00:01:29.120How in the world is there a Bible education that's allowed in public schools during school hours?
00:01:35.860Well, in part because it's not technically in public schools.
00:01:39.500What everybody knows is that decades ago, our nation systematically removed the Bible from the public school day.
00:01:46.280However, few people are aware that in 1952, the Supreme Court ruled that public school students can in fact receive Bible education, religious instruction, if the program meets three criteria.
00:01:58.340If it's off school property, privately funded, and students have parental permission, it's called released time religious instruction.
00:02:07.420That's a mouthful. That's the legal term.
00:02:09.360But again, very few people know about this.
00:02:11.840It's been kind of under the radar, underutilized for 70 years.
00:02:16.780We learned that this was a thing, was possible.
00:02:20.280And so we created LifeWise Academy to be a plug and play program that any community could
00:02:25.540implement to, again, teach their local public school students the Bible during school hours.
00:02:30.440I want to do just like a mini history lesson.
00:02:33.280Y'all have a documentary that, you know, I feel like I'm someone who kind of knew the
00:02:37.340history of public education, but I learned some things specifically about a woman named Madeline
00:02:42.900O'Hare. Was it O'Hare or O'Hara? O'Hare. Yeah. Madeline Marie O'Hare. Yeah. And I didn't know
00:02:48.680about her that she was kind of one of the people in the 20th century that was kind of pushing for
00:02:54.080this idea of a neutral worldview of public schools, that religion has nothing to do with
00:02:59.780what we learn or how we conduct business. You can kind of have your little faith over there,
00:03:05.060but don't bring it into the public realm at all. And her worldview really had an impact on how
00:03:11.000public school was shaped in the last half of the 20th century, right?
00:03:14.920Yeah, it really did, which is sad because, as I'm sure many of your listeners know,
00:03:20.680our public education system was not only founded with the Bible as central to it,
00:03:25.560the Bible was the motivating factor for education even existing. I mean,
00:03:31.240The first law around education in our nation is the old Deluder Act in Massachusetts that explicitly said that communities need to teach their children to read so that they can read the Bible.
00:03:45.620So the reason for education was to get people to the Bible.
00:03:49.220And so it's very sad that the Bible was eventually taken out.
00:03:52.420And as you mentioned, Madeleine Marie O'Hare was a central figure in this through a lawsuit in the mid-1900s that basically saying, yeah, we need to completely remove Bible reading.
00:04:04.700We need to remove prayer from schools.
00:04:07.480And it was much of that that led to where we are today.0.97
00:04:10.820And let's talk about that foundational assumption there.
00:04:14.360I hear this a lot when it comes to politics.
00:04:19.980Don't bring your faith into a school.0.98
00:04:21.420And the idea is if we remove Christianity, that things will become neutral, that we'll have a neutral place from which we can teach students.0.89
00:05:01.200It's like the hub of a wheel that gives order to everything else.
00:05:04.400It's the operating system that makes sense of all the different softwares that you could say.
00:05:09.360You could say history is a software and science is software, but the worldview makes sense of all of that.
00:05:14.020And so to say that you could just be neutral on that or you could just remove that really doesn't make sense.
00:05:19.060Yeah, there are a lot of assumptions when it comes to evolution, which of course is taught that we evolved from monkeys. That's not a neutral position. That says something not only about who we are physically, but also what our worth is.
00:05:33.440I mean, if we really came from nothing, if we all exist because of chance and then evolved
00:05:38.240from animals, well, that's a very different presupposition that that's going to offer
00:05:43.000someone about humanity than the idea that we were created by this God who cares for
00:05:48.740us, made us a particular way for a purpose, and who loves us.
00:05:53.240I mean, neither of those are neutral, but they're going to lead to different outcomes.
00:15:36.160Maybe they just signed the permission slip because their child wanted to, because his
00:15:40.520friends were going, but they really didn't have a Christian background either.
00:15:46.520We see that very regularly and perhaps more often than not.
00:15:50.840It's possible more than what you just described describes more than half of our students.
00:15:57.700And we hear it so, so often, you know, the stories and they flood in, they truly flood in because now we just eclipsed a thousand schools served over 60,000 students enrolled. And the stories of the child who went home and said, hey, my friend Johnny gets on a big red bus every week. I want to go on the big red bus, you know, and then the children who come home and say, hey, I'm at LifeWise and I'm learning about this.
00:16:25.620why don't we go to church? Why don't we learn more? And we just see story after story of
00:16:31.300families getting reconnected to church. In fact, it's in the documentary, a family that
00:16:37.780the daughter came home and she said, why aren't we talking about God here? And so they started
00:16:42.820going to church. And by the end of the story, there's a family of nine that have all been
00:16:47.540baptized and they're members of the church. And so it's very exciting to see it's normalizing
00:16:54.780faith and faith conversations in schools and communities where it had been marginalized to
00:17:02.100a great degree. You know, you have, you see kids carrying their Bible around because it's one of
00:17:06.760their textbooks. You see those kinds of conversations and you do see families re-engaging.
00:17:11.020Yeah. I heard a story in the documentary that just really touched me about this boy
00:17:15.880who just sat down with one of the volunteers, one of the people working at LifeWise Academy
00:17:21.820me and just kind of broke down and talked about the hard things he had going on at home. He didn't
00:17:26.380think he was going to see his dad again because he was in prison. Just a very unstable home life.
00:17:31.060And it sounds like this is kind of a refuge for a lot of kids too. This is not just a place for,
00:17:36.280you know, like all of the church kids whose families already have it together. This is also
00:17:40.700a place for people who maybe don't know God, they haven't heard the gospel, and who really just need
00:17:46.140a place of stability. It's definitely that. And that's one of the reasons we,
00:17:54.300you know, public educators, when we approach them, sometimes, understandably, there's some
00:17:58.540hesitancy when we come and say, hey, we want to take your kids down the road to the church and
00:18:03.820bring them back. There's a hesitancy. But once programs are up and running, you regularly see
00:18:09.500educators understanding the value and being so thankful and so grateful. And it's in part because
00:18:14.860of what you're saying, that this is a way for the community to really engage kids. And a lot of kids
00:18:20.560who are genuinely hurting kids who maybe don't have the best home life kids who they need more
00:18:27.340and educators are being asked to do more and more these days, you know, and, um, if you get them
00:18:34.200alone, uh, you may hear a public educator, like a superintendent or principal say something like,
00:18:39.360you know, these days it's not enough to educate kids. We have to be their parents as well.
00:18:43.580And this is a practical way to engage the church community to come alongside and provide some of those intangible supports.
00:18:52.760Yeah. And yeah, we see like the story you mentioned just today while I'm sitting in the lobby, I got a message of a story because they come in every day of a girl who tragically her mother just passed away, a LifeWise student and about a conversation she was having with the LifeWise director saying how she is going to, she can tell her father's hurting and she's going to teach her father to pray as she was taught to pray in LifeWise because she thinks it will comfort him.
00:19:21.020And yeah, that type of engagement, we just, we weren't seeing before as part of the school day.
00:28:20.840And then the one that is most dystopian is if we give a child a worksheet, maybe they colored a picture of Moses or something, or a Bible, when they go back to school, it has to be in a sealed envelope, which again, we're not aware of any policy like this for other organizations.
00:28:40.280And so we did not seek to make a big thing of this.
00:28:43.940There is a lawsuit now, but we tried to handle this very quietly.
00:28:46.460So first we just reached out to the school and said, hey guys, you can't, you can't really do this. This is discriminatory. They weren't responsive. And so then we got our friends at First Liberty involved and they sent a letter. Again, we wanted to be quiet to say, hey, we don't want you to have egg on your face. Just, just take it back to the fair policies.
00:29:06.820and the response was what you just heard the school board member what's what's wild is that
00:29:13.440the the letter we sent said we believe you hold animus which you know they're supposed to say no
00:29:20.080we don't and and then he said at a school board meeting into a microphone that he does hold
00:29:24.240animus which you know our first liberty really appreciated that yeah thank you for just going
00:29:29.300ahead and saying that and making our case for us because of course that is the illegal discriminatory
00:29:34.100part of it is that you're not supposed to be showing preferential treatment or animus, right?
00:29:38.940You're supposed to be impartial. That's exactly right. And so we, what do we want? We just want
00:29:43.780the policies to go back to normal. You know, we're just looking to be treated as anybody else would.
00:29:48.380Yeah. And I think people forget, or maybe they just ignore the part that this is completely
00:29:53.800voluntary, that the parents get to decide if they want their child to go to this or not. And I
00:30:00.440really feel like someone like that, as rare as that might be, but he's showing his hand that he
00:30:05.300actually thinks that he knows better than the parents. That's exactly right. And back to your
00:30:10.760point about neutrality, we've often said that that's really all we're, genuine neutrality is
00:30:16.540what we're looking for. To require it, you could say, to require Bible education, you could say
00:30:23.760it's not neutral, but to prohibit it is also not neutral. All we're asking for is that parents
00:30:30.160would have the option to enroll their own child.
00:30:57.900we would love for others to join us in prayer to link arms with us um especially for our local
00:31:04.620leaders um you saw the woman um we have a couple ladies in everett washington sarah and darcy who
00:31:11.640are amazing yeah i mean they are just the best the sweetest the most dynamic um you know cream
00:31:19.360of the crop and but they're in the midst of it fighting through this you know they got kids who
00:31:23.320are signed up that now can't go, or there's all these obstacles in the way. And so that they would
00:31:28.120have perseverance, that they would be encouraged. Pray the same for our team, but also pray for
00:31:34.340those that are opposing us, right? As a team, we always say, the first thing we want to do is pray.
00:31:42.380Next thing we want to do is we want to look in the mirror. If there's opposition, well, yeah,
00:31:45.880are we doing something wrong? Are we not saying things the right way? Could we be more winsome?
00:31:49.500So, um, you could pray that, that we would be reflective and, you know, doing everything we can. And then ultimately we want to pray for our opponents. Like we, this is a spiritual battle. We're not fighting with people. Um, right. You know, this is, um, about truth. And so that we would pray for the hearts of those who, for whatever reason, um, wants to stand in the way of kids having access to the Bible.
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00:33:29.860What do you want people who are outside of your organization, not in public schools?
00:33:34.540Someone like me. I went to a Christian private school, very thankful for that.
00:33:37.860my children are going to get a Christian education. And so there's a lot that we only
00:33:44.380hear secondhand about what's going on in public schools. What do you maybe wish someone like me
00:33:50.200could know or see about these kids and what they're learning from y'all and just the experiences
00:33:56.520they're having? Well, I think someone like you, Allie, that I would like you to know is that 90%
00:34:02.640of kids attend public school. And so I think I would just want to emphasize the great need,
00:34:09.820the great opportunity. So 90% of kids go to public schools, less than 20 regularly attend church.
00:34:15.500And so there is an ocean of students in our nation. In fact, there are 50 million public
00:34:21.820school students in our nation. Those are our future doctors. Those are our future leaders.
00:34:28.960Those are our future community members. And I would ask, can you think of anything more important than reaching them with the word of God?
00:34:40.540And so I would just want the message to get to any of my Christian brothers and sisters and say, there are many important things that we need to do.
00:34:48.920right? And I would say this is up there among them. And to say that it really is a great
00:34:56.360opportunity in that the Word of God is doing what the Word of God always does. As students
00:35:01.560are being exposed to it, it's going to work in their hearts. Kids are coming to faith.
00:35:07.340One of the fun things is that Christian kids are being emboldened, right? They don't feel like0.99
00:35:13.700they have to be on the sidelines anymore, right? They're bringing their Bible, they're engaging
00:35:17.620their friends. And so, yeah, I would just want to put out the invitation to link arms.
00:35:21.880Yeah. What are all of the ways that we can get involved and help, even if we don't have kids
00:35:28.160in the public school district ourselves? Yeah. And I'm a homeschool dad, by the way. I'd say
00:35:34.500that there's a lot of people, private school, homeschool families that are behind this effort,
00:35:40.940because it's a lot of the same worldview issues, worldview convictions that lead one to
00:35:47.460homeschool or private school that lead one to get involved in this movement. And so the ways to get
00:35:51.740involved, the best way is locally, right? I would invite everybody, just find out the status of your
00:35:56.360local school district. We now have at least one signature from more than three quarters of all
00:36:03.100school districts across the nation. And many are gaining, you know, that 50 signatures and beyond.
00:36:08.980So if you can get to our website, find out the status of your local school district. Maybe it's
00:36:12.780just signing your name. Maybe it's spreading the word. Maybe it's sign up to volunteer. And if you
00:36:16.620are a public school family, it's enrolling your student. Yeah. That's awesome. Okay. Tell me
00:36:21.740one, your biggest prayer request for everyone who is listening or watching to pray right now.
00:36:28.040Oh boy. I have to narrow it to one. Um, well, if you, if you have to expand it to two or three,
00:36:36.160it's okay. You can break the rules. Well, I'll, I mean, I'll share the one that I just shared at
00:36:40.280at an event we had over the weekend and that, um, is that we, that we would not drift that we,
00:36:48.560as a ministry, we are committed to the gospel message of Jesus. And we do not want to drift
00:36:57.100from that. And we live in a world where there's always pulse, right? And, and we also live in a
00:37:02.520world where that is the rule is that gospel centered ministries do end up drifting so that
00:37:08.500That we would not drift, and even more so that we would not drift from the Lord himself.
00:37:13.080That as we do grow exponentially, and now we're in 30 some states and however many schools,
00:37:19.620that we would be close to the Lord and close to his heart and that we would be, as Moses said to the Lord,
00:37:29.460if you don't go with us, we don't want to go.