The Texas Board of Education couldn’t muster the votes late Tuesday to grant preliminary approval for new history and social studies textbooks for classrooms across the nation’s second-largest state, failing to act amid stinging criticism of the proposed books from both the right and left.

Academics and some liberal-leaning activists have complained for months that many of the books up for adoption overstate the influence of religion on early American democracy, including exaggerating biblical figure Moses’ importance to the founding fathers. But conservative groups worry that many of the same books promote pro-Islam values.

The Republican-controlled board tried to pass nearly all of the 100 books and lesson software it was considering, but that failed 5-4 with four abstentions. One member wasn’t present. “The abstentions have it,” joked Thomas Ratliff, a Mount Pleasant Republican.

That sets up a potentially tense final vote Friday, when the board will have to approve the books or miss the deadline to get them to the state’s 5 million-plus public school students by September 2015. Texas is such a vast textbook market that much of what is produced here can end up influencing materials used in other states.

Board members stressed that they still have time to successfully pass books – but also conceded that no one expected Tuesday to end with no action taken.

The failing vote came after hours of public testimony, where the board heard many of the same complaints about the books that it has for months – that the texts present political and religious beliefs and ideologies as facts.

MerryLynn Gerstenschlager, vice president of the influential conservative group Texas Eagle Forum, said books should describe the “forced wealth distribution” imposed by the United Nations via misleading propaganda about climate change.

Retired school teacher Anthony Bruner warned that they would indoctrinate students with communist tenants. “I’ve tried to be a good, patriotic citizen and tried to protect the young people,” said Bruner, who is aligned with a conservative group called Truth in Texas Textbooks.

That organization used dozens of volunteers to raise more than 1,500 complaints about the books. It noted that the achievements of President Ronald Reagan were omitted from some while arguing that others ignored Islam’s occasional glorification of violence – including beheadings.

Roy White [pictured], a retired Air Force pilot and Truth in Texas Textbooks’ chairman, said he supports all religions but “the political side of Islam, the part that threatens you and me … that’s not a religion.”

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Several hundred Muslims held Friday prayers in Washington’s National Cathedral last week, a first for the well-known Episcopal church.

Some people are very, very unhappy about it. Among them: A Michigan woman named Christine Weick, who sneaked into the cathedral during the private service to tell the worshipers to “leave our churches alone.”

A day later, Weick spoke to the conservative news site World Net Daily, which called her “a folk hero of sorts for thousands, if not millions, of Christians.” Weick, who said she lives out of her car, told WND that she read about the prayer service on Drudge Report days before it happened.

“My blood began to boil as I read the comments of how this is to be such a wonderful event and how religious tolerance can, for the first time, be shown in our nation’s capital,” she said of the news coverage in advance of the interfaith service.

She was staying in Tennessee at the time and drove hundreds of miles to find a way into the service and, she said, to do something about it.

Although the event was closed to the public and all guests had to pass through security, Weick made it in without any trouble, she said. Once seated, she said, “it hit me … I had such an angst come over me. Seeing these Muslims sitting on their rugs ready to bow to a god, causing such an abomination in the house of the Lord.”

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