According to news reports, the Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes Bible quotes on daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not know how long the Worldwide Intelligence Update cover sheets quoted from the Bible. Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer, who was responsible for including them, retired in August 2003, according to his biography.

For a period in 2003, at least, the daily reports prepared for President George W. Bush carried quotes from the books of Psalms and Ephesians and the epistles of Peter. At the time, the reports focused largely on the war in Iraq.

The Bible quotes apparently aimed to support Bush at a time when soldiers’ deaths in Iraq were on the rise, according to the June issue of GQ magazine. GQ has images of the briefings on its Web site. But they offended at least one Muslim analyst at the Pentagon and worried other employees that the passages were inappropriate.

Valerie is the author of The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth. Despite being raised in a fundamentalist family, she received a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Iowa, a PhD from the University of Washington, and now has a private practice.

Concerned about the rise of evangelism in the U.S., she began writing and speaking about fundamentalism. She now writes for exChristian.net and the Huffington Post, and hosts a monthly series on Moral Politics Television (Comcast channel 77 or 23) in Seattle.

She speaks regionally to churches and secular groups about topics such as moral development, the psychology of belief. She is a founder of WisdomCommons.org. Her essays.

From her website:

Ideas for parents

1. Choose a “virtue of the week” to discuss at the dinner table. Why does this virtue matter? How is it honored in your family’s spiritual or cultural tradition? How have family members demonstrated this virtue recently? When have they seen it in other people?
2. Ask each child to find a quote that they really like. Have them read it to other family members and explain why they like it.
3. Make a game of reading bits of wisdom aloud together and giving each one a rating, thus prompting whatever discussion is needed to reach a family agreement or average.