One Mention of a Church = Too Religious?
When I wrote Code for Teens , I set out to teach programming concepts in a way that was accessible to anyone, regardless of religion. Those of you who have read it know there aren't any religious messages in the book. Still, I was recently turned down by a group of educators known as Secular, Eclectic, Academic Homeschoolers (SEAH) solely for having two paragraphs that reference a church. SEAH was excited to promote my book on their website until they found two short paragraphs that mention a church (no reference to the faith of this church in the book at all--just a mention of it). SEAH asked me to rewrite this portion. I told them that I did not control the published book anymore (the publishers do), but I could make an insert that replaces the "church" with "summer camp". So I rewrote those two paragraphs and submitted them as an addendum that they could distribute with the book or use any other way they wanted. Apparently, this wasn't enough.