We all have heard more than enough about the Littleton tragedy. Unfortunately, we have not heard nearly enough of the truth. The great lie about Littleton is that two satanic students walked into their small-town high school, sought out and killed religious students. For instance, the media portrayal of the event highlighted the killing of a girl supposedly killed for saying she believed in God, an event chronicled by her mother in a recent bestseller. After the authenticity of the incident was challenged, both by eyewitnesses and the formal investigation, the media took no responsibility for correcting their error.

Every great American tragedy involves a great misunderstanding. In Littleton it seemed that the tragedy was unambiguous: Two high school students killed their classmates in a library. However, the lesson learned was a misunderstanding of epic proportions, one that has surreptitiously stolen the debate away from the arena of gun-control and counseling and thrust it into the revival tent of Bible-thumping Baptists.

Instead of talking about the troubling prevalence of religion on school grounds in clear defiance of the constitutional separation of church and state, we have been reduced to debating the benefits of bestowing the title of "martyr" upon Littleton victim Cassie Bernall. In fact, the so-called martyrdom of Cassie Bernall is emblematic of the problems with the current debate surrounding religion in the schools.

The case is relatively simple. When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into their high school's library and started shooting, Cassie Bernall and Emily Wyant hid under a table. Klebold slammed his hand on the desk, yelled "Peekaboo" as Cassie prayed fervently to God that she would be spared. Klebold asked if she believed in God, and when she said yes, he killed her. Or so the media refrain went.

In fact, investigators and Emily Wyant have testified to a slightly different sequence of events, one in which the cries of, "Oh, my God, oh, my God, don't let me die," came from the mouth of Wyant; she was asked both if and why she believed in God, to which she responded affirmatively, because "my parents brought me up that way." The assailant reloaded but did not fire again. Wyant survived her 34 pellet wounds to tell this rendition of the popular myth which has now become the topic of a bestselling book by Cassie Bernall's mother, entitled She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall.

The book itself has spawned Christian youth movements nationwide in response to the supposed attack on religion in public schools. The common supposition is that if Klebold and Harris could only have been as pious and God-fearing as Cassie, or at least had been pressured to be so in their schools, their homicidal tendencies would have been replaced by religious fervor. If Cassie were not killed for her belief in God, the lesson is entirely changed.

Instead, we are forced to recognize the killers for who they were, depressed and unsatisfied kids furious at the world in general, not at their God-fearing classmates in particular.

The Littleton shooting should be seen for what it has become; one great big shot in the arm for the Christian right. While the country has been drooling over our recent prosperity, the Christian right has quietly been infiltrating the school boards of the country and pushing a pro-Christian, pro-prayer, anti-evolution platform.