For families in Rutherford County, Middle Tennessee, the presence of Lifewise Academy in our local public schools means they plan to weave religious instruction into the fabric of what should remain secular educational spaces. As a deeply concerned parent, I feel it is important to highlight how this initiative defies the spirit of public education and brings an undue influence aimed at children still forming their core beliefs.

The public school isn’t a recruitment pipeline. They exist to serve every family in a district, regardless of what that family believes. That’s the deal. It’s why schools don’t let campaign volunteers set up tables in the cafeteria, why the Girl Scouts can’t get a standing weekly slot to pull kids out of class, and why a timeshare company can’t send a permission slip home in a backpack. Public institutions are supposed to be neutral ground precisely because they’re funded by, and serve, everyone.

LifeWise Academy has found a way around that rule, and it’s worth naming plainly what it actually is: a single religious organization that managed to secure itself weekly, recurring, in-school access to the youngest, most impressionable population available — young children— using the machinery of a public institution to do it. The enrollment forms go home through the school. The pickup happens during the instructional day, on school time, using school infrastructure to coordinate attendance. No other private organization, religious or secular, gets that kind of standing access to a captive audience of children. Try to imagine a school facilitating a weekly pull-out program for any other special interest — a political party, a for-profit tutoring company, a fraternal order — and the absurdity becomes obvious immediately. The only reason this one gets a pass is that it’s wrapped in the language of religious liberty, which makes it politically uncomfortable to question. Freedom of religion is already protected constitutionally—why then does it need to colonize a neutral designated educational timeline? Indeed, Lifewise is not asking for a one-time special accommodation, no—they’re asking for weekly pull-out gatherings to study, not practice, their faith. 

There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to provide bible study for children, but during compulsory school time is neither the time nor the place because they already exist independently of a school’s mandated schedule. 

This is not just access to our children — it’s a foothold, granted before anyone had a chance to ask whether it should be there at all. The “parental consent” is doing a lot of work in the messaging of this program if the school board already approved the guaranteed, recurring, weekly event. If they were truly neutral, they wouldn’t need to lift a finger to accommodate the program. James Madison made the same underlying point in an 1822 letter, writing that religion and government “will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together” — a warning that cuts both ways, since it applies just as much to a school’s civic purpose as to a church’s religious one.

There’s also a safety dimension to this that deserves more scrutiny than it’s gotten. LifeWise states publicly that it background-checks all staff and volunteers and rechecks them every three years. What it doesn’t advertise as clearly is how that screening actually works. I encourage you all to research the vendors that Lifewise uses to background-check its employees. It’s a meaningfully lower bar than the FBI and the state fingerprint-based checks that public school employees must go through before they’re ever alone near a classroom. In 2026, three men previously affiliated with LifeWise Academy in Ohio were charged or pleaded guilty to sex crimes against minors, including rape and sexual battery. This is not hypothetical—it actually happened. 

None of this requires deciding whether the religious content itself is good or bad. That’s not the school’s business, and it’s not this argument’s business either. The question is narrower and more defensible: should any single belief system — this one or any other — get a dedicated, recurring channel into the public school day that no other organization, religious or otherwise, is offered? Framed that way, the answer isn’t really about faith. It’s about whether a public institution should be renting out its access to children to whoever asks first.

Simply put: denying LifeWise Academy access to our compulsory time is not an attack on Christianity, any more than it is an endorsement of atheism. If I were unashamed of myself, I’d be advocating for atheism class in public schools instead. I’m not, because believing something doesn’t entitle it to compulsory education time — not religion, and not my own skepticism of it either.

The time has come to advocate for a truly secular and neutral educational environment. Let’s protect the sanctity of our public schools and ensure every student’s right to an unbiased education in Rutherford County. Sign this petition if you believe in maintaining the separation of private religious teachings and public educational spaces. Your voice can help preserve the integrity of our schools and protect the minds of our children from direct and undue influence.