Social Emotional Learning – Creating a Nation of “Nones” for the New American Religion
This article is Part 3 of a 4-article series originally published in the Ohio Press Network
Part 1: Social Transformation=Spiritual Soup—The Movement to Water Down & “Woke-ify” Religious Traditions
Part 2: One Nation Under “Mob”…With “Spirituality” & “Democracy” for All
Part 4: Social Emotional Learning is Unconstitutional—A State-Sanctioned Religion
In the first two articles of this four-part series, it was revealed that our government, in partnership with the private sector and civil society, is scheming to eventually take away freedom of religion and our constitutional republic by instituting a sort of state-sanctioned religion—a religious plurality that will classify anyone who doesn’t agree with them as a “threat to democracy.” In order to reach religious plurality, though, they have to change the minds and hearts of people who hold tightly to the letter of the doctrine to which their religion subscribes--starting with the highly impressionable youth of our country—with the goal of getting all of society to reject belief-based religion and move toward more of an “experiential”, “equitable” faith. It is a new American Religion.
The Five Stages of Religious Change
As mentioned in their Where We Belong: Mapping American Religious Innovation report, the Fetzer Institute’s reason for supporting emerging communities classifying as “Nones” or “spiritual but not religious” is to support the “future transformation of significant cultural and religious institutions.” Growing numbers of Americans today, they say, are already in stages 3-4 of what historian William McLoughlin mapped out and called “The Five Stages of Religious Change.”
Children in schools are currently being coaxed through these five stages to reject their familial religious and cultural beliefs to become a part of this nation of “Nones” through another program that the Fetzer Institute supports that has woven itself deep into the very fabric of our education system: social emotional learning.
Social Emotional Learning
Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is a mental health program that claims its role in schools is to help children “acquire the skills to recognize and manage emotions, develop care and concern for others, make responsible decisions, establish positive relationships, and handle challenging situations effectively.” (CASEL, 2019) The organization CASEL (the Collaborative for Academic and Social Emotional Learning), which was actually born out of a meeting at the Fetzer Institute in 1994, is the main standard-bearer for social emotional learning. They set the definition and the 5-core competencies that all SEL programs use and even rate and review programs depending on their adherence to teaching those competencies; reviews which many states use to only choose programs that are “CASEL-approved.”
In 2020, CASEL changed their definition and five core competencies to reflect a new vision for SEL, called Transformative Social Emotional Learning. The goal of this new endeavor would be to create a critical consciousness in children to become social justice activists for collective causes by manipulating children’s innate desire to be empathetic and compassionate. Similar to Stage 2 of the Five Stages of Religious Change, a critical consciousness would lead children to believe that all problems in society are due to “institutional malfunction.” For instance, they are led to believe that systemic racism is inherent in the structures and institutions of society and that it is not enough just to “not be racist”, but that they have to be anti-racist, willing to tear down those institutions and build more “equitable” ones for all “oppressed/marginalized” groups.
Similar to Stage 1 of the Five Stages of Religious Change, SEL programs like Second Step begin this process by altering the familial and cultural religious beliefs that children might come into school with already. Notice that the Golden Rule taught in Grade 5, which is traditionally taught in religious circles as “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is changed to “consider how someone would like to be treated, then treating them that way.”
This lesson, as well as a 7th grade gender harassment lesson featuring a boy in makeup, primes the pump for children to be expected to use someone’s “preferred pronouns” instead of adhering to their biblical belief that there are only two sexes and that those sexes are immutable, all in the name of “empathy and respect.” The definitions of empathy and perspective-taking shift throughout the program and take on new meanings like accepting others’ beliefs (over your own) and that being empathetic requires compassion (or action, i.e. social justice activism) in order to count. Once they can get children to buy into these mindsets and reject familial beliefs in order to develop a critical consciousness, it is much easier to move to Stage 3 of Religious Change, which is indoctrination or getting them to develop an entirely different worldview: As stated in the Five Stages of Religious Change: “A new vision emerges. New understandings of human nature, God, spiritual practices and ethical commitments are articulated.”
Identity & Belonging as a Road to Believing in the Need for Social Justice
None of these 3 Stages can be successful without the 4th Stage of Religious Change, which has to do with Identity & Belonging, which social and emotional learning teaches and cultivates in droves. CASEL’s new expanded [transformative] definition of SEL “emphasizes the importance of promoting students’ personal identities, agency, as well as their sense of belonging in the classroom, school, and larger community…when students have a positive and integrated self-concept, a strong sense of agency, and feel connected to their schools and classrooms, they are more likely to be engaged in their school work and build and maintain healthy relationships.” (Branching Minds)
The agency spoken of here is not individual agency, though, but collective agency and a sense of civic engagement toward the public good, which they need a sense of belonging and community to facilitate. According to Robert Jagers, the VP of Research at CASEL, students need to focus on their identity (race, class, gender, etc.) in order to critically examine issues such as power, privilege, and the systems and institutions that oppress or elevate groups of people based on that identity. The sense of collective belonging then occurs by students realizing what role they can play as a co-creator in coming up with (ant-racist) solutions to systemic issues around these injustices, either as an oppressed class or an ally to that oppressed class through social justice activism. Diana Butler Bass--an Emerging Church-leaning Thinker—describes in her book, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (New York: Harper Collins, 2012) how this process of belonging before believing is a great reversal of how religious groups traditionally come together. She argues that instead of beginning with questions of belief (which then inform behavior, which then determine belonging), that the focus should be on belonging, then behaving, then believing. The altered competencies of Transformative SEL have all the markings and language associated with creating this type of religious community, with the 5th step being “Institutional Transformation.”
“Institutional Transformation”=Cultural Revolution
Social emotional learning is being wielded as a religious tool in its own right to bring about the Five Stages of Religious Transformation in the youth of America, with the aim of turning students into a nation of “Nones” that desire to shift our country from a Constitutional Republic to a “Democracy.” Therefore, it must be argued that SEL is a religion.
Read Part 4 to understand how Social Emotional Learning is Unconstitutional and could be labeled as a state-sanctioned religion.
Lisa Logan is the host of the YouTube Channel Parents of Patriots and author of the Substack Education Manifesto. As a wife, mother and patriot, she has made it her mission to expose the sinister agenda behind Social Emotional Learning programs to save our children and the future of our country.
Whoever creates you, controls you.
Whoever gives you your identity creates you. Whoever gives you permission to be you saves you.
Frankenstein psychology.
Where can I find part 4?