Patriotism
I got a forwarded patriotic message criticizing schools and governments which removed patriotic and religious slogans and symbols from public places for "sensitivity" or "diversity" reasons. I wrote back with a long reply, mainly addressing two issues: first, a seemingly random comment about Americans speaking English, and English being "the language" of the U.S.; second, the provenance and implications of the phrase "In God We Trust".
Here's the bit about "In God We Trust".
> "In God We Trust" is our national motto.
I'm given to understand that this isn't quite correct -- I'm told that there is no legislative enactment providing this (although the current political climate might allow something like that to happen).
Apparently the source of this impression is the line in The Star-Spangled Banner:
"Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just: / And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'"
However, that just means that Francis Scott Key thought of "In God is our trust" as a national motto, or the equivalent of one. It doesn't mean that it was.
(I haven't verified this, and I might be mistaken.)
> ?This is not some
> off-the-wall, Christian, Right Wing, political slogan - it is our national
> motto. It is engraved in stone in the House of Representatives in our Capitol
> and it is printed on our
> currency. ?We adopted this motto because Christian men and women, on
> Christian principles, founded this nation; and this
> is clearly documented throughout our history. If it is
> appropriate for our motto to be inscribed in the halls of our highest level
> of Government, then it is certainly appropriate
> to display it on the walls of our schools.
>
> God is in our pledge, our National Anthem, nearly every
> patriotic song, and in our founding documents. We honor His
> birth, death, and resurrection as holidays, and we turn to Him
> in prayer in times of crisis. ?If God offends you, then I suggest you
> consider another part of the world as your new home,
> because God is part of our culture and we are proud to have
> Him.A prohibition on government "establishment of religion" is also a part of the U.S. "founding documents"; in fact, that prohibition appears even before the guarantee of freedom of speech (by six words).
There are certainly different views on what "establishment" means; some people continue to think of it as merely a disestablishmentarian rule reacting to the Established Church in England, so that no particular church could be prescribed by law as the official church of the U.S.
The court record on interpreting this is mixed -- I am disappointed that the American Atheists and Freedom From Religion Foundation lawsuits to get "In God We Trust" off of U.S. currency were unsuccessful. There is a strange paradox around this phrase. On the one hand, courts which have considered "In God We Trust" have argued that it was non-religious and not an example of government endorsement of religion. On the other hand, proponents of having the government display this slogan routinely maintain that it would express religious values, and point to the presence of the phrase in other places as evidence that it's legal and legitimate to do so.
This seems to be a general trend. When someone challenges a particular state action under the Establishment Clause, a court will often say "No, that might once have been religious, but now it's purely secular and cultural!". Subsequently, an activist will point to the same exact practice and say "You see, it's perfectly legitimate for the government to promote religion -- look at how it happens all the time!".
On the other hand, the general trend in interpretation of the Establishment Clause is encouraging. Lots of states used to have religious test oaths for public officers and employees. In some cases, these were Christian religious tests, accompanied with state laws providing that only believing Christians could hold office. (Yes, these practiced survived well into the 20th century.) In other cases, there were anti-atheist laws, designed to prevent atheists (and Buddhists and most everyone outside the Judeo-Christian orbit) from holding office or giving testimony in courts. These tests are going, going, gone -- it helps that the Constitution requires that "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the United States".
Mentioning God in the Pledge of Allegiance is a new thing. The original version, by Francis Bellamy, the author of Looking Backward, went
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
God wasn't mentioned for 62 years, from 1892 to 1954, when the Knights of Columbus (!) got "under God" added to the text during the Cold War. Bellamy is lucky he never lived to see that; as a socialist (Looking Backward is a utopian vision of the establishment of a socialist society in the U.S.), he probably wouldn't have fared well during the McCarthy era.
Nowhere in the first amendment -- Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause, and right on out -- is there a right not to be offended. If it were only about being offended, I'd be right there saying "Don't make a Constitutional case out of it" (although it's strange to me that the author of the essay seems so eager to write off offended parties in various ways). But the separation of church and state is all about political power.
It's easy to forget that when you don't see the intrigues and political decisions that injected religion into government in the first place. It's easy to forget that when some of those battles are in the past, so that someone can claim that religion was "always" a part of government, or that we "always" had "In God We Trust" on currency. (It's not so; the original inscription was only "E pluribus unum" -- "From many, one". "In God We Trust" was added to U.S. currency late in the Civil War by an act of Congress as a result of a protracted political campaign by the National Reform Association, a Christian group, and it wasn't added to all U.S. currency until 1955. The National Reform Association was keen on creating evidence that the U.S. was a "Christian nation" -- perhaps especially so because it wasn't! The evidence thus manufactured comes in handy today for "Christian nation" enthusiasts in political debates, who merely have to say "Look at our currency!" in order to make what is certainly a very powerful argument about the influence of organized Christianity in the U.S.)
"We adopted this motto" not because of U.S. history in the abstract, but because the National Reform Association wanted to show off its political power in a way which would marginalize non-Christians. Most of its uses date to the Cold War or other wars, and it certainly has no connection with the founders of the U.S. (who were keen on "E pluribus unum").
It's not about sensitivity or political correctness, it's about the power to define -- in the government's "potent, omnipresent" voice -- who is going to be considered a good American, and what beliefs are going to be depicted as good American beliefs.
(I was wrong about "In God We Trust" not being the U.S. national motto -- it is, ever since 1956.)
I'm serious about that power to define who is going to be considered a good American. When George Bush Sr. was campaigning for president -- before he was actually president -- Robert Sherman asked Bush about the atheist community and received a lukewarm response. So Sherman inquired about the "citizenship and patriotism" of atheists, and Bush famously answered: "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
Clearly, Bush wasn't suggesting that atheists don't have civil rights, because he was answering a question about "citizenship and patriotism", in which context "citizenship" means something closer to the Boy Scout or Civics version. He was merely saying that atheism is unpatriotic.
Well, July 4, 1776, as everybody learned in school, was a Thursday. And, as all of us born on a Thursday must have heard, "Thursday's child has far to go".
