c. 2005 Religion News Service

DOVER, Pa. _ Todd Gentzler was sitting on the small wooden porch of the venerable brick house he bought a few months ago on Main Street, cleaning heating baseboards he had removed from inside, when he was greeted by a reporter from the BBC.

Media from across the country had converged on the town since the local school board introduced intelligent design in its ninth-grade biology classes in January, rekindling a national debate over evolution and creationism and pitching Dover into a landmark court battle over the constitutional separation of church and state.

The New York Times had come. So had Newsweek, People and Rolling Stone. Now a reporter from England.

“What’s it like being at the center of the universe?” the reporter asked.

The question stunned Gentzler.

“We have one stoplight,” he replied incredulously.

Residents have grown weary of the attention their small town of 1,900, about 35 miles southwest of Harrisburg, has gained since the school board required teachers to read a statement on intelligent design to their biology classes.

The four-paragraph statement, which takes about 90 seconds to read, calls evolution “a theory” that “is not a fact.”

Intelligent design _ the belief that nature is so complex that it was guided by a higher intelligence _ is “an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view,” the statement says.

Teachers refused to read the statement, and 11 parents, aided by the American Civil Liberties Union, are suing the school district in federal court in Harrisburg to eliminate it from biology classrooms.

Dover, a mostly white, rural town where farmers from the township would retire upon leaving their farms to their children, has religious underpinnings that are obvious to a visitor.

Seventeen churches sit in and around the borough. Walk into Glenda Lentz’s gift shop on the square, and you will hear a religious radio program playing on the boom box that sits below shelves. In Ron Bottenbusch’s jewelry shop, a rack next to the door is filled with religious tracts holding secrets to finding Jesus.

Dover is a quiet town, where Bingo is played every Monday at the firehall and a campaign every Christmas collects toys for needy kids. It’s also a conservative place where people lament the loss of cornfields outside town to housing developments and where lawsuits and the ACLU just don’t seem right.

“Maybe if the ACLU had stayed out of it and let people decide what they want to do, they could have worked it out,” Bottenbusch said. “They only took up 90 seconds of the children’s time, and that has turned into all this?”

Lentz, who describes herself as a born-again Christian, has seen numerous reporters come into her shop _ and even a couple of guys from the Communist Party. They argued with a customer over intelligent design until she demanded they leave.

“When I see the reporters, I try to go the other way,” Lentz said. “I can’t believe that it’s a national media attention thing. I can’t imagine what everyone’s so into it for.”

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Though she’s tired of repeating her stand on the issue _ she sees nothing wrong with reading the intelligent design statement in class _ she feels she must. “If I need to stand up for God in any way, I’ll do it,” she said. “I know it won’t be easy. I know we’re not supposed to do what’s easy.”

Even Gentzler, who opposes the introduction of intelligent design in class _ “It’s up to the parents to teach it,” he insisted _ is awed by the attention the statement is getting. “I think it’s being blown out of proportion.”

While the media have been fascinated by Dover, the town seemingly in the middle of a battle between God and Darwin _ People magazine called the borough “A Town at War” in its Oct. 31 issue _ Dover residents say they are tired of the issue.

At Weaver’s Quality Meats, a butcher shop in an unassuming white building just down the street from the high school, customers rarely talk about intelligent design or the election or the ACLU, a clerk said.

“The only excitement we’ve had was when gas prices went up after Hurricane Katrina,” said the clerk, who refused to give her name.

Owner John Wire is proud of his smoked ham and fresh meats, which he cuts on a large silver machine in a room next to the counter. He isn’t interested in what the media have to say about Dover. “If the media could help all the people who are homeless, all the children who go to bed starving at night, we’d be better off,” he said. “You hardly hear anything about that.”

If Dover is a hot topic in the national media, he hasn’t seen it. Wire doesn’t read newspapers anymore. “If it’s a hunting magazine, I’ll probably read it,” he said as he hosed down his cutting machine at the end of a workday.

“It was in Rolling Stones,” said the clerk, confusing the magazine and the rock band.

“I don’t read it,” he said.

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Residents say they’ll be glad when a court challenge to the school district’s intelligent design policy is over. A judge is expected to rule sometime in January.

“I certainly look forward to it being over and it getting back to normal,” Lentz said. “Whatever that is.”

(Jim Lewis writes for The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa.)

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