A long, long time ago, the journalist Stephen Bates wrote a stunning book entitled “Battleground: One Mother’s Crusade, the Religious Right, and the Struggle for Control of Our Classrooms.” You knew it was an amazing book because the back cover was full of praise from scholars, journalists and acitivists on the left as well as the right. His thesis: Our public schools have become so biased against traditional forms of religion that they are, ultimately, undercutting the foundations of America’s heritage of public education. They are driving away millions of parents and, thus, their children.