This phenomenological study provides insight into the experiences of public-school board directors as they experience, cognitively process, and respond to religious-based reasoning during deliberations on controversial issues while serving in their elected role at school board meetings. Understanding how elected public-school district directors experience, think, feel about, and may be influenced by religious-based reasoning is relevant to revealing the internal cognitive, decision-making processes and the resulting actions from those processes. This study explores and describes how religious-based reasoning is experienced and cognitively processed in the minds of school board directors as well as the influence it may have on their resulting decision-making. The following was the overall guiding research question: How do democratically elected public-school board directors experience, cognitively process, and respond to religious-based reasoning in public deliberations on controversial issues at school board meetings? The design for this study focused on interviewing school directors throughout public-school districts in Lancaster and York County, Pennsylvania, that were purposefully identified for having recently engaged in public discussions on one or more controversial issues that involved religious-based reasoning. Interview data collected from school board directors was the primary data source for this research study. The interview data was analyzed, coded, and themed using conceptual and In Vivo coding prior to being thematically coded during a multi-cycle data analysis process to reveal the findings. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]