Good News Club is a weekly interdenominational Christian program for 5-to-12-year-old children featuring a Bible lesson, songs, memory verses, and games.
Other lesson books featured stories centered on the biblical characters Daniel, Joseph, Joshua, Esther, Moses, King David, and the Apostle Paul.
CEF's version of the Wordless Book contains five colors: gold, black, red, white, and green, representing heaven, sin, Jesus's crucifixion, righteousness, and growth, respectively.
[11] Good News Club has roots dating back to the early 1920s, when CEF's founder J. Irvin Overholtzer launched the "Children's Home Bible Class" movement in the Bay Area of San Francisco.
[13] Over the next 15 years, CEF developed an entire series of lessons,[14] organized it into a 5-year curriculum cycle, and renamed the home study bible class the "Good News Club."
Describing her experience of being a college student of Biola dean Reuben Torrey, Ruth wrote: “How could any of us who had the privilege of hearing this author at eleven a.m. each weekday morning teaching from his own book, ever, the rest of our lives, be ‘foggy about the fundamentals’?
At least as early as 1961, CEF's articles of incorporation recited that its purpose included "conducting Bible study and evangelistic meetings for children in public schools and elsewhere.
[20][21][22][23] That litigation culminated in the landmark 2001 Supreme Court decision of Good News Club v. Milford Central School, 533 U.S. 98 (2001), which held in favor of CEF.
"[4] Good News Club has been criticized for making inroads into public elementary schools that blur the distinction between church and state and for masking its goal of proselytizing children.
Since its 2001 Supreme Court victory, CEF has filed and won dozens of lawsuits against school districts that resisted opening up its classrooms or communication channels (e.g., flyer distribution programs) to Good News Club.
According to Greaves: It’s critical that children understand that there are multiple perspectives on all issues, and that they have a choice in how they think... "Satan" is just a "metaphorical construct" intended to represent the rejection of all forms of tyranny over the human mind.