More than two years would pass before the Ohio Supreme Court would resolve the conflict, but because the city sat on the leading edge of the nation's western frontier, much of the country sat poised to follow suit. In retrospect, scholars consider the Cincinnati Bible War to be a "watershed event in the secularization of public schools," explains University of Cincinnati associate history professor Linda Przybyszewski. "This was the beginning of the end of the Bible in public schools."

Cincinnati? Leading the nation in banning Bibles? Embroiled in Catholic-Protestant conflicts? Sitting on the edge of the Western frontier? Poised to lead the nation in any thing?

The historic event raises many questions for students taking Przybyszewski's "Law and Religion in U.S. History" class at UC. "At first, they're astonished," she says. "Then they have a great time with it."

Twice the class conducted research on the subject, reading original newspaper accounts on microfilm. "The newspapers were so much more emotional at that time, completely politically partisan," she says. "This was a situation where a whole lot of people were mouthing off."

Ministers took stances from their pulpits. Lawyers made political speeches. And everyone wrote passionate letters to the editor.

In August 1869, the Cincinnati Board of Education had just exiled the Bible from schools because it put Catholic children at a disadvantage. After all, the Roman Catholic and Protestant versions of the Bible differ not only in text, but in the number of books included.

It's not clear what precipitated the decision, but Catholic leaders such as archbishop John Purcell had long complained that public school boards should help finance the Catholic schools to give children an alternative. The request wasn't as outrageous as it sounds today.

"The notion of public and private was far more flexible than what we're used to," Przybyszewski says. "There were public schools that charged tuition and private schools that got public funds."

In areas where nearly everyone was Catholic, such as New Mexico, communities actually split public school funds with the Catholics and hired nuns to teach, she says. Still, Cincinnatians were hesitant to split the pot so readily.

"It was very respectable then to be anti-Catholic," notes Przybyszewski. "Neighborhoods were often segregated. In 1844, after Cincinnati newspapers carried stories of anti-Catholic riots on the east coast, a group of men threw sticks and rocks at a house occupied by Catholic clergy, according to a German priest who had immigrated to Cincinnati."

Even the Rev. Lyman Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe's father, was a vocal opponent of Catholics. Considered a progressive thinker because he was a black abolitionist and the founder of a Cincinnati seminary, Beecher preached a "papal conspiracy theory" that Catholics would take over the West.

In Cincinnati, hostilities were particularly evident because an equally large number of Protestants and Catholics resided in town. Yet there was nothing new about Protestant influence in public schools.

Most American public schools, including Cincinnati's, had been founded by ministers and their wives who started Protestant churches at the same time, the professor explains. "From the very beginning, the country's entire public school system was imbued with Protestant ethics."

Of course, having a Protestant slant on education raises more questions than whether your Bible contains the books of Tobit and Judith. "If you're using textbooks, you either have a textbook that thinks the reformation is the most wonderful thing that ever happened, which is the Protestant version, or you have the Catholic version, which doesn't think it was such a great idea after all," she says. "Which one do you want to go for? If you're using Christian literature, are you going to use St. Augustine or Martin Luther?"

The 1869 Board of Education went for the cost-effective solution to quiet the Catholics. It threw out the Bible.

Thousands of irate people, including men with names like Shillito and Covington -- the "choicest of our citizens," according to the Daily Times newspaper -- sued the board. In November, the local Superior Court ruled in their favor, agreeing the board had overstepped its authority.

The board, of course, appealed. In 1872, the Ohio Supreme Court overturned the lower court decision, saying it was within the school board's discretion to ban the Bible. "Government is an organization for particular purposes," wrote Justice John Welch. "It is not almighty, and we are not to look to it for everything.

"The great bulk of human affairs ... is left by any free government to ... individual action. Religion is eminently one of those interests, lying outside the true and legitimate province of government."

Even though Przybyszewski says other areas of the country were struggling with the same issue, Cincinnati drew the nation's eye because of its reputation. "Before the Civil War, Cincinnati is a frontier," she says. "The West becomes the place where everyone sees the future. This is the place where problems need to be worked out."

So the Cincinnati Bible War takes a place in history books as the beginning of school secularization; however, Przybyszewski's most recent research disproves that claim. "From what I can tell, we're not talking about secularization. This law suit didn't change the substance of what was going on. They just maneuvered around it."

In reality, the Bible may have been stricken from the curriculum, but God wasn't. Her most recent research leads her to believe that while the appeal process was underway, local educators found ways to incorporate religion into the schools without the Bible.

As late as 1887, the school day still contained "sacred song," "the literature of Christendom" and "faithful and fearless Christian teachers," according to a speech that Cincinnati superintendent E.E. White gave to the National Education Association that year. He concludes that "the only way to teach children to revere both the school and society is by teaching them about God," Przybyszewski says.

"To him, that's the foundational belief. Most of the men who spoke at the meeting, superintendents from all over the country, were utterly committed to the idea that you needed children trained to believe in God to have a society that functions."

Of course, White's revised curriculum failed to address the original controversy. After all, sacred songs were usually sectarian at the time, meaning they were either Protestant or Catholic. And Christian literature would be slanted depending upon its source. Furthermore, potential Jewish concerns were totally ignored.

"Their version of the separation of church and state was that you aren't forced to attend a particular church; you aren't forced to pony up money for it," she explains. "But they see absolutely no reason why that should include the removal of religious influence from public sectors of life. To us, that's not separation of church and state, but we have a far stricter and higher standard today."

The professor's first hint that the Supreme Court had little impact on the typical school day came when she could find no documented public outcry after the ruling. "It was way too quiet in 1872, as opposed to this huge public response in 1869," she says.

Discovering the superintendent's speech will provide important information in the book she is writing because it changes assumptions scholars have held for a long time. "If scholars are pointing to this 1872 case as the end of Bibles in Ohio public schools and as a big step forward in secularization, which we repeatedly do, then we've screwed up. The idea that it was always onward and upward toward secularization is far too simple."

How far is far enough in keeping church and state separate?

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The first of 10 amendments that compose the Bill of Rights was written by James Madison.

Ever since the First Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1791, the country has continually sought judicial interpretation. In November '03, for example, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from the bench for refusing to move a Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse. This year, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on a California case involving the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Basically, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution never uses the phrase "separation of church and state." It simply prohibits the government from establishing any religion and permits free speech. "That gives you a whole lot of leeway," Przybyszewski says.

The "wall of separation between church and state" is a metaphor that President Thomas Jefferson penned in 1802. The phrase surfaced in a Supreme Court citation in 1879 and again in 1947.

"There are competing visions of church and state," Przybyszewski says. "One is the liberal Thomas Jefferson theory of complete division. Another theory is the evangelical one, which says just because we cannot establish a church doesn't mean that religion cannot influence society."

The First Amendment has served its purpose in halting U.S. oppression, such as fines and jail sentences levied in the mid-1800s on Jewish businessmen who sold merchandise on Sundays and penalties inflicted on Jehovah's Witnesses who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance because they reserve vows for God alone.

Lawyers, she explains, have made it plain that because school is compulsory, children fall under the authority of the state and that while under that authority, minority children should not be left vulnerable to suffer abuse from majority groups. For instance, "Jehovah's Witnesses bring the first decisions against the Pledge of Allegiance," she says. "Their kids were put through the ringer. Doesn't a small group of people deserve as much protection as a large group?

"We obviously need a better system than one that oppresses people, but we have this distorted historical view of continually moving toward perfect secularization. We don't realize what a struggle it is to figure this stuff out. There isn't an easy answer."