🚩 43% OF OHIO SCHOOL DISTRICTS NOW HAVE AN ACTIVE LIFEWISE ACADEMY CHAPTER.
And LifeWise says 240 more Ohio chapters are already in process.
According to new reporting from the Ohio Capital Journal, approximately 32,200 Ohio public-school students are enrolled in 267 active LifeWise chapters across the state.
Only one Ohio county — Mercer County — currently has no LifeWise chapter live, launching or in the planning stages.
Released-time religious instruction was once largely a collection of local programs. LifeWise has transformed that model into a rapidly expanding, highly organized religious-release-time network operating during the public-school day — and Ohio has become its laboratory. 🧪
And while LifeWise tells reporters that communities are embracing the program because of SUPPOSED benefits to behavior, academics and well-being, families continue telling a much more complicated story.
🚩 Students who do not participate have reported being isolated from classmates, sent to gyms or study halls, their education suffering and being treated differently or made to feel as though they are the ones missing out.
Our own Ohio organizer, Kitty Schwanitz, told the Ohio Capital Journal exactly what we hear from families:
Parents enroll their children believing they understand what LifeWise is — and then come to us later saying they did not understand exactly what they were signing their children up for.
🚨Because LifeWise is not simply offering something before or after school to families who seek it out. It removes public-school students from the building during the school day for explicitly Christian instruction, while the children who remain behind are left to experience whatever system their district has created around that absence.
And Ohio lawmakers have actively aided LifeWise, making this expansion easier. On January 8, 2025, Gov. Mike DeWine signed HB 8, requiring Ohio public-school districts to adopt policies authorizing released-time religious instruction. Before HB 8, districts had discretion over whether to allow it.
👀 Now look at the result:
267 active Ohio chapters.
32,200 students.
43% of Ohio school districts.
240 more Ohio chapters in the pipeline.
And nationally? LifeWise reports 531 live chapters — with another 4,377 in process.
This is exactly why we keep telling people:
DO NOT WAIT UNTIL LIFEWISE SHOWS UP ON YOUR SCHOOL BOARD AGENDA TO START PAYING ATTENTION. By then, the organizing, recruiting, fundraising and political groundwork may already have been happening for months.
Ohio is showing the rest of the country what mandating cooperation and the resulting rapid expansion looks like. The question is whether the rest of the country is paying attention. 👀
What people are saying:
- Facebook User: Lifewise does not provide Christian education, it provides programming of the Southern Baptist Conference.
I wonder how people would react if the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints started a religious pull out program or say the Roman Catholic Church.
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User They actually do. LDS and Catholic release-time programs exist too. The difference is that they tend to be concentrated in communities where those faiths are already heavily represented, and we generally do not see the same kind of aggressive recruitment, prizes, candy, parties, and other incentives that families report with LifeWise.
There’s another important difference: they are usually very clear about what they are. A Catholic program tells you it is Catholic. An LDS program tells you it is LDS. LifeWise markets itself with language like “non-denominational,” “Bible education,” and “character education,” while teaching a specific evangelical Christian curriculum.
Our objection has never been simply that LifeWise is Christian. It’s the way it uses the public-school day and school community to recruit, incentivize, and expand a particular religious ministry.
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User They actually do. LDS and Catholic release-time programs exist too. The difference is that they tend to be concentrated in communities where those faiths are already heavily represented, and we generally do not see the same kind of aggressive recruitment, prizes, candy, parties, and other incentives that families report with LifeWise.
- Facebook User: 😡
- Facebook User: Too late for us here & honestly the public school here has open prayer at all events & even in class. I was sent a paper saying if I did not want my kid to pray in class (public school class) I can have him ReMOVED. Plus teaching kids to hate families of divorce and any otherness that is not Christian is very hateful.
They are the ones fueling a divide among everyone. I honestly don’t care what you practice but not in my publicly funded school. I don’t care if you want to go to a religious school but my public school forcing religion down our throats every time we go for an award assembly or meet the team does not need a Jesus christ prayer.
None of the lesson plans lifewise teaches are fact just stories from a book men rewrote to fit what they wanted. They teach judgement against others & exclusion of anyone that doesn’t fit some weird ideology.
Me & my kids have stayed quiet about the prayer in school because I can respect your beliefs but I guess the crazy Christians can’t respect mine.- Secular Education Association: Facebook User Thank you for sharing this. And we want to say this clearly: you and your children should not have to stay quiet or remove yourselves from your own public school in order to accommodate someone else’s religion. Respect for religious freedom goes both ways.
Students are absolutely free to pray voluntarily. But a public school cannot treat Christian prayer as the default and then put the burden on families who don’t participate to opt out or leave. Your children belong in that classroom and at those school events every bit as much as anyone else’s.
If you’re comfortable, please message us the school and district — and especially a photo of the paper you were sent if you still have it. We can keep your identifying information private. We’d really like to look into this. And you are certainly not alone. This is exactly why we do this work.
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User Thank you for sharing this. And we want to say this clearly: you and your children should not have to stay quiet or remove yourselves from your own public school in order to accommodate someone else’s religion. Respect for religious freedom goes both ways.
- Facebook User: Interesting that Mercer County has no schools with Lifewise programs. That’s the area where I grew up. The Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches. It’s possibly the most church-going, homes with lighted rosaries on the house and BVM statues in the yard place that I have ever seen. I would say that 7 out of 10 people there are Catholic. Most kids probably go to church every Sunday and are in CCD once a week. Not sure how parents there would view a “non-denominational” group coming in and trying to influence their kids.
- Facebook User: Facebook User maybe that’s how they have kept them out???
- Facebook User: Facebook User I’ve found lots of folks who are catholic that still don’t agree with the religious release time during public school day- I’m sure being a religion that has always provided religious instruction separately from public schools, even they are not thrilled about the way this christian nationalist group is looking to indoctrinate public school kids and their parents…
- Facebook User: Facebook User These types of predators don’t hunt where there is no prey. Why would they target a community that is already indoctrinated? Not putting Lifewise in Mercer co is just a corner they can afford to cut, because their goal is to snag schoolchildren from secular areas and drag them into the cesspool to be devoured.
- Facebook User: Nauseating. Grooming on steroids
- Facebook User: Facebook User like this ?
- Facebook User: Creationists found an effective way to indoctrinate public school kids.
- Facebook User: It seems every church in our village is taking turns displaying the Life wise bus.
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User This is absolutely happening, and it’s part of the strategy. When local churches take turns displaying a LifeWise bus, they aren’t just providing parking — they’re advertising the program, signaling their congregation’s support, and helping make LifeWise look like an established, community-wide institution.
And that is the grift. The more people see that red bus at churches, community events and around town, the more LifeWise begins to feel like it simply belongs there before the community has ever had a serious conversation about what the program actually is or what bringing it into the public-school day means.
That visibility isn’t accidental. It’s marketing, normalization and recruitment.
- Facebook User: Facebook User I’d stand in front with a banner.
- Facebook User: Secular Education Association ,I actually have the opposite reaction. It makes me suspicious
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User This is absolutely happening, and it’s part of the strategy. When local churches take turns displaying a LifeWise bus, they aren’t just providing parking — they’re advertising the program, signaling their congregation’s support, and helping make LifeWise look like an established, community-wide institution.
- Facebook User: Thanks to people like Facebook User who used their office to support one faith and push it into the school day. Taking away local rule is un-American.
- Facebook User: Lifewise is Children of the Corn.
- Facebook User: Lifewise has opened the door for all other faiths to do likewise. I would love to see them do it.
- Facebook User: Facebook User FORCED districts to allow this. Most staff oppose it. Meanwhile, my
group of girls I mentored for over 9 years can’t meet in school anymore because the girls might want to talk about their problems and feelings. (Duh) 🙄😡 - Facebook User: Absence excused. Doctor appointments unexcused.
- Facebook User: Good to see kids have access to God in schools
- Facebook User: Facebook User they always have…. This is different b/c it’s forcing it into the public school day and it’s a stampeding onto others’ rights NOT to have to be forced to hear about it and be affected by children bullying others not attending, for starters.
Why are you here if you don’t understand the concept of this support group?
- Facebook User: Facebook User 😂 its a public post. If you only want certain people commenting than set it that way
- Facebook User: Facebook User But only ONE version. Children of other faiths are bullied and treated as second class citizens. Keep your bigotry at home.
- Facebook User: Facebook User Individual religious rights are unaffected by prioritizing education during education time and religious instruction during family time. Students can read religious texts during personal time at school or pray quietly when needed. We need to recognize that secular education allows for plurality and religious freedom for all. Not allowing state employees or 3rd party groups to promote, encourage or recruit on school grounds during school hours protects the rights of all. Freedom of religion includes freedom FROM religious coercion. Lifewise recruitment on school property during school hours is a threat to that freedom.
- Facebook User: Facebook User How would you feel if a Muslim child were allowed to pray out loud to Mecca in the classroom? I mean, all the other kids would have the option to leave. Or maybe have a rabbi say a prayer at a Friday night football game – it is part of their sabbath after all.
- Facebook User: Facebook User naw let em talk. They drive up the algorithm.
- Facebook User: Facebook User they always have…. This is different b/c it’s forcing it into the public school day and it’s a stampeding onto others’ rights NOT to have to be forced to hear about it and be affected by children bullying others not attending, for starters.
- Facebook User: Facebook User Ohio public schools need you!!!
- Facebook User: Lifwwise ought to file a federal lawsuit against your organization and your ilk for infringing upon freedom of religion and the First Amendment. Since Lifewise is a voluntary program which doesn’t affect you – mind your own business.
- Facebook User: Facebook User yup…so voluntary they use kids to bully other kids to go. More like a kristian cult.
- Facebook User: Facebook User Grooming and proselytizing children to hate those of other faiths is disgusting. Be the bigots you are in church but don’t push your anti-science, revisionist history, book banning fascism in public education.
- Facebook User: Facebook User how has the Secular Education Association infringed on the First Amendment which includes religion and freedom of expression?
Lifewise Academy promotes itself as a voluntary program but employs methods that don’t feel voluntary to the students and families impacted by it.》How does a student opt out when the program teaches kids to ostracize and bully non-Lifewise students?
Answer me that and we can continue.
- Facebook User: Facebook User Excuse you? Outside organizations lacking any development experience, background checks and training. Schools are responsible for security of children. Outside organizations don’t deserve to force religious compliance.
- Facebook User: Just shut-up lady. I don’t give a rip what God haters and atheists have to say about anything. As I said, mind your own business.
- Facebook User: Students are loosing time for intervention, socialization with their peers, physical education, academic extra credits, etc. when they leave for this! States are penalizing schools for low achieving students, yet Lifewise is pressuring & tempting student to leave during precious school time AND parents are allowing it! If you want to reach these students (please, they need it) do it after school or on the weekends! Don’t take time out of the school day! And BS to the excuse, “they aren’t missing anything at school.” YES, they are!!
- Facebook User: The real question that I haven’t seen asked…who is paying for all of this? In Ohio, they have transport the students to/from the indoctrination center. That is big money and what is their goal? (rhetorical)
- Facebook User: Facebook User they sell fear to the elderly and a tax break to businesses that also believe in dominionism. It generates millions.
- Facebook User: Facebook User good question?? And why is it politically backed?
- Facebook User: Remember Tipp city
- Facebook User: Facebook User remember what?
- Facebook User: Facebook User A lifewise instructor was arrested in May 2026 for raping a child. It’s a Tipp City address, but it was Bethel Local Schools, not Tipp City schools.
- Facebook User: This article is nonsense. My kids don’t participate in LifeWise but I fully support the program.
- Facebook User: Facebook User Really? How would you feel if you were Jewish or Muslim or Sikh…or not religious at all? Forcing one religion on children is fascist grooming.
- Facebook User: Facebook User why?
- Facebook User: Facebook User are you just a bot?
- Facebook User: Christian madrassa.
- Facebook User: Ironically I ended up sending my kiddo to a religious school in part to avoid these assholes.
- Facebook User: Republicans INDOCTRINATION/GROOMING!
- Facebook User: This violates the separation of church and state & is a huge waste of active teaching time!
- Facebook User: Facebook User ah its the loophole that needs closed!
- Facebook User: The big red bus bringing Lie Wise special brand of Kristian Nationalism and public school student grooming to a school near you.
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