Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look and an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Back in March 1948, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that religious education and public schools violated the separation of church and state.

According to McCollum v Board of Education, even off-site release time programs that secured parental consent amounted to the establishment

of religion and was thus a violation of the First Amendment.

However, just four years later, in a case called Zorak v. Clausen, the Supreme Court corrected this earlier decision

and established that release time programs did not entail the establishment of religion that's

prohibited by the First Amendment. If privately funded, if held off school property,

and if they secured parental consent for participating students,

then religious release time programs were legally protected and were allowed to take place.

States have further applied this decision by stating in their own laws that schools either can or

shall have religious release time programs.

Since that decision, there have been all kinds of local release time programs that have been offered in various locations.

In 2018, an organization called LifeWise Academy began to offer religious release time

programs with bibically based Christian classes for public school students in Ohio with an eye on spreading across the state and maybe beyond.

Initially, Lifewise Academy set the ambitious goal of serving 25 schools by 2025. But as of this year, Life 25.

But as of this year, LifeWise Academy has launched

Release Time Bible-based education for public school students

in over 300 schools in 12 states.

That means that each and every week right now in America,

35,000 students are being taught from the Bible about Jesus

in LifeWise Academy programs which only continue to spread.

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