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The following words closed an 1861 letter from Rev. M.R. Watkinson to Salmon P. Chase, then-secretary of the treasury:
"This would make a beautiful coin, to which no possible citizen could object. This would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism. This would place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed. From my hearth I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters."
What was the "this" that the good reverend was suggesting? Simply that the United States somehow recognize God on our currency. Secretary Chase agreed, and instructed the director of the Philadelphia Mint to prepare a motto, observing:
"No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins."
As a result, events were set in motion, including an Act of Congress, which resulted in the first use of the motto "In God We Trust" on America's coins in 1864. Ultimately, a 1956 joint resolution of Congress formalized the phrase as the national motto, officially replacing E Pluribus Unum ("from many, one").
Viewed from the perspective of history, the national motto can hardly be adjudged anything else but a national recognition of the Almighty's influence in the founding of our nation, as well as His continued grace in sustaining the Republic.
That's why it's so hard to look on this week's decision by a California federal district court upholding the national motto on our currency as a huge victory. Here's why. The judge wrote that the motto does not violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause ("Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion") because it "has no theological or ritualistic impact and is of a purely secular, patriotic and ceremonial character."
What? That tasted a lot like lukewarm coffee, effective but hardly satisfying. The most important statement of the nation's acknowledgement of God since the Declaration of Independence reduced to such a tepid description so as to comply with the First Amendment? What would the Rev. Watkinson, or Secretary Chase, or the 1956 Congress for that matter, think of such a description of the motto? Could that really be what our national profession of trust in God has been reduced to?
It's not really this particular judge's fault that he was forced to water down the meaning of our motto in order to survive a First Amendment challenge. The Supreme Court has been fumbling the First Amendment ball ever since its 1947 Everson case which erected the much-criticized "wall of separation between church and state." Since then, the high court has used the nauseating phrase "ceremonial deism" to minimize and justify long-standing public expressions of faith in God, such as legislative chaplains, the use of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, the national motto and prayers at presidential inaugurals. To people of faith, the Court's verbal gymnastics suggest that only a religious phrase or practice that has somehow become meaningless by rote repetition is permissible in the nation's public life. That's hardly the perspective of the above-mentioned folks who played a role in establishing our national motto. Or the experience of the Founders, who hired the first Congressional chaplains, and who, on the very day the Bill of Rights was finished and ready for transmittal to the states for ratification in September 1789, asked President Washington to declare a national day of "public thanksgiving and prayer." I don't know whether they'd laugh or cry at the Court's current treatment of the First Amendment and the public acknowledgment of God.
Don't get me wrong. It's always nice to see atheist Michael Newdow (of Pledge of Allegiance fame) lose another First Amendment challenge to one of our nation's traditions, as he did in this week's case. But Americans shouldn't have to wait on pins and needles every time some atheist (or worse, the ACLU) takes on the nation's public professions of its trust in God. This case will undoubtedly be appealed by Mr. Newdow to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where anything bad can, and routinely does, happen.
It's time that we look either to the new and hopefully improved Supreme Court to correct its convoluted First Amendment jurisprudence, or, in the alternative, to legislative remedies like the proposed Pledge Protection Act that would totally place our cherished traditions out of the reach of the federal courts.
Our national identity is and should remain "one nation, under God," whose motto is, appropriately, "In God We Trust." It's even surreal to suggest here that these should be non-negotiable. They should be "truths" that are "self-evident."
Now where have I heard those words before?
