If there’s one thing you have to give Evangelicals (and believe me, it’s only this one thing), you would have to admire their hustle. When it comes to shoving their religion down our throats, they are on a whole other level.

Take Lifewise Academy. Because of a law in Ohio called the “Released Time” which allows students to substitute their secular schooling for bouts of fundamentalist religious teachings, they have been allowed to operate with impunity for decades.

The rules of this “Release Time” are simple: so long as they are privately funded, and done outside of school property, they are allowed to bus children away off site to fill their little minds with whatever nonsense they want, so long as parents “consent” to it.

There are similar laws in other states, such as Illinois, and it’s clear that these are attempts by religious organizations to use public funding to promote their faiths. That’s why the law was successfully challenged in the 40’s Illinois by a woman named Vashti McCollum, whose son had been forced to attend one of these special classes, with predictable results:

James – the only student in his class not participating in the religion class – was subsequently pressured by his teachers to conform, and his parents were pressured by school officials to permit him to join the religion classes to help James “get along.” The McCollums were angered at their son’s ostracism by his teachers, which included James’s being forced to sit alone in a hallway while the other pupils attended religion classes.

Sounds about right. Despite any assurance from these organizers that non-believers are not pressured or subjected to these views, we all know that this is untrue. There is no doubt that because it is promoted by schools that is violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Not only that, but they espouse a political view of the world that can only be described as Christian Nationalism.