“Evolution is a great theory, but it is flawed … There are alternatives. Children need to hear them. We can’t ignore that our nation is based on Christianity — not science.”

— Kathy Martin, 59, a member of Kansas’s state board of education and a former science and elementary school teacher, who is presiding over the board’s recent inquiry into the role that evolution should play in the science curriculum of the Kansas public schools. Martin, who makes no attempt to hide her religious affiliation, has found many like-minded individuals, and Kansas is not the only state engaged in the debate over the legitimacy of teaching evolution; Ohio has already passed a measure guaranteeing that teachers may, in their classes, challenge the theory of evolution. Far from adhering to the notion of the separation of church and state, Martin and those who are on her intellectual and spiritual horizon are aggressively, legally, and insistently wedging the presence of the church in the ostensibly secular state.

Mimi Hanaoka