The United States enters a new century with its citizens deeply divided, sometimes confused, and often angry about their differing opinions about the proper place of religion in the public schools of the nation and the current legal mandates regarding the relationship of religion and public education. Different citizens often are unhappy in different ways. But one thing is very clear: a consensus does not exist. And a thoughtful observer can be relatively certain that battles about church and state, and more specifically about religion in the schools, are going to be characteristic of the first decades of the new millennium as they have been for the last two centuries. - Introduction.