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"A.D. has been around a long time, and the question is why is it being replaced now, in the early 21st century?" he said. "It's not unconnected to secularism in the society."

Contention over the larger issue of religion's place in Kentucky's public schools shows no sign of abating. Fletcher, who vows to seek re-election next year, has signaled that he may try to use that issue to revive his political fortunes, which have been weighed down by a merit-hiring scandal and his own related May 11 indictment on misdemeanor charges.

In his State of the Commonwealth address in January, Fletcher, an ordained Baptist minister, urged schools to include intelligent design — the theory that life and the universe are best explained by an intelligent cause — in their curriculum.

"This is not a question about faith or religion," he said. "It's about self-evident truth."

Fletcher followed up in February with a letter to the executive director of the Kentucky Academy of Science, urging schools to use the power they already possess under Kentucky law to teach creationism in conjunction with evolutionary theory.

"It disappoints and astounds me that the so-called intellectual elite are so concerned about accepting self-evident truths that nearly 90 percent of the population understands," Fletcher said in his letter to the academy.

Fletcher's statements add to evidence from other states that promoting intelligent design is still seen in some sectors as a useful move on the political chessboard, despite a federal judge's ruling last December that barred a school board in Pennsylvania from teaching the theory in science classes. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones called the Dover Area School Board's effort a thinly disguised promotion of religion.

This spring, bills or legislative language described by the National Center for Science Education as hostile to the teaching of evolution were proposed in Alabama, South Carolina, Michigan and Maryland, but none of those measures was passed into law. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, legislators debated but failed to pass measures banning the teaching of intelligent design as science.

Kemper said schools have opened themselves to attack by conservatives by purging texts and curricula of all religious content in the mistaken belief that continuing to teach it would amount to an endorsement of religion.

The result has been an "enormous vacuum" in public knowledge about the role religion has played in American history and culture.

"Frankly, I think public education has failed in this whole arena," she said.

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News elsewhere includes:

Hearing's attendees clamor to use only B.C. and A.D. | The attendees of a public hearing today regarding a recommendation to change the designation of time were overwhelmingly against the measure. (Herald-Leader, Lexington, May 30, 2006)

Board seeks views on date markers C.E., B.C.E. | Religious groups and other opponents are expected in force for a hearing today that will focus in part on whether Kentucky schools should add the secular term C.E. (Common Era) to A.D. and B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) to B.C. to mark dates in history. (The Courier-Journal, Louisville, May 30, 2006)

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May (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50