Religion in schools risks a deal with the devil. It’s not about the Satanic Temple.

Originally published in the Columbus Dispatch, this is a slightly expanded version that goes into more detail. I truly appreciate the Dispatch for their willingness to include contrarian voices and headlines that help to sell newspapers.

As the old story goes, December is the month when Santa Claus comes to town. For students in Marysville public schools, jolly ole’ St. Nick might have company from a far more sinister red-clad character as the Satanic Temple visits with children from there.

Or so it seems from a recent headline. Fear not, for all is not what it seems.

Yes, leaders of the Satanic Temple did indeed announce their intention to take advantage of Ohio’s optional religious release time program for public schools to offer its programming to Marysville students.

Fortunately, at least from a secular point of view, about the only thing truly satanic about the Satanic Temple is its name. They are instead a dressed-up parody of traditional religions with tenets that seem more progressive-libertarian than evil.

While all of that is interesting enough, the real story here isn’t about the battle of good versus evil. It’s about the role of public schools. I’ve written about this before and I’ll keep doing so because it is one of the most important issues of our time.

The devil lurking in our schools is their job performance.

Our nation’s public schools are failing in their primary role of conveying to students the foundational knowledge humans have acquired in the 10,000 years of recorded civilization. This passage from an article in Education Week tells the grim story:

Thirty countries now outperform the United States in mathematics at the high school level. Many are ahead in science, too. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the millennials in our workforce tied for last on tests of mathematics and problem solving among the millennials in the workforces of all the industrial countries tested. We now have the worst-educated workforce in the industrialized world. Because our workers are among the most highly paid in the world, that makes a lot of Americans uncompetitive in the global economy. And uncompetitive against increasingly smart machines. It is a formula for a grim future.

And we spend more on education for worse results than our peer nations too.

Ohio’s performance isn’t much better than the national average. But, sure, let’s waste time arguing about religious release time from school rather than making schools better at their job. A bit of background on that topic might be useful.

 Ohio legislators are currently debating HB 445, which would require public schools to allow students to be released from certain school periods for off-campus religious instruction rather than keeping it optional as it is now.

Such release time activities are conducted at no cost to school districts, and Ohio law permits each local school board to allow it if they choose.

The Satanic Temple’s foray into Central Ohio is probably best viewed as a response to the growth of LifeWise Academy, a Christian Bible study youth ministry based in Hilliard. It’s also a test of our state legislators’ commitment to the religious freedom protections of the Constitution.

According to their website, LifeWise started in 2018 and offered programming for students from just two schools in 2019. By the end of last school year, they “served more than 30,000 students from 331 schools across 13 states.”

LifeWise is clearly filling a need.

Just as the Satanic Temple seems to be a reaction to LifeWise, LifeWise is best viewed as a response to the quasi-religious political progressivism promoted in far too many of our public schools. Such was apparent in the dust up about the Olentangy high school principal using an official staff newsletter to lament about Donald Trump’s election victory.  

Progressivism’s hold on public education is also apparent in school programming around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and “social justice” movements that teach students to see the world through the lens of progressive causes centered on race, sex, sexual orientation, gender, etc.

The popularity of LifeWise exploded during Covid, driven by two key factors, both related to school closures.

When schools switched to some version of online instruction with students sitting in front of their computers at home, parents saw — many for the first time —what their kids were actually being taught about those progressive causes.

 Just as importantly, extended school closures and “virtual” school reversed decades of progress promoting the importance of school attendance and the resulting reductions in truancy.

This combination of overt public school political partisanship and the dilution of cultural expectations for school attendance has brought us to where we are today.

The Worthington school board recently discussed the possibility of rescinding their religious release time policy. During the public meeting, Board President Nikki Hudson said it was “kind of insulting” for residents to prefer the character-building programming of LifeWise to the version of such programming in her school.

The insult isn’t about the quality of Worthington’s or any public school’s character programming. It’s about public school officials adopting academically irrelevant and inherently partisan programming that they force parents to either accept or bear the cost of private schooling.

The parents who choose to release their children from school for LifeWise or any of the other religious options aren’t wrong – nor are they racist, sexist or any of the other slurs of intolerance hurled their way. They’re reasonably solving a problem public school leaders created.

Our schools are in trouble and the answer isn’t to further divide school children by adding religion to the already lengthy list of obligatory and divisive characteristics. It is instead to refocus public education on its essential role of conveying foundational knowledge to students, fostering accountability and civility while they’re in school, and leaving the rest to parents.

The same goes for Ohio legislators. Our public schools are better served by legislation that requires politically neutral programming instead of requiring religious release time. Our kids need more time in school, not less, and that time needs to be spent more focused on learning things that matter rather than flavor-of-the-day pet causes. 

Religion in public schools risks a deal with the devil, regardless of whether that religion is divinely inspired, the Satanic Temple, or secular progressivism.