Ed Humes’ Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for America’s Soul is now out in paperback and californiaauthors.com is holding a drawing to celebrate. Two lucky winners will get an autographed copy of Humes’ critically acclaimed book on the Dover, PA creationism case. Visit CaliforniaAuthors.com for details. Drawing ends on Friday, February 22.

The Washington Post review called it “gripping.” From the WP:

In 2004, when the Dover, Penn., school board voted to require biology classes to use a supplemental textbook that promoted the theory of intelligent design rather than evolution, the conflict that erupted was about far more than semantics. As Edward Humes describes in this lively and thoughtful book, Dover — like Dayton, Tenn., during the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial” — became a proving ground for clashing beliefs about the origins of life and constitutional questions about the separation of church and state.

Learn more about Monkey Girl at edwardhumes.com or at the DYD bookstore.

God in the White House — a new book from religious historian, episcopal priest and editor-at-large of Chrisitanity Today, Randall Balmer — explores the history and the consequences of the “religionization” of the presidency from John F Kennedy through George W. Bush. From an excerpt offered at npr.org:

… [E]xamples suggest that the quest for moral rectitude in presidential candidates may be chimerical. The candidates’ declarations of faith over the past several decades provide a fairly poor indicator of how they govern. Even the record of the two redeemer presidents of the past half century, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, is mixed. Carter actually sought to govern according to his moral lights and in fidelity to the principles of decency, honor, and fair play that he articulated on the campaign trail; the American voters resoundingly repudiated him when he ran for a second term.

Bush sought the presidency on a platform of morality and Christian virtues. Yet his policies in the first decade of the twenty-first century reflected those values only dimly, if at all. Perhaps it’s time to shift our attention away from the candidates and toward the electorate. What is it we expect from our presidents? Do we look for charisma and political skills, experience in foreign and domestic policy, and administrative competence? Or do we demand that candidates for the White House pass some sort of catechetical test? It’s not an either-or proposition, of course, but the record of the last four decades of the twentieth century suggests that we’ve moved toward the latter and away from the former.

But at what cost?…

Read the complete excerpt, “Cheap Grace: Piety and the Presidency” at npr.org.

Randall Balmer is also the author of the Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism and Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America.

The well-conceived Politifact.com calls Mike Huckabee on his claim that a majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were “clergy.” In fact, only one of 56 was a clergyman. From Politifact: “We’d like to give Huckabee every benefit of the doubt, but even if you consider former clergymen among the signers the best you could come up with is four. Out of 56. That’s not “most,” that’s Pants-on-Fire wrong.” Read more.

BTW: Politifact is a cool and useful site from the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, dedicated to a factual analysis of presidential candidates’ statements and ads. Learn more about it and its nifty truth-o-meter here and check it often. [Thanks Val and TPM]

… from the friendly folks at the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Click here to see what today holds. The FFRF — which is holding its 30th Annual Convention this weekend in Madison, Wisconsin — is having a big year. This week the group erected its first “Beware of Dogma” billboard and starting this month, its Freethought Radio is now carried nationally by Air America. Hear a podcast of the inaugural Air America show here.

This life-in-pictures promo for the satirical Destined for Destiny: the Unauthorized Biography of George Bush will make you laugh/cry. [Thanks evangelicalright]

Plus: Have you met Al the Affable Atheist? Click here to enjoy his polite discussion of his disbelief in Poseidon.

And: Only last week I discovered John Safran vs God on the Sundance Channel. The next episode — which “finds John in Sicily where he confesses to a priest about his very sinful past… goes door-to-door in Salt Lake City visiting Mormon homes and advocating atheism, and takes in the spiritual teachings of some Hindi gurus in India — premiers on Oct. 11. (Unfortunately it’s episode 5 of 8! Wish I would have caught 1 - 4.) Visit the show’s web page to see funny/sad/scarey video clips and learn more about John’s “irreverent personal investigation into religions around the world.”