Some years ago, Child Evangelism Fellowship got in trouble<\/a> for teaching children I Samuel 15:3 in their Good News Clubs.<\/p>\n I Samuel 15:3\u2014\u201cNow go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Guardian described the lesson as follows:<\/p>\n The CEF has been teaching the story of the Amalekites at least since 1973. In its earlier curriculum materials, CEF was euphemistic about the bloodshed, saying simply that \u201cthe Amalekites were completely defeated.\u201d 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:<\/p>\n \u201cYou are to go and completely destroy the Amalekites (AM-uh-leck-ites) \u2013 people, animals, every living thing. Nothing shall be left.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cThat was pretty clear, wasn\u2019t it?\u201d the manual tells the teachers to say to the kids.<\/p>\n Even more important, the Good News Club wants the children to know, the Amalakites were targeted for destruction\u00a0on account of their religion<\/em>, or lack of it. The instruction manual reads:<\/p>\n \u201cThe Amalekites had heard about Israel\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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.<\/p>\n Asking if Saul would \u201cpass the test\u201d of obedience, the text points to Saul\u2019s failure to annihilate every last Amalekite, posing the rhetorical question:<\/p>\n \u201cIf you are asked to do something, how much of it do you need to do before you can say, \u2018I did it!\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf only Saul had been willing to seek God for strength to obey!\u201d the lesson concludes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I never attended a Good News Club\u2014I was homeschooled, and these clubs take place in public schools\u2014but I grew up in an evangelical home and I remember\u00a0this lesson. My mother would read the Bible aloud to us children each morning after breakfast, asking questions like the ones posed here to draw meaning out of the text.<\/p>\n Child Evangelism Fellowship was not pleased<\/a> with the heat it received.<\/p>\n The story of Saul and the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:3<\/a>) is found in any version or edition of the Bibles of the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant faiths since the first manuscripts were inscribed. Only a misinterpretation of the cited passage could be used to buttress genocide (How Christian fundamentalists plan to teach genocide to schoolchildren<\/a>, 30 May).<\/p>\n The goal of Child Evangelism Fellowship is the proper teaching of this passage, which is not an instruction in genocide. Though truly many brutal acts appear in both the Old and New Testaments, including the torture and crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans, nothing could be more un-Christian than the promotion of genocide of any group of human beings under the New Covenant introduced to the world by Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n CEF and the Good News Clubs would never teach children that God would instruct them, or anyone today, to commit genocide.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There is so much<\/em> going on here.<\/p>\n While it is true that Jews, Catholics, and mainline Protestants all have this passage in their holy books, they do not<\/em> all approach their holy books (or this passage) in the same way. Second and relatedly, it does not take a \u201cmisinterpretation\u201d of the cited passage to conclude that God commanded and endorsed genocide. All it takes is the sort of straightforward reading evangelicals champion.<\/p>\n The Jewish Virtual Library notes\u00a0that Saul is commanded to exterminate the Amalekites in the context of\u00a0the Amalekites having attacked the Israelites on their way out of Egypt\u2014in stark contrast to Child Evangelism Fellowship stating that the Amalekites were killed because they refused to believe in God. In addition, the entry concludes that \u201cDespite the \u2018pre-deuteronomic\u2019 literary framework of [Samuel] chapter 15 and its prophetic-ideological aim, embedded in it is an ancient historical tradition about a war of extermination that reflects Saul\u2019s war against Amalek.\u201d<\/p>\n Very brief googling makes it clear, too, that there\u2019s\u00a0a lot more going on regarding\u00a0the role the Amalekites play\u2014and have long played\u2014in the Jewish origin story.\u00a0I\u2019m extremely tired of evangelicals assuming that Jews share the same view of the events described in the books in the Old Testament that evangelicals\u00a0do. They don\u2019t<\/em>. The Jewish Torah might as well be a completely separate book, so great is the difference between Jewish and evangelical approaches and interpretations.<\/p>\n As for the others, I wasn\u2019t able to find an official Catholic position online. However, I looked in\u00a0my Catholic Study Bible and found this\u00a0footnote:<\/p>\n Under the ban: in such wars of extermination, all things (men, cities, beasts, etc.) were to be blotted out; nothing could be reserved for private use. The interpretation\u00a0of God\u2019s will here attributed to Samuel is in keeping with the abhorrent practices of blood revenge prevalent among pastoral, semi nomadic peoples such as the Hebrews had recently been. The slaughter of the innocent has never been in conformity with the will of God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This interpretation is common among\u00a0both Catholics and mainline Protestants, who often look at the Old Testament as a combination of God\u2019s attempts to reveal himself to a tribal people far different from our society today, and those peoples\u2019 interpretations of God\u2019s commands (which were not always accurate).<\/p>\n But evangelicals of the Child Evangelism Fellowship mold are not comfortable with any of this. They argue that the Bible should be taken at face value. Yes, you have to understand the context and culture of the time, but if the Bible says\u00a0God commanded something, no matter how horrific, God did indeed command it.<\/p>\n Growing up in an evangelical home, I was taught that good and bad is defined by God, and that if he commands something it is de facto moral and right. At some point, though, I concluded that we cannot both have absolute moral standards (i.e. willfully taking innocent life is always wrong) and a moral system based on the idea that whatever God commands is automatically right or wrong.<\/p>\n Today my moral system has more nuance\u2014try squaring the belief that willfully taking innocent life is always wrong with the trolly problem<\/a>\u2014and it can be strange, sometimes, to remember my mother reading aloud the story of the Amalekites.<\/p>\n