The anti–Project Blitz: How the KPOP Act fights Christian Nationalism in public schools

A new wave of secular legislation aims to keep prayer, proselytizing, and religious pressure out of classrooms—while protecting everyone's rights

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Do you remember Project Blitz?

Years before Project 2025 became the playbook for conservatives, Project Blitz highlighted the conservative Christian agenda and offered lawmakers draft bills they could submit in their own legislatures to force banners reading “In God We Trust” to go up in public schools, and get Bible classes taught in school districts, and allow health care providers to deny service based on their religious bigotry.

As Americans United for Separation of Church and State explained in 2020, Project Blitz and its “21 model bills” were part of a “coordinated national effort working to codify the U.S. as a Christian nation.”

I can’t stress the importance of those draft bills. Lawmakers who shared their views didn’t have to do any real work. The bills had been written specifically to get around predicted legal challenges while still working toward overall theocratic goals. And by introducing so many pieces of legislation so quickly—the blitz!—organizers knew they wouldn’t all get passed, but if some of them did, it would still be a victory.

To be clear, it’s not unusual for advocacy groups to write draft legislation, but rarely had it been so coordinated and so bad for the country.

What would it look like if people who actually cared about civil rights and religious freedom and public education did something similar?

We’re finally getting an answer thanks to the Secular Coalition for America. The group recently announced a “secular bill of rights” for students that would require public schools to remain neutral with regards to religion. They brought together experts from American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) to draft legislation that could be filed as quickly as possible by legislative allies.

And guess what? That’s already happening.

The brilliantly named Keep Proselytizing Out of Public Schools (KPOP) Act aims to help students in the following ways:

• Protects students from school-sponsored prayer, worship or religious displays.

• Keeps religion out of classrooms, assemblies and official school events.

• Preserves students’ full rights to personal religious expression.

• Gives educators clear, enforceable rules — reducing lawsuits and confusion.

• Ensures every student belongs, regardless of faith or nonbelief.

The legislation wouldn’t ban prayer, religious clubs, wearing religious symbols, or do any of the things religious zealots love to complain about. It would merely strengthen what the Constitution already says.

That doesn’t mean conservative Christians won’t complain. For example, the prohibition on school-sponsored religious displays in public schools is already being challenged by Christians who claim forcing Ten Commandments posters to go up in classrooms is historical rather than religious. (They’re lying.) The ban on school-sponsored religious teaching, like Creationism or Intelligent Design, has been challenged on grounds that it limits academic freedom. And then, of course, there’s an open question of what counts as “proselytizing” or “religious activities.” We’ve sometimes seen school districts hold assemblies urging students not to do drugs that include an indirect call for those students to go to church. At what point does it all cross the line?

Still, even if conservative Christians might challenge some of these provisions, they’ve been doing that already—and losing repeatedly. This draft legislation simply clarifies the obvious in order to give lawmakers and school officials better tools for how to handle these situations. It doesn’t go beyond what courts have already said. It aims to protect whatever parts of the wall of separation are still there.

And here’s the best part: Lawmakers in three states have already started to advance this legislation.

In Vermont, Reps. Monique Priestley and Laura Sibilia have introduced H. 705.

In Kansas, Reps. Heather Meyer, Melissa Oropeza, and Susan Ruiz have introduced House Bill 2431. (Sen. Silas Miller has introduced the similar Senate Bill 424 in the other chamber.)

In Oklahoma, Rep. Michelle McCane has introduced HB 3488.

Sadly, none of them use the KPOP labeling—cowards!—choosing instead to refer to it as the “Student Secular Bill of Rights.” No matter, though, because the bills accomplish the same things. While filing the bills doesn’t mean they’re going to pass, they keep these issues front and center because they shouldn’t be controversial. If Republicans oppose them, it gives Democrats and the media good reason to question whether their loyalties are to their churches or to the Constitution.

That’s why these bills are worth sponsoring.

“Public schools exist to educate, not indoctrinate in religion,” comments FFRF Action Fund President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The KPOP Act, or Student Secular Bill of Rights, makes clear that the captive audience of students of all religious faiths or none at all, have the right to attend school without religious pressure, coercion or exclusion. And crucially, these protections will stand regardless of the whims of the U.S. Supreme Court or any lower federal courts regarding the Establishment Clause.”

To help with the bills’ advancement, the FFRF Action Fund has released a toolkit that offers scripts constituents can use when calling their representatives to tell them to get on board with these bills. The toolkit also includes draft letters-to-the-editor, language to use on social media, and same emails they can send to school board members who may want to implement similar policies even if their lawmakers don’t pass these bills.

All I can say is: It’s about damn time. This is a long-overdue counteroffensive. For years, we’ve seen conservative Christian legal strategists refine this pipeline: write the bills, distribute them nationally, dare opponents to challenge them, and shift the culture one statute at a time.

The KPOP Act shows how defenders of church–state separation are finally playing on the same field, taking this strategy seriously. It’s not just symbolic resistance; it’s strengthening our constitutional infrastructure at a time when the Establishment Clause is under constant attack. It’s also a reminder that religious neutrality doesn’t preserve itself. It needs to be explicitly codified and defended—because right-wing activists sure as hell don’t care about defending the Constitution.

These bills will inevitably be challenged or attacked or voted against. But remember that they’re not really creating new laws or restricting the rights of religious people to do what they’re already allowed to do. They simply reaffirm what’s already permitted.

Public schools can’t sponsor prayer. They can’t endorse religious doctrine. They can’t privilege one faith over others or religion over non-religion. Students can (and always have been allowed to) pray, gather, and worship. This legislation simply makes life easier for educators so they don’t have to guess where the line is drawn. If anything, these bills reduce litigation by giving school officials more clear policies.

And though conservative Christians will eventually complain about all this, there’s a simple question they should answer: What exactly do they think they’re losing if these bills are passed? They’re not losing the right to pray, or evangelize privately, or form student religious groups.

They just can’t use public schools to advance their theology—which is already the law though we see it challenged anyway. In a country that takes religious neutrality seriously, none of this would be considered persecution. But as we know by now, conservative Christians act like neutrality is oppression because they always demand special treatment under the law.

These bills are nothing more than good governance. They create consistency across school districts while protecting administrators from costly legal exposure. They insulate students’ rights from fluctuating court interpretations. And they make clear that public education isn’t meant to advance a sectarian agenda.

More broadly speaking, let’s hope these bills are just a start. After years of watching Christian Nationalists get their draft bills in the hands of lawmakers who only care about appeasing their conservative base no matter the cost, it’s about time we see supporters of religious liberty reacting in a smarter way. More states should introduce and advance these measures. And there’s no reason Republican lawmakers can’t get on board either.

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