This is the time we wrap all the gifts we collected for the family we are sponsoring. If you haven’t dropped off your donated gifts, feel free to stop by and help us get the gifts ready.
One of our community outreaches we’ve done, really since SHoWLE was founded, is sponsoring a family through the Lucas County Children’s Services. They match us with a family and we donate gifts to help make their holiday season a merry one. Now through December 8th we are collecting gifts. Check out the details below.
Please contact Bev at bevzilla(AT)yahoo.com when you plan to purchase or have purchased an item from the list below so we can avoid duplication. You can drop off gifts anytime and if you plan using an online store like Amazon, you can ship the item directly to Bev 2133 Copley Dr. Toledo 43615.
We will be having a wrap party at Bev’s house (2133 Copley Drive) on Sunday December 8th @ 1 PM. We also need a volunteer who can deliver the gifts to LCCS by Friday Dec. 13th
If you have any questions feel free to reach out to Bev.
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?
SHoWLE enjoyed another Old West End Festival on June 1st and 2nd this year. We had several people join our email list and we talked to many more who stopped by. New this year was a donation collection box and we brought in $9.18.
The Prize Wheel was just as popular with the kids and the young at heart but it did suffer some damage from overnight rain between Saturday and Sunday. We will have it restored and better than ever for the Maumee Summer Fair in August.
SHoWLE wants to thank the volunteers that spent their weekend helping staff the booth — Ed, Michaelene, Anne, and Shawn. We also thank the donors that funded the booth space and much of the swag we handed out this weekend.
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 — The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie condemn the override of the veto of House Bill 68 that will now allow the ban on gender-affirming care and ban on Trans women in school sports to become law.
The majority ignored medical science and the pleas of the Trans community and dismissed their very existence. Several Senators during the vote claimed Trans kids don’t exist and that their God assigned the child’s gender at conception. Rep. Gary Click, in a statement on X called for resources for individuals who regret their transition “as they realign with their authentic selves.” We reject Rep. Click’s call as misguided and tinged with religious bigotry.
We don’t believe that laws and public policy should ignore scientific consensus or be irrationally supported by moral panic. It is clear to us that some legislators believe their religion is above basic human decency and compassion. Bullying children is not a good look.
It was also ironic in the same session the same people who voted to harm Trans kids overrode a veto on a budget item that prohibits local governments from enacting their own regulations on tobacco, particularly bans on the sale of flavored nicotine products, which are typically marketed toward minors.
The action by the Ohio Legislature to force HB 68 into law also denies the right of parents to support their child’s health care needs whatever that maybe.
We hope that the ban is challenged in court and ends up like other similar bans by being ruled unconstitutional.
We will do what we can to support the LGBTQI community during these unwarranted and indefensible attacks from the government.
