Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for July 29, 2006 IN GOD WE TRUST

From the Star Tribune...

For 50 years, "In God We Trust" has been the motto of the United States. But it's been a source of controversy since the Civil War.

Dru Sefton, Newhouse News Service

In God We Trust. The four short words of the U.S. motto are long on irony: • In the early 1900s, President Theodore Roosevelt wanted them deleted from coinage; he felt their use was "dangerously close to sacrilege."

• In 1970, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled they have "nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion."

• Today, governments and school boards remain hesitant to post the words in public buildings and classrooms -- even though they were legally adopted as the national motto 50 years ago this month.

"I don't think it'll ever really be a settled issue," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

Jacquie Sullivan, founder of the nonprofit group In God We Trust -- America, said, "There was a lot of debate and searching before that became the national motto. It stands for everything good that our country is about."

The founding fathers originally favored the motto E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One) -- taken from a salad recipe, said Brian Burrell, author of "The Words We Live By: The Creeds, Mottoes, and Pledges That Have Shaped America," a volume based on his father's extensive collection.

"When you think of a melting pot, a salad bowl is another analogy," said Burrell, a mathematics lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The "In God We Trust" motto has its roots in a surge of religiosity during and after the Civil War.

"Times of fear and insecurity tend to give rise to a kind of exaggerated nationalism," Burrell said. "That's when the move began to put the phrase on the currency."

In 1861, after citizen requests, Treasury Secretary Samuel Chase began searching for an appropriately devout inscription. Those considered included "Our Country; Our God" and "God, Our Trust."

Chase suggested "In God We Trust" -- perhaps inspired by the final stanza of "The Star-Spangled Banner": "And this be our motto: In God is our trust." The approved four-word version first appeared on the 1864 two-cent coin, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

The phrase still reflects America's spirituality, said Randy Sharp of the American Family Association.

Sharp, director of special projects for the group, which is based in Tupelo, Miss., oversees its continuing poster drive to display the motto in classrooms nationwide. More than half a million posters have been distributed since 2001, he said.

"We wanted to make sure children in public schools were able to recognize their heritage, and our national motto is part of that," Sharp said.

"If we look back, God has had his hand in our national history, including George Washington's fight to break free from tyranny," he said. "We couldn't have done that without firm reliance on God."

Not a simple concept

Lynn, a United Church of Christ minister, reads a different meaning -- and contention -- in the words.

It's divisive, he said, because "some Americans believe in and trust many gods, some believe in and trust none, some believe in and trust one."

Especially with immigration, Lynn noted, comes "an increased diversity of new religious movements. The simplicity that people thought was contained in that phrase turns out to be increasingly complex and controversial."

The debate isn't new. Teddy Roosevelt sparked a furor when he wrote in a 1907 letter that it was "eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins, just as it would be to cheapen it by use on postage stamps or in advertisements."

"There was a huge uproar, debates in Congress," Burrell said. "Roosevelt lost that battle."

The Cold War prompted legal adoption of "In God We Trust" as the national motto. Historians see it as a public religious stand against officially atheist communism. President Dwight Eisenhower approved the congressional joint resolution on July 30, 1956.

The motto has appeared on paper money since 1957.

Patriotic, not religious

The 1970 Ninth Circuit Court case (Aronow vs. the United States) affirmed that usage was "of patriotic or ceremonial value," and not religious. The Supreme Court has declined to consider appeals of that and similiar rulings.

In September 2003, a Gallup Poll queried American adults about the use of the phrase on currency; 90 percent approved, 8 percent disapproved, 2 percent had no opinion.

And yet, some governments and school boards remain hesitant to post it. That's why Jacquie Sullivan got involved.

Sullivan, a City Council member in Bakersfield, Calif., founded In God We Trust -- America in 2004 to educate officials that it is not illegal to post it, and to prompt them to do so.

"This is different from the Ten Commandments," she said.

She's planning a 50th anniversary celebration Sunday and is enlisting volunteers to take the push nationwide.