Do We Really Need To Teach Young Kids About Human Sacrifice?

Public schools all over the coun­try and espe­cial­ly in Ohio are being invad­ed by a Christian Nationalist group called LifeWise. They claim to be teach­ing char­ac­ter val­ues using Bible sto­ries but in review­ing some of these Bible sto­ries, we have to ask, Do we want to be teach­ing young kids about Human sac­ri­fice for exam­ple?

LifeWise sets up in a local school dis­trict and with parental per­mis­sion take kids off-campus for some Bible learn­ing dis­guised as Character and val­ue edu­ca­tion. They refuse to let the pub­lic review their cur­ricu­lum and is in fact suing some­one who legal­ly obtained a copy and post­ed it online.

Maybe this is why LifeWise refus­es to let peo­ple out­side of LifeWise see their cur­ricu­lum:

In the Elementary cur­ricu­lum, that is not­ed for Kindergarten through 3rd grade, Lesson 8 is about the char­ac­ter trait “sac­ri­fice”. One seg­ment of the les­son talks about God test­ing Abraham. For those who don’t know the sto­ry, God tells Abraham to take his son up into the moun­tain and sac­ri­fice him to show his loy­al­ty to God.

God wants Abraham to mur­der his own son to show much he “loves” God.

Abraham does what God says and takes his son up the moun­tain, builds an alter, and is just about ready to do the deed and an Angel stops him and lets him know that since he was ready to mur­der Isaac he knew he feared God (ie. would do what God Wanted).

Side note: Isaac had no clue his father was pre­pared to mur­der him.

So, not only is LifeWise teach­ing lit­tle kids that human sac­ri­fice can be a good thing as long as it is for God, here is this tid­bit

Example of a LifeWise Lesson about Human Sacrifice

The les­son is to have 2nd and 3rd graders act out the Abraham sto­ry and for the oth­er kids to pro­vide sound effects. Have the kids act out human sac­ri­fice for God? Some kids have issues with what is real and what is not so should we be teach­ing this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry? We don’t think so.

That isn’t the only prob­lem­at­ic sto­ry. Here is a les­son about the trait sub­mis­sion:

Submission means learn­ing to be a good fol­low­er. Instead of doing our own thing, we can do what we are asked. We don’t talk back or demand our way. We choose to “fol­low the leader,” whether that is God, our par­ents, our teach­ers or oth­er good author­i­ties God puts in our lives.

LifeWise Lesson Example

In an iron­ic twist, the title of the les­son is “Jacob’s New Name” and some of the activ­i­ties are kids choos­ing a new name as a game. Yet, Joel Penton, the founder of LifeWise is against kids choos­ing their own name to social­ly tran­si­tion at school. Also LifeWise train­ing doc­u­ments make clear that the order of author­i­ty for chil­dren is God then their Parents.

If this was a sec­u­lar les­son about sub­mis­sion (it would­n’t be called that in the first place), the teacher would also talk about caveats like are you being hurt or ‘has an adult asked you to keep a secret.’ Unlike this Bible sto­ry we don’t teach kids to nev­er ques­tion why an adult or par­ent is ask­ing them to do some­thing. There will be things a kid must do that they don’t want to do — like their home­work or mow­ing the yard, but typ­i­cal­ly they need to “sub­mit” as long as it won’t hurt them in some way that typ­i­cal­ly is ille­gal if uncov­ered.

And what if a child actu­al­ly mur­ders their class­mate and they say they did it because God told them to do it?

LifeWise does­n’t have an answer for that.


If you are inter­est­ed in more infor­ma­tion about the prob­lems with LifeWise, check out our recent episode of Glass City Humanist.

Click on the image for link

Urge Toledo City Council To Mark Day Of Reason

May 4th is the National Day of Reason in 2024 and into the future. One of the ways we have want­ed to mark the occas­sion is to have the city coun­cil issue a res­o­lu­tion mark­ing the day in the city. We weren’t pre­pared for how hard it real­ly is to get it done. That’s why we start­ed a peti­tion.

Back in 2019, SHoWLE reached out to the Mayor of Toledo about issu­ing a procla­ma­tion but his office declined and then the pan­dem­ic hap­pened and our efforts fell by the way­side.

This year we decid­ed to focus on the city coun­cil since they have issued res­o­lu­tions for a whole host of issues with the most recent being demand­ing a cease fire in Gaza. So how hard could it be?

There is no writ­ten for­mal process but in talk­ing to a long time com­mu­ni­ty activist, they sug­gest­ed email­ing the coun­cil pres­i­dent with the request. We did that and heard noth­ing back. Not even a thank you for send­ing this email. After reach­ing out again, the pres­i­dent respond­ed back that our request had been missed and she declined to spon­sor a res­o­lu­tion from us.

A res­o­lu­tion has to be spon­sored by a mem­ber of coun­cil and this being a res­o­lu­tion from a non-religious group to mark a day about rea­son, there were not many coun­cil mem­bers to approach who would wel­come our request. We iden­ti­fied anoth­er coun­cil mem­ber known for their pro­gres­sive stances on the issues and advo­ca­cy for social jus­tice and reached out to them. Never heard back. Again not even an acknowl­edge­ment they got the mes­sage.

In con­sult­ing our com­mu­ni­ty activist friend again, he men­tioned that coun­cil is innudat­ed with requests like ours all the time, they have no for­mal office or staff at city hall, and most times they won’t act on any­thing unless they know cit­i­zens are request­ing it and will back their efforts.

That’s where our peti­tion comes into the pic­ture.

We’ve start­ed a peti­tion with the goal to ask the Toledo City coun­cil to adopt a Day of Reason res­o­lu­tion. The National Day of Reason is May 4th. so it is most like­ly too late this year to get a res­o­lu­tion adopt­ed but we will share the peti­tion with the coun­cil for next year’s Day of Reason. Won’t you help us out?

*Note* We would real­ly like to lim­it the sign­ers to peo­ple who live in the city of Toledo but if you don’t you can still help us out by mak­ing a dona­tion to SHoWLE.

Sign Our Petition Here

Judge Rules Against Catholic Families in Sylvania Bus Dispute

Images of Sylvania school bus

On Tuesday 3/19, Lucas coun­ty Judge Stacy Cook ruled that the Sylvania City School District bus trans­porta­tion plan for stu­dents of non-public schools does­n’t vio­late Ohio law or con­sti­tu­tion.

Back in 2022, a cou­ple of fam­i­lies that send their chil­dren to a catholic school in Sylvania, filed a law­suit because their chil­dren had to be picked up hours before their school start­ed, trans­port­ed with old­er stu­dents, then dropped off at a high school to trans­fer to anoth­er bus, to arrive at their catholic school. The par­ents thought it was unlaw­ful and vio­lat­ed the equal pro­tec­tion and reli­gious free­dom claus­es of the Ohio con­sti­tu­tion.

From the rul­ing:

“The evi­dence sub­mit­ted by plain­tiffs con­sist of sev­er­al affi­davits by the par­ties and a non­par­ty spouse. These affi­davits recite that they choose Catholic edu­ca­tion because of their per­son­al Catholic faith. The affi­davits also recite the var­i­ous incon­ve­niences the Plaintiffs and their chil­dren face because of the District’s trans­porta­tion scheme. However, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have offered no evi­dence of any coer­cive effects on their reli­gious prac­tice: there is no evi­dence that the trans­porta­tion plan has com­pelled Plaintiffs to do any­thing for­bid­den by their reli­gion or that it has caused them to refrain from doing some­thing required by their reli­gion. Plaintiffs have also not offered any evi­dence that the trans­porta­tion plan has com­pelled them to affirm or dis­avow a belief for­bid­den or required by their reli­gion. Accordingly, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have failed to demon­strate any coer­cive effect upon their reli­gious prac­tice. The Plaintiffs have there­fore failed to show that Defendants’ trans­porta­tion plan vio­lates their right to free exer­cise of reli­gion under the Ohio Constitution.

The Court finds against Plaintiffs as to their claim that Defendants’ trans­porta­tion plan vio­lates their right to free exer­cise of reli­gion under the Ohio Constitution. Again, the pre­sump­tion that a leg­isla­tive act is con­sti­tu­tion­al applies to the Board’s trans­porta­tion plan. With this pre­sump­tion the Court finds in favor of Defendants as to Plaintiffs’ free exer­cise claim.”

JENNIFER A SWIECH, et. al., v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE SYLVANIA CITY SCHOOL DIST., et. al.,

Both par­ties had asked for a sum­ma­ry judge­ment since the facts in the case weren’t in dis­pute. In the orig­i­nal law­suit the fam­i­lies asked the court for an injunc­tion to order the school dis­trict to “fix” the trans­porta­tion plan. Judge Cook said the court could­n’t do that, it could only rule if the dis­tric­t’s act was law­ful and not uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

The orig­i­nal law­suit was dis­missed by the par­ents on August 30, 2022. Parents refiled on September 16, 2022 and asked for class action sta­tus and removed all ref­er­ences to the 1st amend­ment to keep it out of Federal court. The class action was nev­er cer­ti­fied.

A lawyer for the fam­i­lies, who was one of the plain­tiffs when the law­suit had been filed in August 2022 but dropped out in September of 2022, stat­ed they were prob­a­bly going to appeal the rul­ing.

Additional infor­ma­tion on this sto­ry is in the Toledo Blade behind a pay­wall. Images of the arti­cle is below.

A Released Time Religious Instruction FAQ is now available

We were con­tact­ed recent­ly by some­one who lives in the Sylvania Public school dis­trict. She said that LifeWise had a pre­sen­ta­tion sched­uled for the next school board meet­ing and want­ed to know if we had any infor­ma­tion about the group.

Released Time Religious Instruction is allowed under Ohio Revised Code 3313.6022. The big take­away is that school dis­tricts aren’t required to adopt RTRI poli­cies.

Other points from the law:

(1) The student’s par­ent or guardian gives writ­ten con­sent.

(2) The spon­sor­ing enti­ty main­tains atten­dance records and makes them avail­able to the school dis­trict the stu­dent attends.

(3) Transportation to and from the place of instruc­tion, includ­ing trans­porta­tion for stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties, is the com­plete respon­si­bil­i­ty of the spon­sor­ing enti­ty, par­ent, guardian, or stu­dent.

(4) The spon­sor­ing enti­ty makes pro­vi­sions for and assumes lia­bil­i­ty for the stu­dent.

(5) No pub­lic funds are expend­ed and no pub­lic school per­son­nel are involved in pro­vid­ing the reli­gious instruc­tion.

(6) The stu­dent assumes respon­si­bil­i­ty for any missed school­work.

LifeWise Academy is a large reli­gious group based in Columbus that works with local groups to install Bible class­es in school dis­tricts. In 2022, LifeWise brought in over $6 mil­lion in dona­tions, enrolls near­ly 30,000 stu­dents from more than 300 schools across more than 12 states. LifeWise has a strong pres­ence in Ohio. LifeWise will be in more than 170 Ohio school dis­tricts by next school year — more than a quar­ter of the state’s school dis­tricts.

LifeWise only teach­es Christianity and only hires Christians to be instruc­tors and staff.

The oth­er issues we have is that chil­dren are being removed from school grounds for an hour more by peo­ple who don’t work for the school dis­trict and who the dis­trict does­n’t vet. The class­es have absolute­ly no con­nec­tion to any­thing being taught in the pub­lic school. It is basi­cal­ly a Sunday school dur­ing the week. LifeWise claims it is teach­ing char­ac­ter val­ues but you can learn those val­ues with­out reli­gion.

We have cre­at­ed a FAQ page about Released Time Religious Instruction with addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about the class­es and LifeWise.

SHoWLE Disappointed By 303 Creative Court Decision

Toledo, July 1, 2023 — The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie are very dis­ap­point­ed in the rul­ing on June 30 by the US Supreme Court in the 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis case. It is wrong that reli­gious beliefs now trump all oth­er rights to full pub­lic busi­ness accom­mo­da­tions and allow dis­crim­i­na­tion of peo­ple in a pro­tect­ed class.

The court said that requir­ing the graph­ic design­er to make wed­ding web­sites for same-sex cou­ples was an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tion of her first amend­ment rights because the cre­ation would be seen as an endorse­ment of some­thing her reli­gious beliefs pro­hib­it.

We don’t believe requir­ing busi­ness own­ers not to dis­crim­i­nate against cus­tomers in pro­tect­ed class­es makes the per­son or busi­ness endorse some­thing against their reli­gious beliefs. At the end of the day they can still not approve of same-sex mar­riages. If a busi­ness can’t bring itself to serve cus­tomers from the pro­tect­ed class­es then they need not be a pub­lic busi­ness.

We are also con­cerned about the unprece­dent­ed pro­tec­tion the court grant­ed to a reli­gious per­son. They ruled on a case that did­n’t include any actu­al harm. The plain­tiff was­n’t cre­at­ing wed­ding web­sites when she filed the law­suit and there is some ques­tion that the LGBT cus­tomer writ­ten about in her case was made up. Secular peo­ple who claim their reli­gious free­dom was vio­lat­ed, like for exam­ple chal­leng­ing 10 Commandment stat­ues on court house lawns, are dis­missed because the mere pres­ence of the reli­gious item or text isn’t an actu­al harm accord­ing to fed­er­al courts.

The plain­tiff agreed in court that she would sell her ser­vices to LGBTQ peo­ple, just not wed­ding web­site designs. So her reli­gious beliefs are not absolute. How does mak­ing a sign for a gay man not also seem to endorse his sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion?

The deci­sion was capri­cious and arbi­trary and gave spe­cial rights to reli­gious peo­ple that are not allowed by any­one else. The Christian Nationalists have been bent on sub­vert­ing decades of church and state legal deci­sions.

The US Supreme Court set back reli­gious free­dom for many years.


For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on this deci­sion see: Supreme Court rules web­site design­er can decline to cre­ate same-sex wed­ding web­sites

About Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie

The mis­sion of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie is to pro­vide a sup­port­ive local com­mu­ni­ty for human­ists and oth­er non­the­ists, while pro­mot­ing an eth­i­cal, rea­son­able, and sec­u­lar approach to life through edu­ca­tion, com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, out­reach, activism, and social events.

We envi­sion a Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan where sec­u­lar peo­ple are respect­ed and inte­grat­ed in broad­er soci­ety, live val­ues of rea­son and com­pas­sion, and enjoy a friend­ly human­ist com­mu­ni­ty.

#

PDF of Statement Available Here

Ohio Attorney General Wrong To Insert State Into Religious School Lawsuit

The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie (SHoWLE) have issued the fol­low­ing state­ment on the brief filed by Ohio Attorney General David Yost in sup­port of a law­suit brought by three reli­gious schools against a Lucas coun­ty pub­lic health order clos­ing all schools in the coun­ty to in-person instruc­tion.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 29, 2020

Ohio Attorney General Wrong To Insert State Into Religious School Lawsuit

Toledo  — The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie (SHoWLE) is extreme­ly dis­ap­point­ed that Ohio Attorney General David Yost has decid­ed to insert him­self and the state into a Federal law­suit by three Lucas County reli­gious schools over the Lucas County Health Board’s order to close all schools in the coun­ty to in-person instruc­tion until January 11, 2021 due to the cur­rent COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Like the orig­i­nal law­suit, Attorney General Yost makes the same argu­ment that was reject­ed by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey J. Helmick on December 14th, that the reli­gious schools should be treat­ed like non-education sec­u­lar busi­ness­es that were allowed to stay open.

Judge Helmick stat­ed in his deci­sion:

“While, as Plaintiffs note, TLCHD has not ordered gyms, tan­ning salons, or casi­nos to close, (Doc. No. 1 at 5–6), these are not the rel­e­vant “com­pa­ra­ble sec­u­lar activ­i­ties.” Instead, the com­pa­ra­ble sec­u­lar activ­i­ties are edu­ca­tion­al class­es offered by all oth­er schools in Lucas County. These spe­cif­ic envi­ron­ments have sub­stan­tial­ly sim­i­lar group­ings and move­ments of indi­vid­u­als. Emmanuel Christian, St. John’s, and Monclova Christian are pro­hib­it­ed from offer­ing in-person instruc­tion to grades 9–12 (or grades 7–12) along with all oth­er Lucas County schools “because the rea­sons for sus­pend­ing in-person instruc­tion apply pre­cise­ly the same to them.””

Judge Helmick also not­ed that if we were to take the school’s argu­ment to the log­i­cal con­clu­sion, the state would not be able to reg­u­late any­thing involved with a reli­gious group.

“Plaintiffs’ argu­ments, there­fore, would extend to pro­hib­it the gov­ern­ment from reg­u­lat­ing any aspect of a Christian’s pub­lic life because, as Plaintiffs’ mis­sion state­ments make clear, the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing “a bib­li­cal foun­da­tion for … stu­dents” is to pre­pare stu­dents “to exem­pli­fy Christ [and] make Biblically-based deci­sions” through­out an indi­vid­u­al’s life, and not only dur­ing the schools years. Thus, a Christian busi­ness would be exempt from min­i­mum wage and max­i­mum hour laws,9 while Christians in states where offi­cials have issued Covid-19-related orders clos­ing restau­rants for in-person din­ing could not be pro­hib­it­ed from gath­er­ing to share a meal in one of those restaurants.10

More close­ly to the issue at stake in this case, Plaintiffs’ argu­ments would mean States could not man­date that stu­dents attend­ing parochial schools receive the equiv­a­lent num­ber of hours required of public-school stu­dents or require that parochial schools pro­vide cours­es in spe­cif­ic sub­jects.”

The law­suit, instead of try­ing to pro­tect the right of the schools to be treat­ed equal­ly, is try­ing to force the coun­ty to treat reli­gious schools dif­fer­ent­ly than oth­er schools that have com­plied with the order. They want a court to force the coun­ty to give them pref­er­en­tial treat­ment just because they are reli­gious.

This is the com­plete oppo­site mean­ing of the 1st amend­ment which is meant to keep reli­gious activ­i­ties from being sin­gled out by the gov­ern­ment for being reli­gious.

“The fact remains, right­ly or wrong­ly, that the Lucas County pub­lic health order specif­i­cal­ly exempts in-person reli­gious activ­i­ties,” SHoWLE pres­i­dent Douglas Berger said. “We believe that church­es and reli­gious groups, includ­ing reli­gious schools, should put the long-term health of their mem­bers above the need to gath­er togeth­er for their reli­gious activ­i­ties since those activ­i­ties aren’t restrict­ed to hap­pen­ing out­side the home. It is for this rea­son the pub­lic health order, that explic­it­ly exempts reli­gious activ­i­ties of the schools, isn’t an undue bur­den on them.”

It appears that Attorney General Yost has decid­ed, after claim­ing he would defend state pub­lic health orders, and against the facts of the case, that pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for reli­gious schools is in the state’s best inter­ests.

We strong­ly dis­agree with his deci­sion to insert the state in this case with his brief to the court.


Reference:

Ohio AG files brief sup­port­ing reli­gious schools’ return to in-person instruc­tion

Monclova Christian Academy et al v. Toledo-Lucas County Health Department 12/14/2020

SHoWLE President Douglas Berger dis­cussed this case in Episode 16 of the Glass City Humanist pod­cast start­ing at the 08:34 mark.


About Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie

The mis­sion of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie is to pro­vide a sup­port­ive local com­mu­ni­ty for human­ists and oth­er non­the­ists, while pro­mot­ing an eth­i­cal, rea­son­able, and sec­u­lar approach to life through edu­ca­tion, com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, out­reach, activism, and social events.

We envi­sion a Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan where sec­u­lar peo­ple are respect­ed and inte­grat­ed in broad­er soci­ety, live val­ues of rea­son and com­pas­sion, and enjoy a friend­ly human­ist com­mu­ni­ty.

*Update* - On December 31, a three judge pan­el of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals grant­ed an injunc­tion to the schools against the pub­lic health order pend­ing an appeal hear­ing.

Pastor Protection Act Not Needed And Wrong For Ohio

Testimony giv­en to Ohio Senate com­mit­tee

TOLEDO, November 28, 2018 — Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie (SHoWLE) sub­mit­ted writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny oppos­ing Ohio House Bill 36, also known as the “Pastor Protection Act”. The bill would repeat 1st amend­ment pro­tec­tion giv­en to faith prac­ti­tion­ers but would also allow reli­gious groups to avoid pub­lic accom­mo­da­tion laws even if a prop­er­ty is used for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es.

This is a very dan­ger­ous change in our civ­il rights,” SHoWLE President Douglas Berger stat­ed in writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny sub­mit­ted to the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee today. “This bill would allow reli­gious groups to dis­crim­i­nate against ANYONE that they feel doesn’t con­form to their reli­gious beliefs. Do we want to see a church food pantry turn­ing away a needy fam­i­ly because they are Mormon, since this par­tic­u­lar church doesn’t believe Mormons are Christians?

Churches and prop­er­ty owned by reli­gious groups aren’t nor­mal­ly required to fol­low state or fed­er­al pub­lic accom­mo­da­tion laws when used explic­it­ly for reli­gious pur­pos­es. House Bill 36 does­n’t make such a dis­tinc­tion. The bill as writ­ten also would­n’t just affect same-sex cou­ples. A pas­tor per­form­ing wed­dings at the court house for a fee could decide not to sol­em­nize a mar­riage because the cou­ple in ques­tion are mem­bers of the mil­i­tary or a church fel­low­ship hall might require renters to only allow straight peo­ple to attend the event.

Religious free­dom should be a shield to pro­tect peo­ple from per­se­cu­tion and not a sword to give spe­cial rights to a favored group that ends up per­se­cut­ing peo­ple not in that favored group, ” Berger wrote.

This bill is a waste of time and tax­pay­er mon­ey for a prob­lem that doesn’t and will nev­er exist. Instead we would like to see the leg­is­la­ture work to make per­form­ing mar­riages more acces­si­ble by con­sid­er­ing and pass­ing Senate Bill 52 that also amends 3101.08 to allow any­one who reg­is­ters with the state to sol­em­nize a mar­riage.

A pas­tor or priest will nev­er be forced to per­form a cer­e­mo­ny that does­n’t con­form to their deeply held reli­gious beliefs but HB 36 is being used to dis­crim­i­nate against those who don’t con­form to the favored reli­gion — name­ly LGBTQ peo­ple but the vague­ness of the law will allow all kinds of dis­crim­i­na­tion — with the force of the state.

The Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee is meet­ing this week and the hear­ing for oppo­nents of the bill is Thursday with a pos­si­ble com­mit­tee vote fol­low­ing.

It’s say­ing some­thing when the major­i­ty par­ty is rush­ing to pro­tect pas­tors and priests from some­thing that will nev­er hap­pen while they con­tin­ue to ignore help­ing the vic­tims of cler­gy abuse,” Berger said.

While SHoWLE does­n’t believe a pas­tor or priest should be forced to do some­thing that vio­lates the 1st amend­ment, reli­gious groups should­n’t be allowed to arbi­trar­i­ly dis­crim­i­nate in the use of prop­er­ty it owns not being used for strict­ly reli­gious pur­pos­es.

Link to the  full writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny

About SHoWLE

The mis­sion of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie is to pro­vide a sup­port­ive local com­mu­ni­ty for human­ists and oth­er non­the­ists, while pro­mot­ing an eth­i­cal, rea­son­able, and sec­u­lar approach to life through edu­ca­tion, com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, out­reach, activism, and social events.

SHoWLE meets on the 2nd Saturday of each month and all gen­er­al meet­ings are free and open to the pub­lic. The web­site is humanistswle.org

Media Contacts

Douglas Berger — President
567–302-0209

Shawn Meagley — co-Founder
419–266-7945

###