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The decisions were greeted with relief by school officials and disappointment by Fundamentalists. "If we continue pursuing change," said Alabama Plaintiff Douglas Smith, undaunted, "things may swing back the other way." Appeals to the Supreme Court are planned. But only two months ago the high court ruled 7 to 2 that Louisiana could not require public schools to teach "creation science." With last week's two new losses, the Fundamentalist strategy of using constitutional cases to restore religion to the school curriculum looks to be in tatters. "These two are the last of the coordinated and systematic attacks by a politicized Fundamentalist movement," said Ira Glasser of the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped win the Alabama case. "There aren't a large number of avenues open to them," agreed Law Professor Carl Esbeck of the University of Missouri at Columbia.
But Fundamentalists may have made one enduring point. The Alabama case helped dramatize the extent to which many textbooks have been purged not merely of religious dogma but also of references to the role of religion in history. "The textbook manufacturers are going to be calling in consultants to see what they should be doing about this," predicted Law Professor Michael McConnell of the University of Chicago. "The consequence is going to be a more balanced approach." Deciding how to teach the historical facts of religion without promoting its tenets is a delicate task. Nonetheless, it is one that a nation intent on smartening up its schoolbooks may have to tackle.