The political situation in this country is in flux and people might not know where to put their energy since there is so much going on. SHoWLE President Doug Berger will host a zoom call about what you can do in these trying times. He will focus on church and state issues such as more anti-abortion actions in the state legislature, the continued disruption of public schools from vouchers and Lifewise, challenges in the Toledo area, and national concerns like the recent anti-atheist NSPM‑7 memo that President Trump issued.
This call will be open to anyone who wants to support real religious freedom and civil rights.
Join our book club. Unlike most book clubs, we don’t name a book all should read to discuss later. Come to the club to share with us a book you are reading now or have read and tell us why we should read it. You can also share any interesting newspaper or magazine articles you’ve read.
Most of you know we have been focused on the growth of Lifewise Academy and the inherent problems it creates for our public schools. President Doug Berger has been working for a few months with a team made up of a cross-section of people concerned with Lifewise. It was led and hosted by Honesty for Ohio Education and on August 29th they released a tool-kit and other information the public can use to limit or eliminate the damage done by Lifewise.
For those new to the issue, Lifewise is a Released Time Religious Instruction (RTRI) program that, with parental permission, removes kids from their public school and takes them off-campus to a Bible school class during the school day.
This is a problem on many levels. Lifewise refuses to have their program before or after school, they have used friends in the state legislature to strong arm districts who won’t let them operate, and the program is less than transparent in their operations.
The tool-kit goes over in more detail all the issues with the Lifewise program.
SHoWLE opposes RTRI on church and state grounds and would love for districts not to have a policy at all. But we have been working with the Honesty team to come up with some solutions that protect the school districts and the children involved. These protections are missing from the state law Lifewise is abusing. The tool-kit includes a model policy that districts should adopt or use to revise their current policy if they have one.
Honesty and SHoWLE oppose HB 445 and SB 293 which would require school districts to have an RTRI policy but would not address the serious issues raised about Lifewise.
Our President Doug Berger got to help make the presentation on the 29th and here is a copy of the remarks he planned to make but due to time constraints was not able to speak from them entirely.
My name is Douglas Berger and I am the founder and president of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie. I have been following this issue since 2014 when the law that Lifewise is abusing was passed in the Ohio Legislature. Ohio Revised Code 3313.6022 was never intended to be used to allow the mass movement of public school children from the school to a Bible class in the middle of their school day. The law was intended to give high school students the chance to gain course credit for religious classes they might attend during the day in addition to their regular course work. The law sat on the books for almost 10 years before Lifewise came into existence and abused the law for their own ends.
Released time has been part of the fabric of the public school since the US Supreme Court case Zorach v Clauson was decided in 1952. All schools have policies now that allow for students to be taken out of school by parents for religious reasons. I know from my own history that some of my classmates would leave school to participate in Ash Wednesday mass and return to school with ash on their forehead. I also know that some rural Hancock county schools, my home county, have had RTRI programs since the 1970s. This is a common occurrence.
The issue isn’t Released time but the abuse of it by Lifewise and any program that refuses to operate before or after school as has been done for more than 50 years by other operators who actually respect the public schools in which they exist.
Lifewise stated goal is to convert children to their brand of Christianity and to turn the public schools into religious schools.
I am a taxpayer and firm supporter of the public schools. The use of released time in the middle of the school day hurts the education of not only the kids who attend the program but the kids who are left behind.
I also have major concerns with how Lifewise operates and I know that some have problems with the theology they teach which they refuse to freely share with anyone. They are known to bully districts that don’t cooperate or to use “friends” in state and local government to lean on them. There are now two bills in the legislature, one in the House is HB 445 and the one in the Senate is SB 293 that would force school districts to adopt policies under ORC 3313.6022 — which wouldn’t contain any guardrails to protect children. That is what Lifewise wants so they can get around local districts who value all students education more than the religious beliefs of a few.
Let me restate that Lifewise doesn’t need the law to operate. They could start up a new program in any district today but they want the state to force all districts in Ohio to allow them to operate during the school day. If a district refuses to allow Lifewise to interrupt the school day it isn’t violating a parent’s 1st amendment right to guide the education of their children. They can always put the student in private school or in a program that operates before or after school.
I don’t care that Lifewise is Christian and I wouldn’t care about the religion or non-religion of a program that wants to disrupt a school day. I would still oppose the disruption.
I urge everyone to ask some serious questions if your district has a Lifewise program or if they are planning on coming to your district. Work with your school board to install the guardrails missing from Ohio’s Released Time law to protect your children and your school district. Some of those guardrails are mentioned in the toolkit and also talk to your legislator about this issue and convince them why guardrails are needed and why this needs to be left up to the individual school districts.
Thank you
For more information about this issue and to view and download the took-kit visit:
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?
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?
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.”
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Toledo, December 20, 2019 — The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie (SHoWLE) are concerned about the recent legal issues involving 14 Amish households in Lenawee County Michigan.
