Amid the debate over critical race theory, one organization has found a way to get the Bible into Pennsylvania public schools.
“Bible2School is a 40-year-old nonprofit organization, and we equip parents, moms, dads, grandparents to teach the Bible to public school kids during their school day — that means typically over lunch and recess,” CEO Kori Pennypacker said.
Kids are bused to churches or other locations during these periods to learn Bible lessons before heading back to their public school classroom. “It’s amazing, because most of the kids we reach in the public schools have no church at home,” she said “There’s a very high percentage, over 60 percent of our kids, that no church home. So we’re teaching them about Jesus for the very first time, many times.”
Bible2School works within existing public school guidelines.
“There is something called the release time court rulings, and this was from back in 1914, when the Bible actually used to be read in school,” Pennypacker said. “Everybody had one. And then, around that time period,, they took the Bible out of school, but they had these release time rulings that said you can release kids from school, maybe one hour a day. They have to be offsite; they have to have parental permission and it has to cost a taxpayer no money.”
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That allows Bible2School to make a positive impact in the lives of around 1,800 kids in 35 schools across the state. Volunteer Erica Ringler said the program helped reinforce a biblical worldview for her own children.
“My husband and I just loved the fact that there were other Christian, caring adults that were pouring into our kids,” she said. “You know, parenting is really hard, and as they get older, just knowing that there were other adults that were reinforcing the same truths that we were teaching at home and that they were hearing that again at church and at Bible2School.”
Pennypacker said training is expanding to churches outside of Pennsylvania on how to launch Bible2School.
“We’re teaching other people how to do this around the country, so we are teaching moms and dads to build teams,” she said. “It’s a community approach in their school district. We teach them how we have curriculum. We have everything they need. We have a toolbox. We have everything they need, and we teach them how to do this in their own school district.”
–Lee Hartman | Metro Voice