A Christian boy band denies trying to win converts at a public elementary school assembly

The Davidson County Schools superintendent says he was "hoodwinked" by the 3 Heath Brothers

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Members of a Christian boy band insist they didn’t preach to children during a daytime assembly at a public school even though the district’s superintendent and everything the band has ever said publicly suggest otherwise.

One side is clearly lying and it’s the one that believes you need God to be a moral person.

I first wrote about this issue last month after hearing that the band had played a concert at Hasty Elementary School, part of North Carolina’s Davidson County Schools, on March 11. Without telling parents in advance that this would be a religious assembly, the school invited the “3 Heath Brothers” to sing nine songs to children with lyrics like “let Jesus use you where you are” and “loving God and loving people, that’s what it’s all about.”

The Heath Brothers. There are three of them. (Screenshot via YouTube)

It’s not like the content of their show should have been a surprise. The boys’ website describes them as a “Christian band” that’s marketed specifically to children:

… While they appeal to multi-generational audiences, their youthful performances have afforded them opportunities to make presentations in over 100 public schools where they have reached over 50,000 students. Recently, 3 Heath Brothers partnered with Keys For Kids, a Christian organization that provides free online daily devotionals for kids and teens.

And if that didn’t do the trick, maybe their GoFundMe campaign to sing in public schools so they can continue “sharing Jesus in a place where it's needed most” should have tipped someone off.

Normally, when Christian proselytizers try to sneak into public schools, there’s a method to get around legal restrictions. They might give a relatively secular inspirational speech during the day—Don’t do drugs! Make healthy decisions!—then invite the same children to come back at night with friends and family members to hear the same speech with Jesus-infused content at a local church. If people claim to be baptized at those events, they notch it as a tally mark toward their goal.

But that’s not what happened here.

In this case, a Christian band performed Christian songs at a public school while literally handing out Christian pamphlets to win converts for Christ. They said in an Instagram post last year that they typically perform “free of charge” at public schools.

According to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which sent a letter to the school district, a devotional handout from the ministry Keys for Kids—specifically made for their spring tour of public schools—was offered to attendees:

… This pamphlet includes explicitly religious stories with references to bible verses. For example, the booklet instructs students not to take revenge because “that’s not what Jesus wants you to do,” and instead they must “give your burden to Jesus, and trust Him to help you respond to that person with His love.”

Keys for Kids promotes this whole effort as a way to convert children, which is how they’re pitching it to donors:

… As the 3 Heath Brothers are invited into public schools, not only are they able to share their music with a message, but they're able to hand out Keys for Kids and Unlocked devotionals to any student who wants one.

That’s a kind of privilege that you will never see extended to non-Christian groups.

FFRF attorney Madeline Ziegler wrote that this wasn’t just illegal; it was unethical because of the peer pressure on kids to accept what they’re being shown:

… This religious assembly was particularly coercive given that students are a captive audience, and elementary students are particularly young. Elementary students cannot legally or practically be expected to dissent and leave what appeared to be a mandatory school assembly in order to resist their school violating their constitutional rights. Further, the school violated parents’ First Amendment right to determine which faith, if any, they teach their children to believe.

The District cannot allow non-school persons to treat schools as a recruiting ground for their religious mission. Public schools are not an appropriate place for outside adults to convince students to convert to Christianity…

…

Elementary school students are vulnerable to peer pressure and feel an intense need to fit in with their classmates and be liked... Hosting a mandatory religious assembly during the school day excludes and marginalizes students who are a part of the 49 percent of Generation Z who are religiously unaffiliated.

…

The District must investigate this situation and ensure its schools immediately refrain from inviting religious performers to proselytize students. The District should also consider reprimanding those staff members involved with allowing this school-sponsored religious worship concert to take place. At the very least, all District staff members must be reminded of their constitutional obligations as public school employees.

FFRF Legal Director Patrick Elliott added that “Forcing elementary students to sit through a Christian concert and handing them religious materials is a flagrant violation of the Establishment Clause.”

The district recently told FFRF and Americans United for Separation of Church (which sent its own letter) that they were lied to. They didn’t know this would be a religious event! They were told it would be an anti-bullying assembly! AU wrote back and said that’s ridiculous given that a basic Google search would have made the group’s intentions very clear: “Even the simplest possible vetting of this group should have raised enough red-flags to prevent this from happening.” AU added that a school board member, Nick Jarvis, may have been at the assembly and supported the group’s message, which is “completely unacceptable.”

Now the local media has caught wind of all this and the update is as damning as the original story.

WFAE’s James Farrell recently reported that the district still insists it had no idea the 3 Heath Brothers were going to perform a religious concert. Yes, they knew this was a Christian band, but the superintendent suggests the group lied to them:

Superintendent Greg Slate told WFAE on Friday he’d personally responded to both letters asserting the district did not intend to put on a religious event. Instead, Slate said, the 3 Heath Brothers misrepresented the program as an anti-bullying event with no Christian content, and that local faculty and administrators were caught off guard.

The event included anti-bullying content, Slate said, but it also included some Christian music and devotional materials. That should never have happened, Slate maintained.

“We were incredibly disappointed that we were, to use an old-timey term, we were somewhat hoodwinked, if you will, because of the misrepresentation of what occurred,” Slate said.

…

… Slate said staff was specifically shown materials that they believed would make up the content of the performance — and that this did not include religious content.

“That was not what was supposed to occur,” Slate maintained.

If that’s accurate, that means the band either explicitly lied about what they were going to do in order to sneak religious content into the school… or didn’t tell the whole truth about what they would do. (Perhaps they said in advance that they would give an anti-bullying speech, and they did, but they simply left out the part about how they would also mention Jesus. It’s just lying by omission.)

The band denies both of those theories:

In an email to WFAE, Nicholas Heath, of the 3 Heath Brothers, denied that there was any proselytizing or worship service at the event. He described the event as a “upbeat show including comedy, games and lots of fun music” and said it’s been misconstrued by advocacy organizations who were not in attendance. He noted the group is not associated with any church or denomination.

“We took this show very seriously, and we were extremely careful with the messaging we put in it,” Heath said. “We are a Christian band, but the show we performed at Hasty Elementary School was totally different than our normal concerts. We did not proselytize in this show nor did we hold any kind of worship service.”

Is singing songs about Jesus proselytizing? Is handing out pamphlets proselytizing? It’s possible the band did both of those things and more but don’t believe they crossed a line because they didn’t go so far as to perform baptisms onstage. If that’s the case, the band is still wrong and the district should have stopped this from happening.

But there’s no reason to give either side the benefit of the doubt because it contradicts everything the group has said publicly. Again, their website brags about winning converts through public school concerts. Keys for Kids created pamphlets so that kids at these assemblies could learn about Jesus. The group’s GoFundMe asked donors for money specifically so they could proselytize.

Oh wait. About that GoFundMe.

It used to say “… Your gift will help us provide hope and love to students, teachers, and families. Sharing Jesus in a place where it's needed most.”

That sentence about Jesus has now been removed without explanation:

It’s like they’re trying to destroy the evidence of what they’re doing in real time while everyone watches. But they’re very bad at it.

The good news is that the school district seems to understand the problem and promises to not let it happen again. They never should have let this band perform given its history of lying in order to target children—no school district is under any obligation to say yes to outside groups wanting students’ attention. But even if you can’t believe the district didn’t know proselytizing would happen, at least they seem to understand it shouldn’t have happened. Hopefully they’ll vet these groups more carefully in the future.

That’s especially true when we’re talking about groups like these that have a history of lying about their intentions in order to gain access to public schools.

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