Two organizations involved with Project 2025 — a personnel and policy initiative for the next Republican administration — have on at least three occasions promoted LifeWise Academy, a group that aims to bring Bible study to public school systems throughout the United States.
The Heritage Foundation, which is leading up the Project 2025 effort, recently hosted LifeWise founder Joel Penton on its The Daily Signal podcast. And the Family Research Council, a partner on the project, hosted Penton twice since last summer on its own podcast, most recently on April 1.
Project 2025 is a comprehensive effort of more than 100 organizations to provide a potential second Donald Trump administration with staff and position papers. Its central document is a nearly 900-page policy book called Mandate for Leadership: A Conservative Promise, which employs Christian nationalist talking points to support its right-wing goals, such as its promises to remove the term “abortion” from all federal laws and regulations and its call for a future executive to “maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.”
In providing a platform to LifeWise, the Family Research Council is furthering that Christian nationalist agenda. Penton’s organization takes advantage of a pair of relatively unknown Supreme Court decisions that, according to LifeWise, allow for religious instruction during regular school hours as long as it takes place offsite and isn’t promoted or funded by the school or district. NBC News reported that LifeWise has “super-charged” the “release time” concept, “using a franchise-style, 'plug-and-play' model that allows local groups to easily start new chapters” staffed by LifeWise teachers.
Some critics, like the Freedom From Religion Foundation, say LifeWise’s approach violates the First Amendment.
“Public school students have the First Amendment right to be free from religious indoctrination in their schools,” FFRF’s Samantha Lawrence wrote in a letter addressed to more than 600 Ohio school districts. “Thus, public schools may not in any way promote or otherwise show favoritism toward religion, nor may they coerce students to believe or participate in any religion or religious exercise.
“It is a basic principle that the First Amendment requires governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion,” Lawrence continued. “Districts that partner with LifeWise open themselves to a greater risk of students being unconstitutionally encouraged or coerced to participate in released time bible study classes.”
According to NBC News, Penton “denied relying on peer pressure to recruit students and scoffed at the idea that LifeWise might lead to bullying or teasing in schools.”
Despite Penton’s claim, the Freedom From Religion Foundation argues that in “communities where a significant portion or majority of students participate in such bible classes, the students who do not join are inevitably singled out in the eyes of their peers.”
Students who don’t participate also risk losing out on valuable instruction time, according to FFRF, which said it “has received several complaints from families in different school districts alleging that non-attending students were given busy work, or no work at all, as a consequence of staying at school during released time.”