
They want access to children, need access to propagate their harmful ideas before the mind develops.
They will never stop. The fight to protect vulnerable children is Neverending.
Aside: if you're in your late 20s, not a licensed teacher, hanging out on middle school campuses, that's weird. Stop it.
Why you could call them "Groomers", in fact.
𝔜𝔢 𝔬𝔩𝔡𝔢 4 𝔱𝔬 14 𝔴𝔦𝔫𝔡𝔬𝔴.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e09066e28b286dd3402779bf31fdd9d0774672faadd4d6a090ff44850a652173.jpg
Reading stuff like this quite often will trigger memories of something I had not thought about in decades.
While reading this particular story, I remembered a similar type of band performing at our school. I was probably in middle school by then (?) maybe.
I don't recall hearing about this ahead of time, because I would have been looking forward to getting out of class. I just remember being kind of surprised when we were all herded to the auditorium.
The songs were secular, but I don't remember a single one of them. I was wondering why we had been let out of class for basically a dumb rock concert - usually there was some kind of official school-related thing going on (science fairs or presenting academic awards, for example).
Then it started - after every three or four songs, the music would stop and one of the band members would step forward and give his testimony about his coming to Jesus and being Born Again.
It was weird, cringe-worthy, and annoying. I got enough of that shit at church, and now here I was having to sit through it at school. After the show, they sold generic posters of themselves for $1, so yeah, that was a looooong time ago. And there were some free generic book marks with their band logo. I didn't take anything because I was standing in line waiting to be herded back to class, but a True Believer friend grabbed a handful of bookmarks and gave me one, gushing about how "beautiful" and "inspiring" the whole thing was. If I was uncomfortable before, this was downright anxiety-producing, because it made me wonder about my own salvation. Why didn't I feel the same way she did about all this? Was I not a real christian? What was wrong with me?
Once again, I had thoughts about ending up in hell, in a place where usually I encountered nothing even remotely religious. I wonder if any of the kids in that captive audience experienced the same thing, or if they saw through the manipulative BS.
I would rather be deaf than listen to these guys, but I suspect it's like 1960's bubblegum rock with theological pretensions. Religion and morality are not mutually exclusive, but they are very far from the same thing. One need only think about the countless horrors perpetrated by religious people in the name of their religion. Morality is one of those things most people think they understand, but trying to define it is like nailing Jello to the ceiling. If you need religion to be a moral person, then by all means keep going to church. It's a lot easier than thinking.
I remember my early days in the Catholic Church. It was during that time of threats about hellfire and eternal damnation that gave me pause. I wondered, “Why is missing church a reason to burn in hell? Doesn’t it matter if you are a good person? Would God burn me if I died in an accident before I could confess my sins?”
None of it made sense…and I was only 8 years old.
I suspect we were on similar journeys. Although I could not articulate it as a young child, from early on in my life I began to view Christianity as roughly equal parts comfort myth and revenge fantasy. The church always seemed to be more interested in controlling people on this earthly plane for reasons that nothing to do with actual decency.
Exactly. That bothered me even then.
I can remember once standing in line for confession. A boy was in the confessional and I could hear him telling the priest about all of the times he swore. I was gobsmacked. Why would anyone intentionally swear if it’s a sin?
One year later I was in public school and my question was quickly answered. I heard more cussing on the playground in one afternoon than I had heard in my whole life. It was simply the common vernacular.
Burn in hell…eternally…for that?
Infinite punishment for what can only ever be a finite offense, is not how my idea of a loving God behaves. I would never worship such a God even if it could be demonstrated to exist.
Don't forget identical punishments for the mass murder of countless people and for blasphemy, which hurts only god's feelings.
My sentiments exactly.
If you’re going to burn in hell for eternity for committing finite sins, then it doesn’t really matter how small the sin is, does it?
Might as well go big. If I was pretty, I'd bang every decent looking guy in Texas.
You are pretty. Just not as pretty as he used to be, but then who is
But hey, all of the men in Texas are straight, so all you really need is a six pack of beer and the wife gone on vacation.
Back in the 70s there were quite a few “Christian Themed” pop songs on regular rotation on AM stations. “Spirit in the Sky”, “Put Your Hand (In the Hand of the Man Who Stilled the Water)”, and a renditon of The Lord’s Prayer.*
Naive teenage me didn’t think much about it. Older cynical, cranky me would be very PO’d.
* I may have misrememberd some of the titiles.
There's a subtle but important difference between songwriters that explore religious themes ('music first') and proselytizers using music as their entry ('message first'). Good music can absolutely be religious. Cohen's Allelujah springs to mind. Turn, Turn, Turn. Jesus is Just Alight With Me. Plus a ton of classical stuff. What makes most Christian rock crap is that they don't really put any effort into the composition beyond what is needed to carry their message.
And someone once said, Christian rock didn’t make rock better, it made Christianity worse. Or maybe Christian rock didn’t make Christianity better, it made rock worse.
Hank Hill.
In my upper Midwestern Mainline Protestant background, I first heard "Amazing Grace" as performed by Judy Collins! Those were strange times.
I remember Bing Crosby and David Bowie performing both “Little Drummer Boy” and “Peace on Earth” together.
For the record, I was not on drugs.
But they were.
Amazing Grace, side 2, track 6, Whales and Nightingales.
Sticker on the cover says I paid $5.99 for it. Big money back then, but worth it.
There is a wonderful version of Amazing Grace, I think by Judy Collins and others, possibly a capella, recorded in a church with great acoustics, possibly in Boston?
Oddly, I was well into adulthood before I realized AG was a Christian song. I was mesmerized by the song itself and not the lyrics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUg8B1VA0Bs
Overproduced inspirational pop type stuff. They might have good voices but theyre pitch corrected to hell and back.
𝐼 𝑠𝑢𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑖𝑡'𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 1960'𝑠 𝑏𝑢𝑏𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑔𝑢𝑚 𝑟𝑜𝑐𝑘 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠
Whether it's a christian boy band or a secular, legit anti-drug outfit, schools should still remember the adage 'you get what you pay for.' You bring in amateur volunteers, you're going to get an amateurish product.
Schools should also be suspicious of any outside performance group that offers to perform for free (as this group does).
Christian bands like this boy band are part of a long-time effort by evangelical christians to 'get 'em while they're young'. They know that children of elementary school age are especially impressionable and least able to resist peer pressure. I'm calling BS on the school, the school board and the band for lying about the purpose of this performance in front of a captive audience without their parents' permission.
Let's not forget that these are the same kind of people who scream bloody murder if a school wants to hold a drag queen story hour, claiming it's a violation of parental rights.
Both sides here are lying through their teeth.
They were not proselytizing, they were just trying to convert these schoolkids to christianity.
Riiight. 😄
See? Not proselytizing at all.
It's only proselytizing when it's not Christianity....
Or just those JWs and Mormons, not TRUE Christians (TM)
Or, you know, those Catholics that will be burning for eternity, fallen-away group that it is.
(Yeesh, a Southern Baptist upbringing really does pop up at the strangest times.)
The Chick published comics by ex-Jesuit Alberto Rivera?
You don't say! And here I was thinking they were one and the same.
Fundies: Singing songs about Jesus to school kids is NOT Christian proselytizing!
Fundies: Teaching evolution to school kids is atheist proselytizing!
Our bad. We need to sing about Darwin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x34y7xKJsv8
Along with Math, Science, Literature, home ec, and everything else kids learn in school.
3 groomers and not a single one of them is a drag queen.
To a drag queen, grooming is brushing your wig and waxing your pits.
??? I thought it was waxing their legs. ??? Because waxing pits sounds excruciatingly painful.
I tried a DIY bikini wax once when I was young and stupid. Ripped off the first strip, shrieked like a banshee, and dissolved into tears. Never did that again.
I saw a video of bikini wax. I almost cried just watching. It is a fairly common thing on porn sites. Very popular with the S&M crowd.
Ouch!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIKL3odXQIw
Christopher Hitchens on his Brazilian Bikini Wax job and the limits of self-improvement
youtu.be/pERz0Q3C2ls
Given the track record of twentysomething proselytizers who want access to children, has anyone done a criminal background check on these men? Checked their browser histories?
I'm not saying their motives include child abuse, but there is definitely a nonzero chance of that.
Then there's the history of "rock" bands and groupies. I don't know if that translates to Christian "rock", but...
Conclusion: religion poisons everything! 🤔 where have I heard that before?
It always poisons when it violates separation of Stare /Church!
....however you look at it.
Fking lying perverts and pedophiles.
There is something I don't quite understand. How can the school make it a mandatory event when it has nothing to do with the curriculum or a field trip ? Shouldn't the parents sign a form ?
Most US schools have the occasional all-school assembly. It can be some school spirit thing or (as this one was touted) for social/emotional learning reasons such as promoting an anti-bullying message. At the elementary level, kids don't have distinct 'classes' for the most part so as long as all the subjects get covered over the course of the day/week/year, the Principal has a fair amount of discretion to hold in-school events like this.
So that's all legit. Obviously, holding an anti-bullying assembly but sneaking in a Christian proselytization rally is not.
Quote: "Obviously, holding an anti-bullying assembly but sneaking in a Christian proselytization rally is not."
This.
Rules don't seem to mean anything to those who bend the knee to YHVHs brat.
This is so alien to me. Here, it's forbidden (and enforced) to force participation in religious events for the private religious schools who partner with the government. They have to follow the same rules as public schools 🤔
Wow. We desperately need that system in place here. But I know the chances of that are slim and none, and slim's outta town.
Yeah, it should've been built right into the structure of voucher programs right from the beginning: if you take state money, you must follow state rules. The private nature and flexibility you gain is in covering extra stuff or providing additional specialized services, it is not in skipping stuff everyone is supposed to learn or in hiring unaccredited staff.
But, this particular case is a public school, so that's a digression.
Since voucher programs were birthed by the right wing, I think it's safe to say that it was a foot-in-the-door for exactly this type of BS.
"It's time to kick ass or chew gum. And guess what?"
"I'm all outta gum."
- Al Pacino and Christopher Walken, Stand Up Guys
That's how it worked at my school. Extra-curricular events during classroom hours required parental approval for kids who wanted to go, but that was a lifetime ago. These days, it seems to have been mostly discarded.
It's still how it works here, since a monetary participation* is needed nearly every time.
* And volunteers to watch over the children, it can only be a parent or adult sibling.
Ironic that the group chosen to give an anti-bullying message is Christian. And so much more that it seems to be an evangelical Christian group. History of all Christian religions and current teachings of a loud percentage of evangelical sects shows that Christianity is a global organized bully group. We’ve got the crusades and just constant violent conversions, we have a patriarchal culture that oppresses women and treats wives and children as property, biblical and the USA’s chattel slavery, the complete segregation of churches and Jim Crow and educational institutions, all that to current positions of conversion therapy and simple anti-LGBTQ sermonizing. This particular event was a form of bullying as well, while preaching against it, this musical group implicitly pressures children to conform through encouraging peer pressure, which is simply outsourcing the bullying to children.
Christians are the last people to be qualified for an anti-bullying campaign. Well, aside from Melania Trump, that is.
They are bringing the warm, supportive, loving, anti-bullying message that you're gonna burn in hell unless you convert right now.
Attempts to bring this type of stuff into public schools under assorted titles happens quite often across the land. And the groups know exactly what they are doing too. Meanwhile we have the RW constantly accusing us teachers of indoctrinating students with a multitude of imaginary grievances. I’ve yet to see anything the RW imagines & accuses of us in 3 decades of teaching.
I started out teaching. I lasted three years and it was the most difficult and exhausting job I have ever held in my entire life, and I had previously worked three part-time jobs at the same time to pay my way through college.
Thirty years...I am more than impressed, I am awed. Not just because of the workload, but also because of the Mt. Everest-sized load of bullshit you now have to endure.
You are amazing. I salute you!
3 years ? I wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes before throwing them by the window or from the roof 😅