What role does religion play in American society and schools?

Over 200 years after the Constitution was amended to separate church and state, the role of religion in American society, and the role that the government should play in religion is still in question. As religious advocates struggle to keep at least some religion in public schools, they are also bringing into question the idea of teaching intelligent design or the Theory of Evolution when these are, as they say, simply theories14.

• When the amendments to the Constitution were written, almost everybody in the United States was Christian
• Most people saw the First Amendment--"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" 4--as being an insult to the church and that "the injury done to the cause of Christ ...was irreparable" as the churches were "cut...loose from dependence on state support [and thrown] wholly on their own resources and on God"11