LifeWise Academy: The Project 2025 Connected Religious Release Program in Public Schools
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Brad interviews activist and parent Natalie Hastings, LifeWise Academy, a religious release program in public schools that takes children out of their school day for Bible study. Hastings provides insights into the program's growth, its impact on students, and its connections to larger political movements such as Project 2025. The discussion highlights concerns about the program's effects on school resources, inclusion, mental health, and the push for policies mandating such programs in different states.
Natalie Hastings is a public school parent who began tracking the efforts of national extremism on public schools when her own district elected four new board members who promised to “fight CRT,” canceled an opt-in Racial Diversity Awareness Day, and passed a “Culture of Kindness” resolution to restrict teaching and discussions on race, gender identity, and inclusion. She educates and activates local communities to protect the rights of every student through Honesty for Ohio Education, an alliance of 70+ nonprofit organizations and its Honesty Teams Network, a partner in HEAL Together Race Forward’s #PublicSchoolStrong initiative. Hastings also manages research for Ohioans Against Extremism, (OHAgainstExtremism.org) a new website launching in August 2024.
Other links:
Policy across the US: www.schoolministries.org
Parents Against LifeWise
respectpublicschools.com
00:00 Introduction to LifeWise and Personal Journey
01:07 Overview of LifeWise Program
02:44 Interview with Natalie Hastings
03:38 How LifeWise Operates
05:38 Challenges and Controversies
07:45 Expansion and Legislative Push
30:51 Connections to Project 2025
39:26 Community Response and Resistance
47:41 Conclusion and Subscriber Segment
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Axis Mundy So I was a stay-at-home mom at the time when LifeWives is just getting started here in Jonathan Alder.
But I'd had previous teaching experience.
And so somebody from the steering committee reached out to me and asked if I'd like to be involved in some way.
And I had never heard of LifeWise.
We met for coffee.
She told me about the program, and I was all in.
I said, absolutely.
Whatever it takes, I want to be involved.
We're wrapping up my second year of teaching for LifeWise, and so it's been really fun to see the growth we have.
We are over 300 students this year, which is just amazing.
We're not a huge district.
And so seeing the growth, but really also seeing the excitement, really, among the ones that are coming.
As we're finishing up the year, I've had to say goodbye to some of my students this week.
And there's tears, and there's, what are we going to do all summer without LifeWise?
And having done our review lesson, it amazes me.
They're just sponges.
They soak it up.
And they're all telling me they're going to read their Bibles this summer.
And it's amazing to see the way that they are.
It's really transforming children.
Today I speak to Natalie Hastings about LifeWise, a program that takes children out of their normal school day so that they can attend Bible study and learn about Christian teaching.
And it's one of those things that perhaps appears to be harmless, and yet once you dig in and think about it, you realize the insidious force it is in our public school system.
LifeWise takes resources and attention away from public school curricula.
It takes kids out of their normal school day.
And it treats certain school subjects as non-essential and to be done away with in favor of kids going off to non-vetted teachers without credentials to learn about a religious text.
And I should mention, it's connected to Project 2025.
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Welcome, y'all.
Natalie, thanks for joining me.
Thanks for having me.
It's great to talk to you.
It's great to talk to you for a number of reasons.
One is you're an organizer and I just love talking to people on the ground who are on the grassroots working in local places and working in locales where the New York Times is not always paying attention and the mainstream national media is not always laser focused.
Two, you're somebody who like is part of our Straight White American Jesus community.
I get to talk to you on Discord.
You are a tireless advocate for so many amazing things, especially related to education.
So it's especially a treat to get to talk to somebody who I see in the Discord server all the time, talking to other folks who are part of this community and talking to me.
And I don't know, it's just really neat.
We're here to talk about LifeWise.
Let me ask you just a very basic question to start.
What is LifeWise and How does it work?
Life Wise Academy is based in Ohio, in Hilliard, Ohio, which is a suburb of Columbus.
And it's a religious release program that, with permission from parents,
takes kids during the public school day to another building, sometimes it's a church, sometimes it's purpose-built to serve LifeWise, and they provide a 40-minute to 55-minute Bible school lesson or Sunday school lesson, if you will, and then transport the kids back to their public school.
Do they do this?
So I had this when I was in growing up in Southern California.
We definitely had these programs.
Do they do this at lunchtime or is this actually part of the school day minutes and hours you're supposed to be sitting in instruction?
It depends on the individual school district when it takes place.
They talk a lot about lunch and recess.
However, because if you only do the program at lunch and recess, you can't serve as many school.
And also, in some districts, maybe they've had funding cuts.
Maybe it's a rural area and the church is really closely aligned with the public school.
And so, in those cases and some others, LifeWise operates During what some might call non-core classes or encores or specials.
And those are things like physical education, arts, music, library.
Things that I consider core to the school day and they were core to my school day, but aren't necessarily considered core depending on the school.
It's amazing when you listen to Sarah Huckabee Sanders say that Arkansas is getting back to basics when it comes to education, and then they're like, at least whether it's life-wise, those things that we want to cut, we'll just do Bible at that point.
It's just amazing to hear on one side of the mouth, some people being like, let's get back to basics.
An hour of the day is spent like, oh, if you want to go to Bible study, go ahead.
You don't need to do like P.E.
today, or art, or who needs any of that?
I mean, that's incredible.
We've had release time religious education in the country for generations.
What inspired LifeWise?
Like, why this new iteration of this old trend?
In the case of LifeWise, the origin story is that
The founder, Joel Penton, was back in his hometown of Van Wert, Ohio, which is a conservative town to this day, and that he visited the religious release program there in Van Wert, which I believe is called Across on the Hill, and he had sort of an epiphany that he wanted to make this program available nationwide.
And he wrote a book called During School Hours, where he discusses this origin, this inspiration.
And he mentions that 90% of kids go to public schools, but 90% of kids don't go to church.
And so it's an opportunity to reach people for the gospel.
So how does this get going in a school district?
What's the process?
You can't just show up, I don't think, I hope, at a school or a school district with your Bible curriculum and say, hey, give us the kids for 45 minutes.
No problem.
We have candy in a van.
That doesn't sound very legit.
So how do you get this legitimized in a school district?
Well, in Joel's book, he makes reference to, we have to McDonald this thing.
If you see one of their buses or their logo, it's even red and yellow like McDonald.
And so the way that I think of it is sort of like,
A church planting program, or someone referred to it as like Beachbody coaching, where if you sign up for a community interest list for your school district, which you can find on their website, nearly every school district is there nationwide, and you can sign on to an existing list if there isn't one, or you can create a community interest list.
And they begin to collect signatures, and those signatures represent people that they will go back to to start to fundraise and to create a steering committee, which exists of three people.
And I believe, ideally, they prefer leaders from three different churches.
So you have a steering committee.
You've got three different folks.
They're coming from, let's say, the Baptist Church, the Non-Denominational Omega Church, and the Bible Church.
And they've raised the 500 bucks, which is going to cover materials and all the curriculum from LifeWise.
So we've got that in place.
And they get a plan going.
Now, what do they do now?
They go to the school district?
Do they go to the superintendent?
How does it work from there?
What I've heard and experienced as far as talking to folks at individual school district level where this is happening is that it depends.
So it depends on whether the superintendent is someone who they believe will be Very open to the program, or they might wait until there are new school board members who have been elected and who they think will be favorable to having a LifeWise in their school.
So in one example, through a public records request, there was a school in Ohio in which There's a back and forth where LifeWise is sort of like, who's going to show their cards first?
So it's the superintendent saying, I'm not going to sign anything to approve LifeWise yet until you give more information about the exact plan.
And on the life-wise side, as far as what I read in these public records, it sounds like, well, you need to tell us what you will allow so that we can form fit it into what would be allowable.
Got it.
So they're really working to kind of, A, figure out if the person in office or in the position is going to be favorable for this.
And then they're basically saying, we'll write up our proposal in a manner that is likely to gain approval, it sounds like to me.
Yes.
And a little bit I should have mentioned.
In Ohio and in many states, if you go to schoolministries.org, you can look up every state.
There either is or is not a policy in their board docs or whichever system they use outlining every policy that's voted on by the school board that allows for this release time.
So, where you went to school, if it was public, assume it was public, they obviously had a policy in place that allowed students to leave during the school day for religious instruction.
And so, in Ohio and in several other states, right now, the state code says schools may have a policy, but they're not required to.
In the places where there is a policy, that is usually where LifeWise would start, because they know that there's already an existing policy in place that technically would or should allow the program.
So it seems, and I've seen this in materials that we've talked about, There's a push at state legislatures in Ohio and in other states for a bill that would require school districts to allow for release time religious education, not leave it up to their discretion.
In essence, they're saying you have to let kids out at lunchtime to go to a religious education that is available per policy.
And that's going to be a state law.
Am I, I mean, do I have those details right?
In Ohio, and in other states, they have these protections in the code, yes, that say that religious instruction should not be during core classes.
But there is this leeway with where you may have a policy.
And in Indiana, and in Ohio, and most likely other places, they were getting pushback.
LifeWise programs were getting pushback.
And so I wasn't, of course, I wasn't in the room but...
It seems like after the big push for LifeWise, which began about 18 months ago, in earnest, as districts were saying, like, hey, wait, is this something that we want?
We're having problems catching kids up from COVID.
We're, literacy issues, what have you.
We may not want this right now.
Well, if the state legislature requires you to, it's a whole different ballgame.
Yeah.
And in Indiana was the first that I was aware of.
They introduced, I believe, at the beginning of the year.
So there was pushback maybe last summer.
And in Indiana, they coupled their Bill 1137 with this changing the word may to shall, a one-word change.
In Indiana, there's a little more to it, but in general, they're targeting states that right now say you may have a program and changing it to districts shall have a program, which of course takes away some of the power.
And depending on where you are, In your community, this may or may not be something that people would want, etc.
But in Indiana, this was when a little flag went off in my head.
They coupled it with these bills that are saying that pastors And because of where I had seen those bills go, what I've been paying attention to in Texas, etc., that set off a little alarm bell for me.
And it was around that time that in Ohio, where I work with school districts just in general on protecting public education, I started hearing people say, what's the deal with live flies?
And so where my kids go to school, we don't have Wi-Fis.
So this was hearing about it from other folks.
And then, what's this?
What's the deal?
So I think something that is very clear right now is you just connected this to a much bigger movement.
So somebody listening might have said, OK, this sounds like a kind of local initiative for Ohio schools.
And I know that the founder is planning, Penton is planning on On going to Missouri and to Florida and to many other states.
And they're already, life vices are already sprouting up on other corners of the country.
But somebody listening might have thought, oh, a local initiative for this kind of release time religious education.
It's bad news.
This sounds like a small story, but you just hinted at something that really connects it to bigger trends across the country, which is in Oklahoma and in Texas, there have been these proposals to allow school chaplains Excuse me.
Chaplains in schools to replace counselors, to replace others.
And so basically a chaplain can come in and start counseling students, even though that chaplain is not trained in psychology, has no degree, no license, no nothing.
And now you're telling me we have this release time religious education.
So we have these like religious leaders hanging around schools already.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's LifeWise is selling itself as a solution to student mental health crises and suicide rates.
They're also saying they they're needed because kids play sports on Sundays now and they can't go to church because they got to go to soccer.
But if you could connect us to how LifeWise sells itself to this whole idea of a school chaplain hanging around and counseling kids.
Well, and just to throw out a caveat of, I do believe on the local level, there are churches, I'm a Christian, that there are churches that earnestly see this as the solution for their community.
So I don't want to connect every single individual to the movement, but looking at it as this larger organization and who they associate with, Sort of how Dan talks about it's in the code, right?
So some of these code words and some of the code words that I see related to articles about lifelines or how they're promoting solutions.
It's Christian worldview.
So we want to, you know, ensure that our kids have a Christian worldview.
We're about character education, and we're successful because it's not just a head change, but it's a heart change.
And just the entire the religious freedom concept.
What some people have found in the case of LifeWise though is religious freedom doesn't always look the same.
Some experiences that I've heard related to there's a Jewish child who obviously isn't going to the program but it's in their school and them feeling left out.
In a LifeWise related I believe it was a radio interview.
The founder, Joel Penton, references a Muslim child who was going to the program.
And then based on what Penton said, it appeared that they didn't have a permission slip, that this child had not gotten a parent permission slip.
And in this case, the parents decided, you know what, okay, you can still go.
However, if you multiply that by You know, how many of our 500,000 schoolchildren that becomes can replicate quickly and create other issues.
Well, it just becomes one more of these instances where if you're in a school district where 60, 80% of the students are Christian in some form, and a bunch of them are going to this class, whether it's at lunch or whether it's during art, and you're the one kid stuck in art or stuck in P.E.
because everyone else is off at LifeWise having a pizza party and learning about David and Goliath, You're that Muslim kid who feels left out once again.
You feel like you're not in the majority once again.
You feel like you're not part of the group once again.
And so there's this sense of, hey, I want to go to that.
And you forge your mom's signature.
You do whatever you have to do.
It just it points to the ways this ripples down on the real world level.
Let me play devil's advocate for one second and say, well, all right, these kids, these are Christian kids.
They want to go learn about the book of Matthew during lunch.
What's the big deal?
What would you say to that kind of line of argumentation?
Like, what's the problem with having this released time religious education in public schools?
Some of the concerns that I've heard from teachers whose schools have this program or parents, etc., are that it can be distracting.
Imagine Even if it was going to something that's really boring for an hour during the school day, it takes a while to get kids back on track.
And I believe this was in the Ohio testimony.
Someone referenced about cell phones and how cell phones are really distracting.
And there's a statistic about how much time it takes if you're pinged by your phone in school before you're back on track.
Imagine kids coming back and some places it's like 85% of students participate and so even if it were a message that you 100% align with, it just can be distracting during the day.
Also, The background checks for LifeWise teachers and volunteers, while I'm not here to say I trust people I go to church with, and some of these are small towns, but the background checks are not as thorough as like school teachers.
And just another aspect is, as a Christian, This is the Gospel Project curriculum, so they have a special license through the Gospel Project to do these lessons.
I grew up United Methodist.
Right now I'm an ELCA Lutheran, but Southern Baptist Convention is not the values that I align with.
And so even some of the churches, they may not dig into the curriculum.
A small-town pastor doesn't have time to do that, right?
Those are some of the concerns.
I could, from Discord, I could share.
But once again, I think what we have here is the Gospel Project is a, I'm familiar with it, I mentioned it in my book, their lesson on the story of Jericho, for example, right?
Totally whitewashes the violence and the attempt at genocide, and it's all about God's people trusting God to do miracles for them.
Okay, great.
My point here, though, is as you're saying, you're getting one understanding of the Bible from one particular outlet that comes from one denomination.
And so in small towns, in places where there's 5,000 people, 10, 20, 50,000 people, Are you really going to have outside the school every day at lunch a release time religious education where there's, here's the Episcopalians, here's the Muslims, here's the Buddhists, here's the humanists.
You're not.
We all know you're going to have that one program life-wise, and that's the only one that's going to be on offer.
I also have a feeling, and I'm happy for you to fill me out, fill out the picture here, is There's probably a lot of pressure.
There's probably training going on for kids who go to LifeWise to recruit other kids to go and prizes for being successful and getting them there.
Am I on target with that?
Yes, there are recruiting efforts, I guess we could call it.
There is a video that I can share with you where a LifeWise teacher references creating business cards for the kids to take back to school.
And these are the things I talk about that can be disrupted.
Business card back to school and he gave them a recruiting goal with the reward of an ice cream party.
In November, early November, about 50% of the kids coming.
It really bugged me.
So, uh, what we came up with was an idea of, uh, student business cards.
I told the kids, I said, these are your own personal cards, and I want you to take the cards to a friend.
I also had my ice cream hat on at the same time, and I had my ice cream scoop, because I know kids love food, especially ice cream.
I said, I'll tell you what I'll do.
If you can get 90 kids to come, I'll give you an ice cream party.
And boy, that got their attention.
They were interested right now.
Now, you might call that bribery, but, you know, it works.
And if it were something that was happening after school, even Good News Club, which I know is controversial in some areas, that would be different.
But we're talking about kids feeling like, if I don't go, just like my kids' school would have coin wars, raising money for the PTA.
And it was like, well, if I don't turn in enough coins, then my grade might not win, and I'm responsible for my grade not winning.
So beyond the othering of maybe you have a different religious background and your parents won't let you go to this thing that looks fun, it's also this sense of they're depending on me to get to have their fun activity.
And that's, as we talked about, if there's a mental health crisis, then in my opinion, the last thing you want to do is make kids feel like they are disappointing us.
Well, and if this is about mental health, let's just play it out.
It's like, all right, we're going to solve the mental health crisis by bringing in people who you just said whose background checks are much less extensive than teachers and other school officials.
So they're the ones in charge.
They're going to teach curriculum that has a theology that says, if you die without going, if you die without accepting Jesus, you will go to hell.
And then we're going to pressure kids with pizza parties and other ice cream prizes in order to get everyone to go.
I'm just here to say, if your concern is mental health, that would not be my first way to solve that crisis.
Inviting kids into a release on religious education setting where they're told they're going to go to hell if they don't have Jesus, and they're being taken away from the school officials who may have the actual training to reckon with mental health crises and developmental issues.
So I think that's worth noting.
I also just think, look, let's just not overlook the fact that I'm going to give you an aside here, Natalie, and I hope you don't mind, but I remember when I moved to France, when I was in my early in my careers for like research purposes, and I realized that like when you're 16 and 17 in France, there's a very good chance you're taking a philosophy class at high school.
And I was like, how does that work?
And I realized over time that philosophy was just sort of part of the national French ethos that learning basic philosophy, René Descartes and Immanuel Kant, was just sort of part of what they thought everyone should learn.
It was a value.
Here's the word I'm going to use.
It was a value.
Now, am I here to say every kid in the United States should be learning GWF Hegel?
No, I don't care.
What I do care about, though, is Here we have art class.
We have the like 45 minutes a day.
You get to be doing art.
You get to be creative.
You get to to like kind of explore that side of you.
And you don't go because all the cool kids are off at Bible class eating pizza.
So what's the value here of our education?
What are the things that we prioritize?
It's not physical health.
Which is a big part of mental health.
It's not creativity.
Also a big part of mental health.
It's get in there and learn about how you might be going to hell without Jesus.
That's maybe a little harsh, but that's kind of how I'm thinking about it at the moment.
I've researched extremists and how they're working in public education.
And last night I was reading something about how the problem is Schools are no longer teaching critical thinking.
And so when you said that about talking about art, it's in some of those, we'll call them specials in some cases, where kids are learning some of these other ways to problem solve, ways to collaborate.
And I've seen some of the LifeWise skits.
They promote them on their Facebook page for the program.
And not to say that they're not creating art or collaborating, but it's different.
It's not a teacher who is trained to open your mind with a new way of thinking about art, thinking about dimension, depth.
Personally for me, art was a way that I realized, okay, Symbols.
I studied art history in college because Christian imagery, iconography, what does all this mean and how has it influenced our culture?
And we're just, we're taking away other ways for kids to learn about themselves and how to be successful.
And the few resources that we have in our schools for those things.
So I just think that's something that I could, for me, I'm, I have ADHD.
I have, I'm neurodivergent.
And so without PE, I don't know what my mental health would have been because that 45 minutes of running around and doing exercise.
Was such a big part of me actually being somewhat successful in school.
Anyway, I could talk about this for a long time.
I want to ask a quick question and then I want to go to the, the kind of like folks who are promoting LifeWise and they're going to be, there's going to be some, some real like red light moments here for people.
Is it true that in Ohio you can get high school, high school credit, you can get credit for your high school degree by going to LifeWise?
Is that true?
In Van Wert, what I've read is that in Van Wert, they partner with Ohio Christian University and have a high school class for which you can get credit.
I haven't seen that as much with LifeWise yet, as far as them popping up with a lot of high school curriculum, but it seems like it's more where you start with, if you're starting a new school, first you do first grade, then second, then third.
So it seems like it's building up to that.
All right, friends, if you're listening now, you've heard us talk about what I think both Natalie and I agree is a pretty insidious kind of program.
At least this is me.
I won't put words in your mouth, Natalie.
I think it's an insidious program that takes away from educational resources, that in many ways imposes religion on people, even if it does not seem like it does.
I think there's an argument to be made that this is the imposition of religion on school-age children in various ways.
But if you've sort of been sleepwalking here for some reason and you've been walking the dog and you've been distracted, I need you to wake up because a lot of folks who are affiliated with and part of the design of Project 2025, yes, that Project 2025, the one that Donald Trump is distancing himself and is all over the news and every big outlet is talking about from John Oliver to wherever, that Project 2025 that we've been covering for months now, Is connected to LifeWise.
So I'm going to leave it to you, Natalie.
Give us some of the connections between LifeWise and Project 2025.
LifeWise Academy has connections to several groups that are either aligned with Project 2025 via how these organizations have promoted the program.
In some cases, it's related to their funding.
And in some cases, it's related to, appears to be connected to groups that are lobbying for state policy.
Some of the places where LifeWise is being promoted have been Heritage Foundation's Daily Collar Podcast.
And Media Matters even covered that.
And also the Family Research Council's Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.
I believe he's been on that one, Joel Penton, several times.
And it gets promoted in Moms for Liberty groups, like Facebook groups, and the like.
And The LifeWise Founders I thought was just noteworthy, could be nothing.
But their Founders Weekend recently was in Naples, Florida, which set off an alarm bell for me.
As far as promoting... Why was that an alarm bell?
Tell us why.
At least in Ohio, a lot of the — we have a supermajority.
In Ohio's supermajority of Republicans, there is an active effort to have a ballot initiative this fall that is — the focus is to end gerrymandering.
It's actually the first one that's passed, but they're redoing it to see if this time it sticks.
And so a lot of these folks seem to connect in Naples and given its proximity to other groups in Florida and extremists, that was of note for me.
Some of the places that are promoting the LifeWise curriculum or concept, one that really stands out is the Noah Webster Educational Foundation.
They are a partner, according to the Project 2025 website, and they're out of Roanoke.
The best way that I think I could describe it is they appear to be one of the arms of Glenn Youngkin's parents' rights movement.
They are affiliated with the Leadership Institute.
And they held a school board policy summit that included several groups that are linked to extremism and folks that are involved in Project 2025.
The BEST is a school board training program by FreedomWorks that you may not have heard of, but is training.
It's one of several, actually, extremism programs that are training school board members on how to How to push this agenda on the local school board level.
One of the groups that was involved with Noah Webster also is the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, which is a member of State Policy Network, and according to an article I read on them, they have ties to ALEC, the Koch Foundation, Heritage Foundation, and have been involved in The school choice movement and climate change denial, among others.
Their summit also included a former vice president for the Center of Education Reform.
And a panelist who stood out to me is Meg Kilgannon.
Meg is a senior fellow for education studies at Family Research Council, which of course is a Project 2025 partner.
And she served in the U.S.
Department of Education under Betsy DeVos as the Director of the Office of Faith and Opportunity Initiatives.
Her focus she described as Bill's opposing the teaching of critical race theory and protecting students from gender identity, ideology, and oversight of libraries, etc.
She self-described as a culture war parent.
And another group that is not a Direct 2025 partner, but I have seen on their website, they promote the LifeWise curriculum as a homeschool curriculum that is recommended for use is Freedom in Education.
And that's a relatively new group, but they have a lot of ties to some of the people who have been activists on book bans and school choice coming from various states.
So here's a picture I want to paint for people.
This is all my words, none of Natalie's words, so don't anyone out there put these words on Natalie.
I'm going to extract out, and I'm going to say, all right, we have LifeWise, which at the beginning of the episode to some people might have felt like a very local Ohio, Midwestern kind of initiative, and yet it's popped up in places like Oklahoma, Colorado, Florida.
There's big plans for it, and it is going nationwide.
Indiana, and so on.
Other places.
Okay.
It's also connected to this huge and well-funded and powerful network of organizations, the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, all of the think tanks you just mentioned, and so on.
It is part of the ecosystem, right?
This is not a lone wolf.
They're not just out there doing something on their own.
They are not acting as an isolated node.
No, they're part of an ecosystem that includes billions of dollars.
And has eyes on direct access to the presidency and the executive branch if Trump wins in November.
I want everyone to imagine a scenario where Project 2025 is implemented and these aggressive overtures we hear about education are taken seriously and Almost everywhere you look in the United States, there are kids who, during the school day, whether it's at lunch, whether it's during a free period, whether it is during art class, are carting off to a religious education hour.
And if you're talking about the Gospel Project, you're talking about the Family Research Council, you're talking about these kinds of theological worldviews that are taught in these spaces, you're talking about a place that's going to teach you that there are only men and women.
That gay people, bisexual people, trans people are going to hell.
That if a family has two moms, that family is messed up and part of a cult or part of something really hellbound.
That if you have the wrong kind of religion, you may not actually be a good American.
Imagine a country where there's a para-educational religious resource at every school district.
Now, you might be like, Brad, you're crazy.
And that's fine.
What's crazy?
Project 2025.
Go read it.
It's absolutely nuts.
So you can tell me that I'm overreacting.
And I'll just say, they've put it out there.
They're so worried about people catching on to it that Trump and everyone else is like, I've never heard of it.
And who knows what that is?
Because they're so worried that the rest of us actually are catching on.
So imagine a world, imagine a school district where the majority of the kids go to 45 minutes of religious education every day.
They make fun of those who don't.
They're giving pizza parties and ice cream sundaes to everybody.
And they're teaching you that being gay, lesbian, trans, bisexual, pansexual, et cetera, is going to make you hell bound.
And you're not really an American if you're Muslim, humanist, non-religious, and so on, right?
This is, if you guys want a window into my brain as Natalie's talking, this is where it's all going.
So what else do we need to know, Natalie?
What in terms of like connections or any other dimensions of this?
And then I do want to leave people with hope because I do think there are reasons to hope that the scenario I just laid out is not going to take place.
There are, I need probably two hours to, but I just wanted to note in Ohio there's Citizens for Christian Virtue is the state policy network aligned and family research council line group that has promoted LifeWise and The sponsors of the Ohio bill often work with them.
And in this particular case, the co-sponsors on the House side, one is the same legislator who often platforms Chloe Cole, a detransitioner, and Riley Gaines.
Going to the demonizing of transgender people.
And then the co-sponsor, who now has been promoted to the State Senate, but when he sponsored it, Representative Katrona, his fiancée is the political director for Catholic Vote, which, if you're not familiar, targets people as they're leaving mass and does a lot of the geotargeting to turn out the Catholic vote.
So I would just encourage people that if something seems that's interesting, go look at who's sponsoring this bill in your area.
Or just if you think there's something, you're probably not crazy.
All right.
What are some reasons?
I mean, so yeah, you just named, and again, I think one of the things we can do here is say, well, who's promoting this?
Who's sponsoring it?
Who thinks it's a good idea?
And you start to think about some of those folks local to Ohio and the Ohio State Legislature.
I just think of Tony Perkins, one of the most homophobic and transphobic leaders in the Christian universe.
I was at a protest where Tony Perkins was speaking one time.
And there were Proud Boys outside, there were neo-Nazis outside, and nobody told them to go home.
They were just like part of the whole landscape.
So, all that to say, what are some reasons for hope in terms of wins and projects that are countering what's happening with LifeWise?
So, I follow Ohio closely, so there may be lots of these hopes springing up in various places, but in Ohio, School districts that want to prioritize having their kid there for the entire day because they are held accountable by the state for the outcomes of every child, even if they leave for an hour.
So what's happening is school districts are taking their power and creating ways to Fight back, I guess.
I don't want to put aggressive words on this, but to make it more difficult for LifeWise to participate in this district.
And I mention that because in testimony, Gary Click, one of the proponents, Yes, schools can do it right now, but we want to make it more efficient.
So the goal is to make these programs more efficient.
So some school districts are asserting their local power.
There have been some school boards that did not have a policy, so already they're not allowing religious release.
And LifeWise has come in.
One of the keys is they wait for school approval until near the end when churches have spent money.
People have spent hours and hours on this so that people feel really disappointed if it doesn't work out.
So they are choosing not to have a policy.
In other school districts, they have rescinded the policy.
So in order to Keep LifeWise out.
They have said, you know what, we support LGBT rights, and so we're going to remove our policy allowing religious release.
Other districts have changed, modified their policy.
So Most school districts, sorry to get nerdy for one second, but they use a couple of different platforms that just they're taking code from, you know, state law, federal law, and giving school boards options to put it into their policy manuals.
So a lot of it is copy and paste for release time.
No one customizes it.
So folks are now customizing it with, of course, legal.
And what they're doing is they're They're deeming, they're identifying all of their classes as core.
Yeah.
So if religious beliefs can't take place during core, then therefore it shortens the window quite a bit.
And one district, I won't mention any of them by name, but they were considering rescinding their policy and they learned that there were a few kids, I think they were minority religion, who We're using the policy.
So they thought to themselves, OK, we don't want to remove this policy for these few kids who are using it, who have a relationship with a church or synagogue or mosque, etc.
And so in those cases, they are just modifying their policy to make it a little more stringent because they don't want to marginalize kids who were using it without being disrupted.
I just, as I'm hearing you talking, I mean, one thing I just can't get away from is if I'm a taxpayer who's just like paying taxes to my local school board and those taxes are going to things like education, who decides what's not core?
And like, why do I get to pay taxes for two thirds of the kids just walk out to the trailer outside and learn about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?
That's just super weird.
It's just, that's like a lawsuit.
Like, I'm sure I, this is not my domain.
I'm sure FFRF and AU and other people are thinking about this, but good Lord, I just can't imagine paying a teacher money to teach things and being like, well, two thirds of the kids are going to get out of here and go hear about the rapture.
Anyway, that's just me though.
All right, Natalie, so thankful for your insight, so thankful for your expertise, especially just thankful for your tireless energy spent monitoring, learning, keeping tabs on these things at a local level.
It is folks like you across the country who I think are really just heroic in terms of their getting up and doing this every day.
So what are some ways to follow those who are combating these kinds of initiatives in schools and whether that's in Ohio or other places?
They're one of the grassroots groups that is involved in opposing LifeWise and promoting public ed.
There is a Facebook group that is called Parents Against LifeWise.
It's not just for parents, it's for anyone.
And there are a lot of resources on the Honesty for Ohio Education website, honestyforohioeducation.org, and where there is a list of questions that parents have about the program that folks are using in Ohio with their school districts and in communicating with the state legislature about it.
So those are two resources.
Additionally, there is RespectPublicSchools.com, and that is another Ohio-based activist who is making it easy for people to find information about LifeWise just using LifeWise's public data.
And on RespectPublicSchools.com, you can put in your school district, and it will show you where your school district is on the journey, we'll call it, without having to go to the LifeWise website, giving your information to LifeWise.
Although, of course, if you want to, that's another place to go for information.
Fantastic.
Well, thank you again, Natalie, for joining me, and look forward to updates as things move forward and we enter the fall in a new school year.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for listening today, y'all.
Hope you appreciated what I spoke about with Natalie.
If you're a subscriber, stick around.
Got about 20 more minutes for you on Biden, on mainly Kamala Harris and her religious identity, the enthusiasm in her campaign and her racial identity and what she represents in the country, the way she's being attacked and so on and so forth.
If you're not a subscriber, now's a great time for everybody.
