Off School Property Fact Check

Off School Property is a 2025 documentary produced and funded by Lifewise Academy that tries to make a case for kids in public schools to be taught the Bible during the school day. It is a slickly made infomercial for the well funded Released Time Religious Instruction provider. The film was shown in 700 theaters around the country on October 23, 2025. Secular Left bought a ticket and on this page and in future podcast episodes we will fact check the movie. Information shown in the film will be in a grey box and the facts are noted with the word “fact”.

“Education became state run. And the rise of science and secularism began to put pressure on the state to remove any sign of religion from the public school day. Eventually, a series of lawsuits in the mid 1900s sealed the deal. One famous atheist, Madeline Marie O’Hair, brought the final case to the Supreme Court, officially banning Bible reading and prayer in public schools. And her reasoning? Separation of church and state.”

Fact: The US Supreme Court case Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) didn’t remove any sign of religion from the public school day nor did it ban Bible reading or prayer in public schools. That is a myth carried on by extremists who want to indoctrinate children.

“The Court explicitly upheld Engel v. Vitale, in which the Court ruled that a school’s sanctioning of a prayer violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The Abington court held that in organizing Bible reading, the school was conducting “a religious exercise,” and “that cannot be done without violating the ‘neutrality’ required of the State by the balance of power between individual, church, and state that has been struck by the First Amendment” (374 U.S. 203 (1963)).”

The court ruled that state mandated prayer and Bible reading was a violation of the 1st amendment of the children and their parents because the state was dictating what the prayers were and what Bible to read and the children were not free to leave.

Fact: One of the people who brought one of the cases combined into Abington School District v. Schempp was Madalyn Murray O’Hair – not Madalyn Marie O”Hair – who the narrator misnames twice. O’Hair did found American Atheists and she was labeled the most hated woman in American but Ellery Schempp, the namesake of the case, was a Unitarian. Most church and state cases have been brought by religious people not atheists. Schempp sued his school after being disciplined for trying to read the Quran.

Fact: Children can read Bibles and pray in public schools as long as they aren’t being disruptive or trying to convert their classmates. In some states, like Ohio, they can use religion for some of their school work like book reports or art projects.

But did these ideas have to come from the Bible? Aren’t these things we’re calling biblical values just common sense ideas? These were not common sense ideas. Bible scholars had communicated to that generation of founding fathers the truth about human equality and the truth about human rights. Intellectual fall of America began on July 4th, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence said that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Jefferson had actually drafted we hold these truths to be sacred. These are revealed truth, that all men are created equal because it was never self-evident to America in 1776 that slaves and slave owners are equal. It was never self-evident that male and female are equal. This was revealed truth that both men and women are created in God’s image. Even today, if you go and interview average high school student in the public school in America, Is it self-evident to you that all men are created? All intelligent students will say created. Nobody’s created

FACT: The founders were nominally religious. They were gentlemen. They owned property. They were wealthy. They believed they gained their morality through their education. The founders, like Jefferson, believed religion was for people of lesser means as a substitute for morality to control the rabble – much like Karl Marx wrote in the 1840s that religion was the opium of the people used as a tool of the ruling class to maintain power and reproduce inequality. They justify the principles of capitalism and prevent the proletariat revolution.

FACT: The Declaration of Independence went against God and the Bible as revolution wasn’t justified in Christianity if God ordained a government. People were expected to obey. That’s why some flowery religious language was used as window dressing.

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