From Shorto's article: "Jefferson said it was not the place of the President to involve himself in religion."

The author and New York Times Magazine writer Russell Shorto is one of those blessed media people who quietly and consistently does excellent work. His 2005 New York history, The Island at the Center of the World is a brilliant book.

Shorto has an insightful piece, How Christian Were the Founders?, in this week’ Sunday Times Magazine. It looks at how Christian Conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education have used the purchasing power of a $22 billion education fund to pressure publishing companies into altering the language and ideas of the nation’s textbooks. Shorto also takes a balanced look at whether our Founding Fathers did indeed intend America as a Christian nation. An excerpt from the piece about one instance where the Board prevailed in changing textbook language:

“To give an illustration simultaneously of the power of ideology and Texas’ influence, [textbook publishing veteran] Tom Barber told me that when he led the social-studies division at Prentice Hall, one conservative member of the board told him that the 12th-grade book, ‘Magruder’s American Government,’ would not be approved because it repeatedly referred to the U.S. Constitution as a ‘living’ document. ‘That book is probably the most famous textbook in American history,’ Barber says. ‘It’s been around since World War I, is updated every year and it had invented the term ‘living Constitution,’ which has been there since the 1950s. But the social conservatives didn’t like its sense of flexibility. They insisted at the last minute that the wording change to ‘enduring.’ Prentice Hall agreed to the change, and ever since the book–which Barber estimates controlled 60 or 65 percent of the market nationally–calls it the ‘enduring Constitution.'”