What people are saying:

• Secular Education Association: Wait. Are these AI too? Or did someone make them in Canva?

  No? These are real billboard photos? Verified examples?

  Cool. So now that the documentation exists, where is all that concern and engagement? Because this is what we were asking people to help document in the first place.

  • Facebook User: Secular Education Association I’ve heard that there are billboards indoctrinating kids toward alcohol, vaping, pro-abortion, ….are you outraged by those too? Or just those that show your intolerance toward anyone who doesn’t believe exactly like you?
• Secular Education Association: For everyone suddenly very concerned about photojournalism ethics: great news. These are verified real LifeWise billboards. Now let’s talk about why a religious program targeting public school children has billboard money in the first place.
  • Facebook User: Secular Education Association Joel Penton made good money playing for Ohio State and endorsements and many people have shared his vision and donated generously.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Joel Penton played for Ohio State from 2002 to 2006. The NCAA didn’t even allow NIL cash or corporate endorsements until 2021. Unless he has a time machine, he didn’t fund a multi-million dollar campaign from his college football days. Let’s be honest here about the ‘generous donors’ funding Lifewise. This isn’t grassroots pocket change. It is highly coordinated, dark money pushed back by wealthy Christian nationalist groups and right-winged billionaires. They are pouring their money into these billboards to force their very specific religious agenda into our secular public schools. Stop pretending a 20 year old college sports stat pays for a massive corporate indoctrination franchise.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User I was in Cbus in the 80’s.. Even then, the players were making big money. There is no “dark money”-it is all in the light. No one is ashamed of supporting character education using historical, Biblical examples.
  • Facebook User: Mr Penton has been a motivational speaker for high schools and colleges because of his fame as a Buckeye. Every chapter of LW handles their funds separately-what you raise in your city, stays in your city. Joel makes 50k a year, teachers make a couple hundred dollars 2-3 days a week. All others (board, assistants, helpers) are volunteers. Sites are donated.. there is no one behind the scenes putting big money in-just people with a passion to see children being taught morals and character lessons.
• Facebook User: Keep this propaganda out of public schools.
• Facebook User: Facebook User wait no, because I never realized just how BS that is. No money for homeless outreach, but “Get them while they’re young, Evita, get them while they’re young.”
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User yep! it has a lot to do with the “4-14 window.”
  • Facebook User: Secular Education Association I saw it from the opposite side of the pew. Raised in a Christian elementary school attached to a church where I went without lunch sometimes because I’d forget to ask mom for money – but was told I wasn’t living for the Lord when I asked why the public school kids that were bussed over for an hour got free pizza and to play with all the cool stuff while we students, whose parents paid tuition for, got nothing. It wasn’t ministry, it was recruiting. Plus being the only black kid in the school, and one of only a handful in the town probably didn’t help.
  • Secular Education Association: Facebook User thank you for saying this. This is exactly the piece people miss: it is not just “ministry,” it is recruitment, and kids on both sides of that window feel it.

    Would you be willing to send us more about your experience with released time religious instruction? Even just a few details about the school, town/state, approximate years, what the public school kids were brought over for, and how it affected you would help us document how long this playbook has been around.

    And only if you’re comfortable, we’d also love to share your comment as a post because this perspective matters. If you’d rather you’re always welcome to message us or email us directly contact@seculareducationassociation.org

  • Facebook User: Secular Education Association sent you an email.
• Facebook User: Bible education already happens on Sundays. Leave public school time for public school.
• Facebook User: Dangling candy, ice cream, bounce houses and carnivals in front of kids. Yeah, that sounds like predators.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User I listened to a video of the guy running the program who bragged about that they’ll use any bribe they can to get the kids to attend they don’t care.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User they do. At my school they encourage the children to brag to peers about what they get at lw. It’s borderline harassment and bullying.
  • Facebook User: and telling kids to tell their friends who don’t do the Likewise program that they’re going to hell.
    Classic “grooming”
• Facebook User: Imagine the money they have in order to finance this stuff.
• Facebook User: Booth at the county fair
• Facebook User: It’s not using any taxpayer money, it’s not done in public school, we are a free country, any other religion is free to do this as well.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User I’d love to see the satanic temple host a similar program – billboards and all!
  • Facebook User: Facebook User false, there are absolutely SOME that occur on school grounds. Those places will be the downfall of Lifewise Academy and RTRI!
  • Facebook User: Facebook User where?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User they have the freedom and right to do that, just like lifewise does
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Elmwood Elementary.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User exactly
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Lifewise Academy absolutely drains public school resources. Hijacks school schedules, and uses a legal loophole to turn public schools into its own personal recruiting grounds. Taxpayer dollars fund the administrators who manage Lifewise’s schedules, the teachers who pause lessons, and the public buildings where the kids are sorted like cattle! Pretending that this is “free” is financially illiterate. Other religions aren’t doing this because they actually RESPECT boundaries and the law. Yes, we are a free country, which means public schools have a right to secular education without being pressured into having to opt out of a political religious agenda that doesn’t belong there in the first place.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User well said!!!
  • Facebook User: Facebook User nobody is pressured, it requires parents permission, we have religious freedom, so any religion can do this, it is not using any taxpayer resources whatsoever, it is all funded from personal donations.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User and who pays the rent for a space not being used by the school? Not taxpayer money but individual donations. Religious freedom in practical use. Would you rather us not have those freedoms?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User if it was AFTER school hours? Fine. During school hours? Has to be by ZORACH rules. OFF SCHOOL PROPERTY.
    No religion can use school property DURING SCHOOL HOURS.
    Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

    Oh and Elmwood also breaks all but one Zorach standard. Its gonna be the KEY to ridding this bs during school hours.

  • Facebook User: Facebook User you absolutely have the freedom to do it after school, on weekends, on your time. Toodles.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User they have a loophole for now. I plan to help close it DOWN.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User are you upset with the BS of using taxpayer money to push trans ideology to our kids when they should only be teaching reproductive biology?
  • Facebook User: Facebook User false again! When grandparents sign kids up, when kids get told they will go to hell if they don’t go, when teachers and superintendents PRESSURE KIDS? That’s TWO violations of Zorach.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User don’t you even dare say that any other religion is free to do this, because not even you believe that lie. If a Mosque even thought about or hinted at bussing willing students with parental permission to their facility for anything – let alone religious education, it’d be flat out civil war and you know it. You wouldn’t stand for it, and to deny that fact is to deny your own existence.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User don’t lie again, you don’t like comprehensive sex ed. You want females submissive trad wifes, barefoot, 15 and pregnant.
    I am NOT upset when the LGBTQIA students are supported and protected from bigots.
    Show me State approved curriculum about LGBTQIA topics???
  • Facebook User: Facebook User 😆= universal 🏳️
    Very bold strategy when you can’t disprove fact. You cannot defend the legal loophole, you cannot defend the stolen school time and you cannot defend your own dishonesty. Laughing to hide your embarrassment doesn’t change the truth.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Claiming “nobody is pressured” to opt out is a blatant lie. This Christian nationalist academy intentionally weaponizes peer pressure by sending kids back to school with candy, trinkets, and prizes to taunt their peers. Non-participating children are ostracized, bullied and treated like outsiders within the walls of their own secular public schools. So yet here you are, once again defending targeting young kids with psychological warfare.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User it’s not a legal loophole, it’s legal. Quit reacting so emotionally, and use some critical thought. Time isn’t stolen, parents can choose to let their kids spend their free time this way, and they’re learning values that are universal across many religions.
  • Facebook User: Facebook User Telling someone to use ‘critical thought’ while ignoring basic ethics is a hilarious self-own. A loophole is a legal mechanism. It’s just a dirty one used to bypass the separation of church and state. Public school hours are not ‘free time’ More importantly, there is absolutely nothing ‘universal’ about a Christian nationalist program that weaponizes peer pressure, bribes kids with candy and prizes, and encourages them to taunt and bully the classmates who don’t join. You aren’t teaching values; you’re teaching division. Sit down.
  • Facebook User: “Bribes kids with candy and prizes and encourages them to taunt and bully classmate”?? That couldn’t be further from the truth, they are taught to love their neighbor and treat others with respect and care for those less fortunate. You need help.
• Facebook User:
• Facebook User: Likewise should spend some of that extra money they have for billboards on, say, nutrition programs for kids.
• Facebook User: “… Public roads. Public-facing ads….”

  So, in this post, you’re upset about Christians having signs in public? This post seems kind of unhinged.

• Facebook User: So disgusting get rid of this cult