Next month, members of the Child Evangelism Fellowship will gather in the Twin Cities for a two-week event called Good News Across America. Among other things, they will be looking for local churches and parishioners willing to lead weekly meetings of religious Good News Clubs in public schools.

You may remember the story about the clubs’ inroads into Twin Cities schools that ran in this space in March. It quoted a then-new book, “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Assault on America’s Children,” by investigative reporter Katherine Stewart.

As it turns out, the clubs are the tip of a proverbial iceberg of evangelism. Stewart’s groundbreaking book chronicles not just the strange back-story to the clubs’ legal toe-hold on the public schoolhouse, but many other ways in which fundamentalist groups are finding their ways into the classroom. For those who support the separation of church and state, “The Good News Club” is compelling -- and disturbing -- reading.

If that description fits you, you should buy a copy... Need further convincing? Consider the edited interview with Stewart that follows...