LifeWise - An Elementary Problem

About a month ago, Respect Public Schools Washington’s (RPS-WA) co-founders met with a reporter from the Everett Herald to talk about our group’s work, and our concerns about LifeWise. We met for the better part of an hour, answering his questions and posing a few of our own. At the end of our interview, we were thanked for our time and then the reporter said something along the lines of, “You, know, one of your questions near the beginning of our conversation has really stuck with me … ‘why wouldn’t LifeWise help low income families by providing a way to get to church on Sundays, providing community for the whole family rather than targeting their kids during school?’” We hoped he would endeavor to have that question answered. 

The article was published last Saturday, April 19. We were quite disappointed by it. While the tone of the article was neutral, the LifeWise representatives were given a huge platform and their words were unchallenged by our heavily edited comments. Our strong statements were diminished to weak summaries, and our thought-provoking question went unanswered. 

So, here we are, publishing a blog post to help ensure our concerns are clearly defined and stated in full effect. 

We are firmly against any religion taking students out of school during public school hours. This is a very important one for us. Public school hours should be for public education. Religious education should be reserved for before and after school, or on the weekends. 

The ability for elementary students to navigate transitions is a challenge in and of itself; when you add leaving and returning to campus, it further complicates this challenge. Not to mention the toll of time and attention for school staff to manage dozens of students leaving and returning in a short period of time. 

We are firmly against the division this program sows. With weekly offsite trips, treats to take home, and brightly colored T-shirts proudly showing who’s in and who’s out, LifeWise doesn't foster inclusion among classmates. It separates them. And, as clearly detailed in their ‘Difficult Questions from Students’ document, it even encourages division of families, telling kids if their parents are sinners, it’s OK not to listen to them. 

We are firmly against the duplicity and deceptive messaging of LifeWise. Unlike public schools which must make their curriculum available to the public, LifeWise is not transparent about their curriculum or its origins.  They claim they can’t share it with the public because the organization which created it won’t allow it. You have to dig for the truth, as they don’t directly say it on their website, but that organization is Lifeway, an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is not nondenominational.

Through court mediation settled in December 2024, LifeWise must now grant access to their curriculum to anyone that asks. It’s an info-dump of hundreds of pages with only 48-hours access, after which you have to reapply for access, but it’s up to them as to how soon requests are granted. It’s worth noting that the page count for the curriculum info-dump after the legal settlement is less than it was before the settlement. 

We’re also firmly against the weak arguments that proponents of LifeWise repeatedly present.

LifeWise claims they schedule their program during school hours, because after-school sports are more important. If parents would rather have their child miss time at school than miss sports practice, that’s certainly a statement of their faith and values, isn’t it? This is not a problem to be solved by disrupting school. Rather, it should be a catalyst for reflection and change; just what is it about your religion’s outreach that is so unappealing and impotent that sports is more important than faith? 

LifeWise representatives claim they cannot schedule their program before or after school, because they would lose all of their funding and support. This appears to be true. Their founder insists on disrupting public school; it’s the entire goal of the program. He views our vulnerable children as “mission fields.” However, there are plenty of other religious programs which do not disrupt school, which RPS-WA fully supports and applauds. That the co-directors chose LifeWise out of all of other faith-based programs indicates their support of the movement to inject Christianity into every domain of our society, including public education. In the spirit of religious freedom and freedom from religion, we vehemently reject this insidious agenda. 

LifeWise claims they are helping low-income families who may be working long hours before or after school. LifeWise targets Title I schools because they seek to exploit food-insecure families, as chapters often serve lunch. But, how much better would it be to offer before and after school care along with their ‘bible education?’ It’s a win-win for everyone! A church in the Northshore School District is doing exactly that for multiple elementary schools, and we think it’s pretty great. 

LifeWise claims they’re helping the single parent who doesn’t have a car to bring her child to Sunday school or church. Which brings us back to the question which the Everett Herald reporter was so intrigued by: if you cry out of sympathy for the single parent, but refuse to activate your network to help her get a better job so she can afford a car, or at the very least, arrange for transportation to church and Sunday School so her family can be part of a caring community of faith, who are you really? What do you actually stand for? Why target her kid, and leave her without meaningful support and community? 

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We appreciate the time the reporters gave to each of us, and we appreciate their valiant efforts of neutrality for a highly-charged topic of conversation. However, we would have preferred if they sought to print a balanced article instead. LifeWise’s representatives were allowed the full force of their arguments, while we were not afforded the same. (If one didn’t know Reverend Jensen, for instance, one could almost have read her quote as supportive of LifeWise, instead of staunchly opposing the Christian Nationalism inherent in the program’s founding and its goals.) We hope any future coverage on the topic of LifeWise or Respect Public Schools - Washington by the Herald will endeavor to be balanced rather than simply “neutral.”

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be publishing comments made by the three clergy members who were featured in the Herald article. They were made during a public info session about LIfeWise back in February, and are the predecessors of the comments made in the article. We’d like you to hear directly from them about their concerns about LifeWise.