On August 16, 2023, Nancy Gregory spoke at Grace Calvary Chapel, her home church, and echoed Pastor Josh Blevins as saying that the church needed to stop hiding and to ‘become the army of God’.

Their plan is to do this by enlisting fundamentalist Christian Nationalist organization LifeWise Academy to work in public schools. They want public school students to receive release time to attend religious education during the day.

The plan is to target four elementary schools: Edison, Ellison, Hosea and Skaith. This religious education would only include one conservative version of Christianity – neither other varieties of Christianity, nor other religions are included. Instruction would be provided by LifeWise Academy instructors, whom they are planning to recruit from Grace Calvary Chapel. The plan centers on recruiting children into this specific version of Christianity because “eight in 10 American youth do not attend church but nine in 10 are in public schools”.

Proponents of this plan are gathering signatures to bring to the Board of Education as a sign of public support for the LifeWise program, and pressure them to approve the program.

We oppose this plan for the following reasons:

• It violates the First Amendment of the Constitution by using public schools as a promotional tool for a specific religion
• It proposes to use time during which the teaching of children is funded by tax dollars, which are not to be used for religious education
• The plan creates educational inequalities since the children are pulled away from instructional time

Please sign this petition to voice your opposition to the plan and invite others to do so as well! Please include your city and zip code with your signature to show that you are a resident of the area impacted by the proposed plan.

Please share this petition!