Another State Not Celebrating Sin in June, Parents Lose Supreme Court Case, Romans 8

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:01]Today is Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026. This is Quick Start from CBN News. I'm Dan Andros. Arkansas is celebrating something much different and better this June. We'll have that top story and more on today's podcast where we bring you news from a Christian perspective. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a rating. You can always email us your thoughts. Quick start podcast at CBN.org. Joining me today to get through all the news of the day, CBN's Billy Hollowell and Treones Phillips. On the focus story, new data sheds light on religion and AI. We might have some definitive proof that AI actually is anti- religion. We have that coming up here in just a minute.

[00:00:41]>> All right, details on that in just a moment. Looking forward to that. On the main thing, the CEO of a Christian organization that teaches the Bible to kids during the public school day celebrating a big legal victory. We'll have the details coming up on the main thing. Right now, I want to tell you about our sponsor of this podcast episode and it's Christian Solidarity International and they are the hands and feet of Jesus uh for persecuted Christians around the globe. And we just had on the podcast yesterday talking about how the Trump administration has broke the news there that they have been militarily helping out and taking out ISIS terrorists because that is what we have seen happening in Nigeria where it's just a shocking level of persecution happening. Well, Christian Solidarity International, they're on the ground. They're building those relationships. They're helping. When you see those headlines and you see people being taken and abducted or even killed and then the families are devastated and the communities are devastated, Christian Solidarity is assisting on the ground physically. They're helping spiritually as well. But among those believers there who are experiencing these horrible, horrible hardships simply because of their faith. If you want to walk alongside those efforts, you can do it. CSI-Sa.org/quickstart.

[00:02:00]You go to csi usa.org/quickstart and you can help in those efforts to help those persecuted Christians in need.

[00:02:13]Go to the news in 90 seconds now and the US Supreme Court has declined to hear a case involving a California school district that wanted to require schools to notify parents if a student requested a different name, pronouns, gender identity, or access to opposite sex facilities. The case stemmed from the Rockland Unified School District's 2023 effort to adopt a parental notification policy. By refusing to take the case, the Supreme Court leaves that ruling in place, meaning the district cannot enforce the notification policy. Justice is offered no explanation for the decision. And Arkansas is joining Tennessee and Alabama in promoting a different message this June with Governor Sarah Huckabe Sanders declaring June 2026 Fidelity Month and urging residents to renew their commitment to God, family, community, and country.

[00:03:13]Sanders proclamation argues that faith, virtue, responsibility, and strong families are essential to a healthy society. The move comes as Pride Month kicks off their celebrations nationwide and reflects a growing trend among Republican le states to emphasize traditional values instead during June.

[00:03:36]Those are just some of today's top headlines. You can check out more stories over at cbnnews.com. And guys, you got to wonder at what point is the Pride Month thing going to be a detriment to all these organizations. I still see, you know, because I follow my favorite sports teams and things like that and I still see them some of them changing over to the rainbow flag here in June. A couple of them done. We'll see if they keep doing it for the entire month because at what point does this backfire because people are tired of it?

[00:04:05]It's an entire month. Regardless of what you think of this, and I would assume most Christians are not really in favor of Pride Month, but it's an entire month. There's almost nothing that is celebrated for an entire month. I mean, we just have Memorial Day and we have Veterans Day. You would think that the troops would be something that is very unifying across the country. And you'd think maybe if anything gets a month, it's something like that where we do have a lot of universal agreement and respect for that thing. But here we are in June and some companies are still doing it. We'll see how long they decide to keep this going.

[00:04:38]>> Yeah. No, I mean, look, I think that the fact that we have people willing to, you know, create an entire month now for something positive, which is fidelity and turning people back to their faith and back to God. That's what we should be if we're going to celebrate anything for a month, that's what we should be celebrating. You know, I think that I do think people are tired of being strong armed into thinking or believing something. It's sort of like everybody's looking around at each other like this is crazy, but nobody's willing to say it. And I think for the last couple years, people have been willing to start saying that. Look, to each their own. In America, you have the freedom to do what you want. Even if it's in something that's unbiblical or untrue, you have that freedom to do it. But to force everybody to come alongside you in this mass celebration that you can't even go to the bank or go to the grocery store without being inundated with it, that just feels weird. And so I think we have moved to a place where more people than before are uncomfortable with that. So I'm curious to see to your point, Dan, how much more of this will go on before more people get fed up.

[00:05:35]>> I think a lot of it is just that we have been repeatedly gaslit into believing that this is the norm. Like the default setting should be that everybody is fully embracing LGBTQIA plus whatever new letters are added each year. and that if you don't accept that that you're you're kind of the odd one out. But in in actuality, not only does scripture uh make clear what the the God's design is, but also if you look at thriving and flourishing societies, history is a pretty good indicator of what works well and doesn't work well.

[00:06:10]Um, so it's actually not the norm over all of human history to embrace all of these uh different and various sexual identities because it is what you called it earlier, Dan. It's just sin. Now, does that mean that we are not compassionate and are hateful toward people who are blind to that? No, of course we're not. We're going to say the truth boldly and clearly, but we're going to do so in love and hopefully come alongside and say, "Look, I'm just as much a sinner as you are, but this is not God's design." Um, and I I think that we can do both of those things. I can be loving and I can also be truthful. And I think a a big part of what people are waking up to now is realizing, hey, this actually it's not the default to accept and embrace all of these things. And it doesn't have to be.

[00:06:57]so we don't have to continue to accept it.

[00:07:00]>> Yeah, absolutely. Well, uh I mean something we're all going to have to navigate obviously, but we'll see if the uh support for that celebration is dwindling or not this uh month in 2026.

[00:07:12]All right, we're going to go to the focus story now. And as we mentioned there a moment ago, there's new data looking at what AI is doing and how it's relating to different topics on uh when when topics that a lot of people would think are normally kind of connected to faith. So what's going on here?

[00:07:29]>> Yeah, this is a fascinating new bit of of research. So, it's a multi-university university consortium that was just released and it reveals that AI systems have actually systematically pushed aside faith-based religious perspectives even on issues where it would be kind of the norm in conversation for you to like if you and I were having a conversation with one another, religion would just naturally come up as as a piece of the conversation. But this new data is showing that not only does AI generally not bring up religion, but in conversations where it makes the most sense to bring up religion, it seems to be kind of intentionally absent from the conversation. And so uh what the data found is that Americans expected according to this research they expected religion to appear in answers to moral and life questions 45 to 59% of the time depending on the specific topic. But AI models on those questions where Americans expected a faith-based answer, AI models only mentioned religion five to 16% of the time. And then on questions involving family, parenting, forgiveness, again, three topics that religion very often comes into the equation. People responded in the survey expected faith-based answers 55% of the time. Again, AI models only mentioned faith or religion in any way 10% of the time. And then perhaps most obviously on ethics questions, questions about morality. Clearly, that's an easy one that you would think religion would factor in or faith would factor in. Uh, respondents to the survey said that they expected a faith-based answer 45% of the time, but AI models only mention faith a measily 5% of the time. So, I think this new data, one of the most fascinating things about it is it does, as I said at the top of the podcast, it gives us a a pretty clear picture that, you know, we're not just making this up. It is pretty clear that AI models generally speaking, I'm not going to say every single one of them, but painting in generalities, they do seemingly intentionally exclude faith-based information.

[00:09:45]>> And what are researchers saying about these results?

[00:09:48]>> So, a computer science professor at Brigham Young University, David Winggate, he said that the studies show that AI systems encourage users to discuss life challenges with parents and with teachers, with friends, and even with therapists. if you're if the the person engaging with the AI acknowledges that they're currently seeing a counselor and those things are all fine.

[00:10:08]Um, but he said what is very notably absent and as believers we should take issue with is the fact that it's specifically again where it's lowhanging fruit. It would seem obvious in addition to maybe talking about this with a counselor or talking about this with a trusted friend, colleague or or parent, maybe you should talk about with this with your pastor or your rabbi. And he said those two uh individuals, the the spiritual leaders were intentionally left out when it should be an obvious suggestion from an AI model.

[00:10:39]>> Yeah. And when we look at these topics and we talked recently on this podcast as well about, you know, how Christians should be using AI and you know, I'm listening to you go through the details on this story and and again that's the question that comes up into my mind. And I really hope that Christians are not seeking answers to deeper meaning questions that you should be, like you said, talking to your pastor about. You should be talking to other people with about it. Not a bot that's just, you know, accumulating data and then just coming up with responses based on all these all the information it has and all the words that it has and the articles that have been written and things of that nature can be useful in some ways.

[00:11:19]But it it certainly seems like when you try to rely on this, you're going to be getting in some ways very very flawed information, especially when you're looking at topics of morality. And you know, the only way around that is really like training it and all that. And it's like, why bother going through all that hassle when we've got a try tried and true method through scripture, through pastors, through people who have really studied this stuff and know it instead of having to just lean on AI to try to give us, you know, some answers.

[00:11:52]>> Yeah, it's the data I think is uh is super interesting. Billy, I just want to mention this one other thing before you come in. One of the other things that the researchers noted is that obviously and I think that you know I'm not looking at this with rosecolored glasses. I realize that not everybody using AI or seeking out answers to life's questions from AI is coming at it from a biblical perspective. Not everybody is a Christian. So I understand that not every single answer from an AI model is going to be a Bible verse or a quote from a a pastor or religious advice. But the researchers noted that the in seemingly intentional lack of any reference to faith at large that suggests that the default should be there is no faith. That there is there is no there is no religious truth.

[00:12:42]There's no objective truth. There's no moral guide that you should look to. And that should be problematic to everybody to suggest that there that religion, faith, and certainly scripture should be absent from the conversation entirely.

[00:12:56]That is alarming. And we've we've had a lot of conversations, Dan, to your point about should you really be going as a believer to an AI model to discuss these moral and ethical questions about life.

[00:13:08]And we've talked to, you know, people like Pastor Jack Hibbs and Alex McFarland. And you can check those conversations out on our our CBN News YouTube channel. And both of them, they're not burying their heads in the sand. They know AI is useful, but they say we need to be practicing some pretty significant discernment in how we engage with these kinds of tools.

[00:13:27]>> I mean, I second all of it. We have to be careful with it. Also, AI is changing so fast that it's hard even with this data. Like, how long is this going to actually be what it is? Is it going to get better? Is it going to get worse? I mean, the the algorithms, all of it. I guess algorithms isn't the right word.

[00:13:39]The programming is shifting and changing so fast. So, it'll be interesting to see in two years. what are our thoughts on this? But the point is we shouldn't be just kind of giving over all of our faith to a machine. I mean, we shouldn't be relying on the machine. Now, I think it's great to say to the machine, hey, what Bible verses speak on this topic?

[00:13:57]And then you double check them, right?

[00:13:58]Or, hey, what you know, when you when you look at the Bible, how does it deal with this particular subject matter? And then again, put that through like take it with a but we got to be very careful how we approach all of it.

[00:14:09]>> Yeah, we really do. And um and again like there's a lot of training that goes involved if you really want to actually use AI to speed some things up like train it about all the source material that you you know dump in all the source material that you actually utilize and that you find very much um trustworthy and have it use that. The more data you give it the better. And if you leave it to its own devices, it certainly is going to go in a terrible direction because almost certainly all the designers behind this thing, their default position is far-left atheism is essentially where most of those are going to be landing. So final thoughts on this one, Trey?

[00:14:48]>> Yeah, look, I I'm not trying to suggest that artificial intelligence and AI is 100% bad or 100% good. I think it's it's the same as anything else that we've dealt with as human beings. Even going back to the garden, we are drawn to knowledge. We just want vast levels of of knowledge. And if we continue to seek it in our own strength, it's going to be completely absent of wisdom. And whether you're getting it from an AI model, you're getting it from a friend, or you're conjuring it up in your own head, if you're not seeking the source of true wisdom, which is God, uh then you're going to be left lacking. Right? So I I think that this is the same as any other conversation. It's just the difference is AI is moving at break neck speed that it's so accessible to us that it seems so appealing that I think it's easy to forget that we need to pause. We need to consider these things and we need to go to God first. Go to scripture first when we're dealing with the difficult questions of life. It doesn't mean we can't use AI. We just need to be wise.

[00:15:49]>> All right. Uh definitely good food for thought and I appreciate you bringing that one to the podcast today. All right. Hey, we are going to go to the main thing now and the CEO of a Christian organization that teaches the Bible to kids during the public school day. They're celebrating a recent legal victory against a school district they believe was unfairly uh restricting his group's efforts. Joel Penton of Lifewise Academy joined Billy for today's main thing to discuss.

[00:16:24]Likewise, your organization has been embroiled in a little bit of a controversy with Everett, Washington, the school district there. It's a case that has been ongoing. You have accused the school district of basically targeting Lifewise. Um, now for those who don't know, we're going to get into the victory and what's been happening in the courts with the injunction that we'll talk about, the preliminary injunction, but for those who don't know the backstory, what is it that led to this dispute?

[00:16:49]>> Yeah. So, thank you, Billy, and thanks for the opportunity again to share. So Lifewise, we provide Bible education for public school students during school hours. We take kids under releasing.

[00:17:03]We take kids off school property during the school day, teach them a Bible lesson, and bring them uh back to school. It's usually at a church. It's usually for an hour a week or so. And we have a program in Everett, Washington that launched a couple years ago and was going incredibly well. Dozens of families involved, making a big impact on those kids and the community.

[00:17:21]However, there were some who, I guess you could say, wanted to stir up trouble. And we have those who opposed our efforts because we, as you can imagine, we teach the Bible. And um a member of the school board uh I guess took in this this criticism and owned it. And uh we started seeing policies come down that were specifically targeting us and discriminating against our program. And as simple as the community fairs where every organization that serves students would come together to kind of sign kids up and promote what they do to students, all of a sudden we were not allowed to be there anymore.

[00:18:02]Um, also permission slips. Most organizations, in fact, all organizations when a a student is signed up to take a class or be a part of a club, they sign up one time per seme per semester or one time per year. All of a sudden, for Lifewise in particular, parents had to sign up every single week, >> which is unheard of. I mean, that's not something I mean, you're a parent. I'm a parent. If you're coming to me every week asking me to sign something, I'm going to get pretty annoyed by it.

[00:18:33]>> Yeah. And it's Well, it's you're going to be discouraged from doing it. In fact, it's going to effectively shut down your interest if you have to go into the school office every single week to sign your kid out for this class that lasts all semester. So, that was one.

[00:18:47]Did you see um these policies at all while they were in effect? Were they impacting anything in the school in terms of life-wise your programming at all?

[00:18:55]>> Oh, absolutely. I mean, they they affected us and our the parents who were participating. I mean, they made a big impact. And then the most really comical one was that they passed a policy that if children brought anything back from Lifewise, whether it be a worksheet or whether it be a Bible, because that's what we study at Lifewise, it had to come back in sealed envelopes so that other kids couldn't see them. And so if a child wanted to read their Lifewise Bible during study hall or during a free reading time, they wouldn't be allowed to do so. They could read Harry Potter, but they wouldn't be able to read the Bible. And so these were the policies that came down and we it was transparently discriminatory and to us transparently unconstitutional. And so we went to the school and said, "Hey, you know, you really can't have policies like this. This is this isn't fair. This is um you know, discriminatory." But they they were not responsive to that.

[00:19:52]And so then we got some religious liberty attorneys involved. First, we just sent them information and we wanted to be able for them to be able to keep it quiet because we didn't want them to, you know, have egg on their face. And we said, "Hey, could you just reverse these policies? We're not asking for anything but to be treated fairly." And in response to us sending that letter quietly, one of their schoolboard members at a schoolboard meeting into the microphone said that he had been accused of holding animus toward LifeWise Academy, which you can't. it's illegal to hold animus toward a religious group and then make policies, you know, against them. And he said, I want everyone to be very clear. I do hold animus toward Lifewise Academy. And then had some very choice words to say about it. At which point we realized we're going to have to get the courts involved. And so we did file a suit and we received a court date and all that.

[00:20:46]We thought it was going to be this long, long drawn out process, but we were so excited and it just Yeah. just joyful to see that we received a preliminary injunction and so essentially all of those policies had to be reversed.

[00:21:00]>> Yeah. Talk about that. So you get this preliminary injunction from the judge here and those policies are reversed.

[00:21:06]What does that mean exactly and what comes next now legally? Is that the final straw or is there more to come?

[00:21:13]>> No, there's more to come. And so with this preliminary injunction, there's still the court date. There's still the ultimate judgment to come. But what it does mean is that there's enough evidence and whatnot that the court said the school you need to go ahead at least until then you need to reverse a lot of these policies. And so it's not completely exhaustive. For example, the um the Bible's being covered up. Well, it's one parent who brought the the lawsuit. you know, we we um advised and we were, you know, gave um not advice, but we gave information and we, you know, we were um willing to be involved in any way that would be helpful. But it was a parent in particular who brought the lawsuit about their child. And so, as it relates to their child, all those policies are reversed, including the one about the the Bible being sealed up.

[00:22:01]That child's now able to uh read in class. But we do anticipate as the case progresses that it will extend to the entire student body.

[00:22:12]>> So okay. So this is this is very interesting. Now obviously at the end of the day you want to see victory here because if you don't like let's say the court let's say and I and I think obviously with the preliminary injunction it seems to send a sign that it believes that the court thinks this was wrong right in some way. But let's say you were to lose. Would you continue fighting this battle? What would you do?

[00:22:34]What would your next step be? You know, you lose this court battle. What would you do next?

[00:22:38]>> Yeah, that's a really good question and I don't know if I can even answer that question. I think that would ultimately be up to the the family that brought the suit as well as there'd be great conversation with our religious liberty attorneys. Um but at the end of the day, we we have every expectation that we will be victorious even at this um initial level.

[00:22:58]>> Yeah. Well, and we'll we'll continue to cover this as it unfolds. for those who want to find out more about LifeWise. I mean, one of the things about this when this kind of thing happens, your organization gets out into the headlines, right? So, it's like you're in the middle of this thing, you have to deal with it, but you have this mission of educating public school kids, giving them a chance to hear the gospel. You know, what where can people go if they want to get more information on what you guys do?

[00:23:20]>> Yeah. No, you're exactly right. I mean, we do not go looking for these fights.

[00:23:23]We we do not go looking for controversy, but we are finding that every time that happens, um more people hear about Lifewise, and so we're grateful we get opportunities like this to uh to share.

[00:23:33]And so, yeah, I we would love to work with anybody who has interest in seeing their local public school students reach with the word of God to receive Bible education during school hours. You can learn about how at lifewise.org.

[00:23:45]In fact, you can look up any school district in the nation at lifewise.org to see, is there already a program in your area? Is there already interest? Is there already a planning team coming together? There's this whole 10-step process to get one started. Find out where your community is in that process at lif.org.

[00:24:07]And uh yeah, we'd love to link arms.

[00:24:10]>> All right. Appreciate that conversation there. And that is going to leave us with time on the podcast today for one last thing.

[00:24:16]>> We've got Romans 8:28. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to his purpose. That's Romans 8:28.

[00:24:26]Powerful reminder that when we're in God, all things, no matter whether they're good or bad, they all work together for good. And that's just an important piece we can get in navigating life's challenges.

[00:24:36]>> Yeah. Super important reminder to see God in all things and to know that as a Christian, it's going to work out for his glory and for our good.

[00:24:43]>> Amen. And amen. Good spot to leave it on this edition of the Quick Start podcast.

[00:24:47]As always, get yourself on over to cbnnews.com, faithwire.com for more news from a Christian perspective. And if you want to be the hands and feet of Jesus to persecuted Christians in need, Christian Solidarity International, csi-usa.org.

[00:25:05]God bless. See you back here for more tomorrow.