An organization that provides Bible programming to public school children is suing a Washington state school district, alleging officials are improperly targeting its Christian program.
Joel Penton, CEO of LifeWise Academy, told CBN News his organization allows parents to opt-in for their kids to go off-site during lunch, recess, and other non-essential periods from public schools during the day.
Children are then given Bible lessons before returning to their respective schools. LifeWise, which launched in 2019, operates in hundreds of schools and is independently funded. It’s a Released Time religious instruction program, made legal in 1952, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Zorach v. Clauson case that public school students can be released during school hours to attend religious classes.
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“We’ve been growing rapidly in the last few years, but we started up a program in Everett, Washington, and it was going so well last year,” Penton said. “We had dozens of families engaged and some individuals went to the school board … one gentleman on the school board, in particular, was swayed by these things, and they put in some really discriminatory rules.”
He continued, “They updated their policies and changed the rules on us so that, unlike other student groups … we cannot show up now at any of the school-related functions like the fair where kids sign up for programs like ours and learn about new things.”
Penton said LifeWise has been “singled out.” Beyond purportedly precluding the organization from participating in these official club events, he told LifeWise is now required to obtain weekly parental permission slips from families who wish to opt in.
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