‘I do, in fact, hold animus’: Washington school district sued for open discrimination against legal Bible program

LifeWise Academy is a nonprofit Christian organization founded in 2018 that provides off-site, Bible-based religious instruction to public school students during the regular school day. The program is fully compliant with the three criteria of released time laws (affirmed by the 1952 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Zorach v. Clauson): classes are held off school property, it’s privately funded, and participation is voluntary with parental consent.

But LifeWise is nonetheless being attacked at some schools — often by those who welcome progressive initiatives, like Pride Month, in the classroom.

On a recent episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey sat down with LifeWise Academy founder and CEO Joel Penton to discuss the program and its ongoing battles with progressive schools.

Serving tens of thousands of students across hundreds of schools in over 30 states, LifeWise Academy Bible lessons are designed to take students through the entire Bible in just five years.

“So a child will start Genesis 1 in first grade, and by the time they finish elementary school and fifth grade, they’ve been through the entire Bible,” says Penton, noting that lessons have a three-part focus: head (knowing the Scripture), heart (gospel connection), and hands (living it out).

The result is not only that kids from Christian homes become more educated on Scripture, but children who do not come from Christian homes hear and accept the gospel.

Penton tells a sweet story of a young girl who joined LifeWise Academy and brought the gospel home to her entire family.

“[She] came home, and she said, ‘Why aren’t we talking about God here?’ And so they started going to church, and by the end of the story, there’s a family of nine that have all been baptized, and they’re members of the church,” he says.

The heartwarming stories of how LifeWise classes impact children and their families roll in every single day, Penton tells Allie.

And yet some schools are resistant to allowing LifeWise to impact their school community.

While 90% of schools say yes to LifeWise programs, there is “a very vocal minority,” says Penton, that go to great lengths to prevent campus startups.

These people “do not like the Bible; they see it as regressive … and they don’t want anybody to have access,” he explains, “and even though it’s optional, and they don’t have to sign their own child up, they don’t like that anyone can sign their child up.”

These community members protest LifeWise programs at school board meetings and engage in hashtag activism, but most of the time, Penton says, they end up unintentionally helping the cause.

He gives the example of a school district in Ohio ending its LifeWise program after two years, which sparked such intense backlash, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed House Bill 8, requiring all public school districts to adopt a religious released-time policy. This led to roughly 80 additional school districts starting LifeWise programs.

But in deep-blue places like the state of Washington, the resistance is intense.

Allie plays a clip of Charles Adkins, a member of the Everett Public Schools Board of Directors in Washington state. At a board meeting, he said, “I want to make it very, extremely, abundantly clear that yes, I do in fact hold animus towards LifeWise Academy.”

Everett Public Schools, says Penton, have policies that are “transparently discriminatory and aimed at LifeWise Academy.” Compared to other secular programs, which require a one-time parent permission slip, parents of students in LifeWise Academy must “walk in a permission slip each and every week.”

“They’re just trying to create more obstacles to make it more difficult,” says Allie.

But weekly permission slips aren’t the only barriers facing LifeWise students.

“If we give a child a worksheet, maybe they colored a picture of Moses or something … when they go back to school, it has to be in a sealed envelope,” says Penton, noting that other programs do not have this requirement.

When LifeWise attempted to resolve the district’s policies internally with the school board, they reportedly received no response. First Liberty Institute then filed a federal lawsuit against Everett Public Schools on behalf of LifeWise Academy and families, alleging unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and hostile treatment of the religious released-time program.

“What’s wild is that the letter we sent said, ‘We believe you hold animus,’ which, you know, they’re supposed to say, ‘No, we don’t.’ And then [Adkins] said at a school board meeting into a microphone that he does hold animus,” says Penton, joking that First Liberty “really appreciated” his convenient candor.

While the lawsuit is still ongoing, Penton notes all he wants is for “policies to go back to normal” and for LifeWise Academy “to be treated as anybody else would.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the full episode above.

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