Religious Indoctrination in Public Schools: The Rise of LifeWise Academy

[0:01] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. In this episode, we get an update on the lobbying effort of the Christian Nationalist Group LifeWise Academy, as they try to force themselves into the public schools with the help of the state. For a group opposed to indoctrination of public school students, they sure do a lot of it themselves. Glass City Humanist is an outreach project of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie, building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow.

[0:39] Music.

[0:53] We’ll be right back.

[0:59] At the time that this episode is being recorded, it’s towards the end of November, and the Ohio State Legislature is in what’s called the lame duck session. They take, of course, Thanksgiving off, but they go until the middle of December. And what they try to do is they try to cram through all the bills that had been introduced during their session, because at the end of the session, at the end of December, the General Assembly expires and doesn’t come back until after the first of the year. And once the General Assembly expires, then any bill that had been introduced that had not been passed dies as well. And so if there’s something that they really want to get passed in this session, they have to do it now before they adjourn for the year, or else they’re going to have to reintroduce that bill, reintroduce that bill in the next session.

[2:07] And so a lot of the times what you get is a lot of their extremist votes, their extremist legislation tries to get jammed through during the lame duck session. And we’ve already had that happen at the time that this has been recorded. The state legislature passed a bathroom ban against trans women.

[2:31] And the governor signed it just today, the day that I’m recording this. He signed it into law. So in 90 days, it will become the law in Ohio that kids and college students will be prohibited from using any restroom that does not match their biological sex at birth. And it was mainly due to punish trans women because the religious outlets believe that trans women are child molesters because they were men. They used to be men and they’re trying to protect their daughters, but they never say what they’re protecting them from. But that’s pretty much what you can get out of it. The other bill that they’re trying to get through is, it’s a bill, it’s House Bill 445 and Senate Bill 293, and it would require public school districts to have what’s called a release time religious instruction policy. And I have talked about this before in previous episodes. It’s where LifeWise Academy, an evangelical group that’s supported by those that wrote, helped write the Project 2025 book.

[3:52] Is forcing their way into public schools to spirit kids away in the middle of the school day to have a Bible class.

[4:02] They refused to do it before or after school. And so they are getting some pushback from various public schools around the state because of the resources that they require and the time and energy and the disruption to the school day. It’s not because they’re Christian. It’s not because of their religion. Many of these people that oppose LifeWise, horning their way into public schools, they’re Christians. They go to church. They’re Jewish. They go to synagogue. They just don’t like LifeWise. LifeWise is a business looking to recruit kids, and indoctrinate kids, which is kind of ironic because just in the past year, past couple years, we’ve had arguments at school board meetings from conservatives believing that their kids are being indoctrinated into CRT stuff. They don’t know what CRT means, but they don’t like it.

[5:12] They don’t want their kids learning about it. But when it deals with religion, they want to do it. They want to indoctrinate children in Christianity, even if Christianity is not that child’s family’s religion.

[5:30] And so what they want to do with these two bills, and they’re the same bill, is they want to change the law, the current law, that says the school board can have a policy to where a school board would have to have a policy. So it’s changing may to shall. Of course, the proposal doesn’t address all of the concerns that have been expressed about LifeWise and about release time religious instruction this whole time. So this month, in the month of November, the House had a hearing for opponent testimony, and the Senate had an all-party hearing where they heard from proponents, opponents, and people that are called interested party. Those interested party people, they’re the ones that don’t mind the bill but would like to see some changes. Meanwhile, the proponents don’t see anything wrong with it, and opponents are opposed to it. We had over 200 submitted written testimonies in opposition to Senate Bill 293. And what I wanted to do right now is I wanted to play a clip from the Senate hearing.

[6:50] Senator Andrew Brenner, or Benner, I forget how to pronounce it, Brenner, is the chair. And he’s asking a question to Joel Penton, who is the founder and owner and CEO of LifeWise, about why they’re getting pushback. One final question for you is, what has sparked the change here? If you’ve been around since 2019, and now there seems to be pushback, is something changed with the way you’re handling the students? Or what is different today than in 2019 that’s causing schools to want to do away with the program? Or is there a cause? I wouldn’t say there’s anything different than in 2019. In fact, release time programs have been around for over 100 years. The Supreme Court ruled on this in 1952. It was 2013 that Ohio passed the law, but there were release time programs throughout Ohio well before that. I think it’s simply because it’s more popular now.

[7:47] The larger something becomes, the more it becomes a target. And for whatever reason, those who would oppose such efforts of students studying the Bible during school hours, it has at this point, I guess, hit their radar as something they want to attack. As you can tell, Penton is playing up the usual playbook of the religious zealots, where they claim they’re being attacked when people disagree with their methods. And that is the issue with LifeWise. And that’s what I don’t think he understands, or he probably understands it, but, you know, he’s too busy trying to lobby the state to guarantee him an income is basically what he’s doing.

[8:37] Because this bill, Senate Bill 293 and House Bill 445, if either one of them passes, it’s going to benefit life-wise. And that’s why they are lobbying for it. But where Penton messes up is he assumes because they’re popular that they’re being attacked. And for one thing, they’re not being attacked. As I said earlier, that a lot of this pushback is coming from people who are religious, who go to church. It’s not a bunch of atheists screaming about church and state because, you know, even though ethically it does violate the separation of church and state, you know, at least most of us in the secular side respect court decisions. And we know that Zorak v. Klaassen is controlling this situation. But like Penton points out, RTRI programs, Release Time Religious Instruction programs, have existed in this country for over 100 years, even before the Supreme Court decision. And so he can’t understand why they are getting pushback. It must be because they’re popular. They’re getting pushback is because they’re like any big corporation trying to weasel their way into the community. You know, people don’t always agree.

[10:01] And they definitely don’t agree with LifeWise’s method. You know, as we’ve talked about before, when school districts have asked them to do a before or after school program, LifeWise has refused. And one of the reasons that they refuse is because they are out to recruit and convert children to Christianity. That is their stated goal. That is the goal that they’re doing. And they are manipulating the state law and federal court cases in order to do that. They found a loophole. In most cases, religious people, they’re not allowed to have free reign inside a public classroom.

[10:47] There’s only specific instances where a religious person is allowed to come in and talk about religion in a public school. There’s so much restriction on religion in a public school is because the public school children are there due to mandatory attendance laws. You know, over the decades, you know, really since the modern school system was developed and it was seen as a public

[11:20] good, one of the ways that they make sure that that happens was to require kids to attend school. And because they are required to attend school, a lot of these federal court cases involving religion in public schools takes that in consideration.

[11:40] And so that’s why groups like LifeWise don’t get a free reign. And so the next thing that I want to do is I have some clips from this guy here in Ohio, Keith Comer. He does the website Respect Public Schools that documents where LifeWise is trying to get into, and he also has other data. And he also has a YouTube channel called Ohio Politics is Fun, and he publishes clips. Like he’s got a couple clips I’m going to play here in a little bit from the different hearings that we’ve had this month for these two bills. But this first clip that I want to play, this is LifeWise employees that were recorded on video talking to people about LifeWise and their stated mission. What they hope to accomplish by going into elementary schools and trying to recruit young kids.

[12:56] So again, this isn’t people that don’t like LifeWise saying these things. This is actual quotes from videos from LifeWise employees talking to various groups about LifeWise. 0 to 14, if I introduce Jesus to a child I’m probably going to hook him on Jesus Okay.

[13:20] 14 years and older, only 4% of those kids are going to come to know Jesus. But then we go to the heart. And I knew when I was trying to take kids and get them motivated to read in school, there was one way, and it’s get them excited in their heart. By telling them stories. If I went up front like this and told a kid a story, I had them hooked. And I could tell by their eyes. I’ve got some of you hooked right now. Some of you aren’t sure yet. Okay? I could take those kids wherever I wanted to take them. Because they’re young, they could be influenced, and they want to learn. I will say, though, we do recommend elementary school. There’s two reasons. One is a practical reason. When we’re in a school, our participation rates, our elementary, are very, very high. So then when they go into middle school, they’ve already had the program, and they’re like, where’s the life was? And it just leads to, it’s the funnel. Second, though, is even more important, it’s spiritual. Who’s heard of the Barna Group, the Christian statistician? The stats show us that when a child hears the gospel in a very real way from the ages of 4 to 13 they have about 40% of the time they truly follow Jesus, yeah so we’re going to vet everyone who applies for the steering committee for sure we’re going to vet the director we take it very seriously we’re not going to allow false religions but the thing about it is every church should have the same gospel.

[14:43] And that was unnegotiable so instead of them taking a hit and and saying well lifewise won’t let us be a part what they did is they wrote a letter and put it in the newspaper that they don’t want to be a part of lifewise because they want watered down christianity so again those were lifewise employees talking to different groups. It was videotaped. Those aren’t made-up quotes. Those are actual employees talking about how it was important to indoctrinate young kids younger than 14 in order to get them to stay with the religion.

[15:32] So that’s their goal is to indoctrinate children. These are the same people that complained that children were being indoctrinated talking about racism, LGBT issues in school, where they were trying to ban books because they didn’t want their children to be indoctrinated into a woke agenda. And here they are talking about, well, we need to get these kids before they’re 14 so that we can get them to come to church. That’s why there’s backlash against LifeWise. That is one reason. Of course, the other reason, too, is that there is no guidelines in these bills to control what LifeWise does. In fact, there is some question about whether or not the state can dictate anything about LifeWise other than releasing the children. So not only do they want to indoctrinate young kids into Christianity, into their brand of Christianity, but they also want to extend their tentacles, as it were, into the public school to where they become a part of the public school, which is ethically wrong.

[16:54] If not legally wrong, because the Supreme Court decision was pretty clear that the release time had to be separate from the school. But in many cases, life-wise, because there’s no guidelines in these laws, it’s like a Wild West for them. And it’s whatever they can work out with the school, And that’s their plan is they want to become integrated into the public school day, like actually integrated so that life-wise is just like art. Life-wise, it’s just like gym. Life-wise, it’s just like library time.

[17:36] And that is also another reason why they are getting pushed back, because they’re attempting to do that. But here, if you don’t believe me, here’s Joel Penton and other LifeWise employees talking about that very issue. Almost none of our students miss any class of any kind. Where I live, I live in Hillyard, Ohio, and our students once a week are released during lunch and recess to attend LifeWise. Yeah, but the majority of them are specials, right, Ron? We become part of the specials rotation. So lunch and recess is the very minority. We normally become part of their school day, like art, gym, music, library, like you mentioned. Yes, but the top one is during a specials rotation for elementary, primary, intermediate grades. So you might have gym, art, music. We don’t want to infringe on core area content. We will not do that. But we also don’t wanna infringe on things that are graded like gym, art, or music. But maybe library, I can get a book anytime. So maybe I could go during library. Some schools have actually been so successful with this that it’s now a special.

[18:42] So you have lunch, gym, art, music, tech, life-wise. And the students whose parents aren’t opting them for life-wise, they might go to the library or a study hall, get extra tutoring help, things like that, right? And so my favorite way that it gets melded into the school schedule is when a school actually creates a special time specifically for release time religious instruction. So a lot of schools still have those four specials and we just say, hey, what about creating a fifth one for the fifth day of the week, a release time religious instruction special, and it’s an optional one. So maybe we could pair it with an extra computer or library time. And so when that happens, we tend to see very high percentages of student enrollment. They’re going to tell us where we fit in best. And usually we become a specials. Have you heard of specials? It’s non-graded academic classes for elementary, art, library, gym, music, stuff like that. We actually become one of those for the school. And so they’re going to tell us where we fit in and we’ll stay static on that day. And then it’ll be the growth of the program.

[19:57] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at GlassCityHumanist.show.

[20:11] As I said earlier at the start of this episode, that I was going to share some audio from video clips put together by Keith Comer. And, and as I said, Keith Comer, he runs the website, respect our schools. He also has the YouTube channel, Ohio politics is fun. Um, he’s a very ardent activist against these two bills, house bill 445, Senate bill 293. I mean, he does the data done, you know, he searches for the data. He does the public records requests. I mean, he’s, he’s on it. And then he has the website that he runs the whole gambit. So I came across his thoughts on the testimonies here in November, the two bills that were, uh, had testimony in his thoughts. Now, I don’t agree 100% with everything he says. I like the direction that he’s going. Where I disagree, he claims that because LifeWise is a third-party entity, that the state could not tell them how to operate. Well, I think if they’re operating with a public school, you could.

[21:35] And that is one of the issues I have with the bills, is there’s no guidelines. All it says is that a district should have a policy. It doesn’t cover liability. Well, it says liability, but there’s nothing to enforce it. And one of the things that Gary Click, one of the proponents of these bills, said was that if the entity is not living up to their promises, then the district could just kick them out. And it’s like there’s nothing in the bill that allows that. That’s something that the district would have to come up with if they were going to accommodate life-wise. And I think that that’s something the state should cover.

[22:22] There should be some guidelines, stricter guidelines in these laws in order for it. But other than that, other than that slight disagreement with Keith, I really think that he says a lot of good things. And so I’m going to play the audio from his video with his thoughts. Here’s keith i’m trying to make this quick because there’s a lot of things i want to talk about um house bill 445 opponent testimony was a couple days ago and then senate bill was it 293 um the first hearing for it, or the reading of it was the same day. It was interesting to watch Josh Williams and Al Cutrona, both attorneys, not really talk about any of the legal parts of LifeWise or RTRI in general. Josh did berate one of the parents who testified about release forms but didn’t really talk about any of the RTRI legal stuff.

[23:23] I think the big problem that I have and a lot of people have with it is that it is so entangled with the school, LifeWise specifically. A lot of other RTRI programs are not. But here’s what Zorach v. Claussen says, and I’ll read it. The school shall do no more than release students whose parents so request. Um so lifewise requires that the school send a letter on school letterhead to lifewise saying that lifewise is legal uh lifewise tries to get the schools to integrate lifewise into the schedule as one of these specials um you know art music gym library stem technology uh lifewise will send around questionnaires and surveys and ask the school to do that. They will bring in food and things like that for the school. There’s a lot of things that happen between the school and LifeWise that is more than just the school shall release the students. No more than that. if any coercion or anything else is done.

[24:36] Zoratz versus Clausen said that it would be a completely different case. So I feel like that’s the the main part is that, None of that should be happening. Also, Josh Williams and Al Cutrona and Gary Click constantly talk about how the school can do whatever they want with the policy. So if they want to make a policy where you can only be released one day a week, you can do that. If you make a policy where if your grades are not at a certain level, you can’t attend life-wise. If you want to make a policy where, if your attendance, if you want to make a policy where behavioral issues, they can choose which students can and can’t attend. I think that’s also wrong. I think if a parent wants to sign their child out, as Zorach versus Clawson says, a parent should do that. The school should do no more than release the student. The school should not be making you know figuring out ways to get a hundred kids on and off school property if a hundred parents show up and sign their kids out and take them down to the church and then bring them back and sign them back in great but the school should not be coordinating with a third party Williams and and Alan Click also also think that you can mandate how LifeWise does background checks, does hiring, does training.

[26:05] You can’t do that. They’re a third party, a completely private entity. They’re a nonprofit. I’ll call them a company. They’re just a third party company. The school should really not even have any idea what is happening there. They shouldn’t know what religion it is. They should know that it’s Bible class versus is something else um i think the line is very blurred i think it’s too blurred um and i think everyone is trying to al and and josh and gary are all trying to make it sound like, That isn’t happening. They’re trying to distract, you know, to say, well, the school can do whatever they want. You can’t do whatever you want. You can’t do whatever you want. That’s crazy. And they’re a third-party company. You can’t tell them how to do things. What you can do is say, this is how we want to run our school. That’s it. That’s it. That’s all. So I don’t know if Josh and Al just forgot about that. I don’t know if they didn’t bother to read the case law. They are attorneys. Josh said that when he was kind of yelling at a parent, you know? So I don’t know. If you want to feel like reading the case, Josh, maybe? I don’t know.

[27:34] Hello, this is Douglas, host of The Glass City Humanist, inviting you to listen to selected segments of The Glass City Humanist on Toledo Community Radio Station WAKT, 106.1 FM,

[27:47] Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Eastern Time. If you can’t listen to us on the radio, you can live stream us on ToledoRadio.org or visit our On WAKT page on our website, GlassCityHumanist.show, for past episodes.

[28:07] Music.

[28:16] Zorachwi Khaasun says that a school should do no more than release the children. And I think that’s a key phrase that’s getting ignored in these discussions about this bill. And that’s because of religious privilege. You know, all these Christians think that they can do no wrong and then civil rights get trampled on. But anyway, so I wanted to wrap up the episode by playing a couple more clips from that Keith collected from the hearings. And I do want to say, though, that the hearings, the videos from hearings in the state of Ohio are available on the Ohio channel.

[28:59] What I’m giving credit for for Keith is he extracted some pertinent clips from those videos and it saved me some time. So I thank him for that. But I wanted to play a couple of the Josh Williams clips. I wanted to play Josh Williams is a representative, has a district here in the Toledo area. He admitted during one of the earlier testimony hearing dates for the bill that he worked with a parent group in Lucas County to try to force their local district to accept LifeWise. And I think that that is totally wrong. A state representative or anybody in state government should not be promoting life-wise at all. That violates Zorach v. Clausen indubitably. But uh so he admitted so he’s not he’s not an opponent of the bill he’s a proponent but what it was is the issue about liability came up and in the law it says that the third party entity assumes all liability but at the time of the hearing or shortly before the hearing.

[30:14] And the parent that’s testifying represented the Westerville school district. Well, she didn’t work for the school district. She was a parent, part of a group that got Westerville to rescind their RTRI policy. And so she is not a lawyer. And Representative Williams unprofessionally berated her for not being a lawyer when they were talking about liability. That’s not something that he should have done, but that’s what people do when they don’t like what somebody’s telling them, is they try to discredit them. And so they went on and on about this liability issue, which isn’t the major issue with LifeWise. It’s the indoctrination and the integration with the public schools. Those are two of the main things. The liability issue, at least in this case, was a distraction. So then we’re going to hear Representative Williams talk about how there’s no guidelines and that the school board can do anything that it wants. And that’s what Keith mentioned in his little piece that he talked about. And then Gary Click also talking about that there’s no guidelines.

[31:30] This portion of the liability waiver is intended to cover things like traffic accidents. Were you aware that you were given false testimony when you when you stated that trans that it transfers all were you aware that you gave false testimony when it when you stated that it transfers all liability to the parent yes or no through the chair um i am not a lawyer i i i am a midwife and i deliver babies for a living um i can tell you as a lay person reading that waiver i to my best in faith stated what I believe. I am a lay person. And there is another page in that waiver where it says lifewise may not be sued. I think it is on the second page of that. It says lifewise may not be sued. As a lay person reading that waiver, that is what I took that to be. So I want to concentrate on what this bill does. It changes one word. It makes it where the school boards have to adopt a policy, but it provides no guidance for what that policy is.

[32:32] It could limit it to only during lunchtime, only during recess. It could limit it to just one day a year for release. There’s no guidance from the state on what the policy is. That’s the discretion left up to the school board. Schools can come up with a myriad of policies. They could say that a particular entire class is not allowed to participate in this release time if their scores are below a certain level. I think parents should have the preference to be able to choose, not the politicians, what’s good for their children, number one. But also when it comes to the policy talk about what’s in the policy what’s not in the policy and so forth and we talk about these decisions being made local there’s nothing more local than the home number one number two the policies cannot the local school boards correctly write a policy that says you must you know have this background check or you have to do it at this time you have to have these qualifications all the things that people are asking you know rather than the state.

[33:29] Micromanaging everything, we are saying each school board must have a policy. And is the school board capable of putting those policies that everyone asks about in their local policy? Well, I do believe that I see some information regarding liability for something happens to that student. How is that covered? Well, the chair to the representative, I would say that this would be no different than when I used to go to my mother and have her sign a release so that I can go on a school trip. I mean, you’re leaving the premises. It’s the same situation.

[34:05] Thank you for listening.

[34:09] For more information about the topics in this episode, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[34:20] Glass City Humanist is an outreach of the secular humanists of Western Lake Erie. Sholee can be reached at humanistswle.org. Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content. Our theme music is Glass City Jam, composed using the Amplify Studio. See you next time.

[34:49] Music.