I'm sure there will be another significant confrontation in the courtroom between science and creationism sometime within the next 10 years, and I'm betting that this time it will be a doozy. The outcome that I think American evangelicals haven't anticipated is that the more successful the efforts of organizations like ICR and the Discovery Institute, the greater may be the eventual backlash. Potentially you could lose your voice in public education.
I would quite agree to your statement in this regard. History has continuously demonstrated what occurs when religions over steps its bounds in the public. As demonstrated in the second and third great awakenings. Wonderfully enough the second great awakening brought us the civil war which may or may not be counted as a blessing as slavery was still on its way out due to labor saving devices. Third great awakening also brought us the temperance movement and prohibition some of the most powerful moves religion have made within the US. The difficulty of course was that soon after that amendment was passed it was rolled back and thus religion hit another setback.
However, in regards to fundamentalists losing their voice in public education, arguably it would be a truth that they would. But the point is that the need not really be concerned about losing a voice in public education, because they already have a booming voice in the private education sector, as Jar wonderfully pointed out in other threads one of the by products of the Civil Rights movement was a mass exodus out of southern schools that were becoming integrated into private schools funded for religious reasons and or home schooled.
One might conclude that the largest reasons fundamentalists participate in public education is so that they can bring public education closer to what they teach.
™ Version 4.2