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semiotic_pirateOkay, I had been curious about this, I knew that the Pledge of Allegiance originally did NOT have any mention of god in it... I had also heard that there was no "In God We Trust" on our money... before we had the real beginning of neocons in power. I found the proof. On the article about the pledge you will find a bunch of links for further information scattered throughout the article. For the most part, the three sites occasionally overlap (when reporting dates at least) but each one brings a bit of information that the other does not. Thoughts? Comments? Ideas on how to disseminate this to keep the neocons from continuing to claim that all this god crap was the idea of our founding fathers??
Found at: http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067499
The Pledge of Allegiance
Why we're not one nation "under God."
By David Greenberg
Updated Friday, June 28, 2002, at 1:39 PM PT
Poor Alfred Goodwin! So torrential was the flood of condemnation that followed his opinion—which held that it's unconstitutional for public schools to require students to recite "under God" as part of the Pledge of Allegiance—that the beleaguered appellate-court judge suspended his own ruling until the whole 9th Circuit Court has a chance to review the case.
Not one major political figure summoned the courage to rebut the spurious claims that America's founders wished to make God a part of public life. It's an old shibboleth of those who want to inject religion into public life that they're honoring the spirit of the nation's founders. In fact, the founders opposed the institutionalization of religion. They kept the Constitution free of references to God. The document mentions religion only to guarantee that godly belief would never be used as a qualification for holding office—a departure from many existing state constitutions. That the founders made erecting a church-state wall their first priority when they added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution reveals the importance they placed on maintaining what Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore have called a "godless Constitution." When Benjamin Franklin proposed during the Constitutional Convention that the founders begin each day of their labors with a prayer to God for guidance, his suggestion was defeated.
Given this tradition, it's not surprising that the original Pledge of Allegiance—meant as an expression of patriotism, not religious faith—also made no mention of God. The pledge was written in 1892 by the socialist Francis Bellamy, a cousin of the famous radical writer Edward Bellamy. He devised it for the popular magazine Youth's Companion on the occasion of the nation's first celebration of Columbus Day. Its wording omitted reference not only to God but also, interestingly, to the United States:
"I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
The key words for Bellamy were "indivisible," which recalled the Civil War and the triumph of federal union over states' rights, and "liberty and justice for all," which was supposed to strike a balance between equality and individual freedom. By the 1920s, reciting the pledge had become a ritual in many public schools.
Since the founding, critics of America's secularism have repeatedly sought to break down the church-state wall. After the Civil War, for example, some clergymen argued that the war's carnage was divine retribution for the founders' refusal to declare the United States a Christian nation, and tried to amend the Constitution to do so.
The efforts to bring God into the state reached their peak during the so-called "religious revival" of the 1950s. It was a time when Norman Vincent Peale grafted religion onto the era's feel-good consumerism in his best-selling The Power of Positive Thinking; when Billy Graham rose to fame as a Red-baiter who warned that Americans would perish in a nuclear holocaust unless they embraced Jesus Christ; when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles believed that the United States should oppose communism not because the Soviet Union was a totalitarian regime but because its leaders were atheists.
Hand in hand with the Red Scare, to which it was inextricably linked, the new religiosity overran Washington. Politicians outbid one another to prove their piety. President Eisenhower inaugurated that Washington staple: the prayer breakfast. Congress created a prayer room in the Capitol. In 1955, with Ike's support, Congress added the words "In God We Trust" on all paper money. In 1956 it made the same four words the nation's official motto, replacing "E Pluribus Unum." Legislators introduced Constitutional amendments to state that Americans obeyed "the authority and law of Jesus Christ."
The campaign to add "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance was part of this movement. It's unclear precisely where the idea originated, but one driving force was the Catholic fraternal society the Knights of Columbus. In the early '50s the Knights themselves adopted the God-infused pledge for use in their own meetings, and members bombarded Congress with calls for the United States to do the same. Other fraternal, religious, and veterans clubs backed the idea. In April 1953, Rep. Louis Rabaut, D-Mich., formally proposed the alteration of the pledge in a bill he introduced to Congress.
The "under God" movement didn't take off, however, until the next year, when it was endorsed by the Rev. George M. Docherty, the pastor of the Presbyterian church in Washington that Eisenhower attended. In February 1954, Docherty gave a sermon—with the president in the pew before him—arguing that apart from "the United States of America," the pledge "could be the pledge of any country." He added, "I could hear little Moscovites [sic] repeat a similar pledge to their hammer-and-sickle flag with equal solemnity." Perhaps forgetting that "liberty and justice for all" was not the norm in Moscow, Docherty urged the inclusion of "under God" in the pledge to denote what he felt was special about the United States.
The ensuing congressional speechifying—debate would be a misnomer, given the near-unanimity of opinion—offered more proof that the point of the bill was to promote religion. The legislative history of the 1954 act stated that the hope was to "acknowledge the dependence of our people and our Government upon … the Creator … [and] deny the atheistic and materialistic concept of communism." In signing the bill on June 14, 1954, Flag Day, Eisenhower delighted in the fact that from then on, "millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town … the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty." That the nation, constitutionally speaking, was in fact dedicated to the opposite proposition seemed to escape the president.
In recent times, controversies over the pledge have centered on the wisdom of enforcing patriotism more than on its corruption from a secular oath into a religious one. In the 1988 presidential race, as many readers will recall, George Bush bludgeoned Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis for vetoing a mandatory-pledge bill when he was governor of Massachusetts, even though the state Supreme Court had ruled the bill unconstitutional. Surely one reason for the current cravenness of Democratic leaders is a fear of undergoing Dukakis' fate in 2002 or 2004 at the hands of another Bush.
The history of the pledge supports Goodwin's decision. The record of the 1954 act shows that, far from a "de minimis" reference or a mere "backdrop" devoid of meaning, the words "under God" were inserted in the pledge for the express purpose of endorsing religion—which the U.S. Supreme Court itself ruled in 1971 was unconstitutional. Also according to the Supreme Court's own rulings, it doesn't matter that students are allowed to refrain from saying the pledge; a 2000 high court opinion held that voluntary, student-led prayers at school football games are unconstitutionally "coercive," because they force students into an unacceptable position of either proclaiming religious beliefs they don't share or publicly protesting.
The appeals court decision came almost 40 years to the day after the Supreme Court decision in Engel v. Vitale. In that case, the court ruled it unconstitutional for public schools to allow prayer, even though the prayer was non-denominational and students were allowed abstain from the exercise. When asked about the unpopular decision, President John F. Kennedy replied coolly that he knew many people were angry, but that the decisions of the court had to be respected. He added that there was "a very easy remedy"—not a constitutional amendment but a renewed commitment by Americans to pray at home, in their churches, and with their families.
I found this: http://quasisemi.com/ego/money.htm
I recently sat down with my wallet and began ritualistically crossing out the "In God We Trust" off the back of all my bills. I do this regularly to support the idea of separation of church and state. This particular time I came across a ten dollar bill that lacked the offending mark. Closer examination indicated that it was a 1950 series ten dollar bill. In addition to the lack of a "In God We Trust" mark this bill also promised to pay me ten dollars in legal currency upon presentation to the department of the treasury, an interesting element for another writer and another article.
It got me to thinking that if the God Mark wasn't there in 1950 when and where did this offending mark come from? In 1782 Jefferson, who coined the phrase 'wall of separation between church and state,' authored the first national motto. From an Deist and separationist like Jefferson this motto was clearly secular. "E Pluribus Unum," (One from Many) was this first motto and still part of the great seal of the United States. This motto appeared on the first coin in 1798 and in 1837 was required by law to appear on all U.S. coins. It still appears on coins today.
This motto stood without challenge for nearly a century. In a letter dated November, 13 1861 from Rev. M. R. Watkinson, a Minister of the Gospel from Ridleyville, PA, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase was urged to recognize God on our coins for what strike me (non-lawyer) as unconstitutional reasons. The letter went as follows:
Dear Sir: You are about to submit your annual report to the Congress respecting the affairs of the national finances.
One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins.
You are probably a Christian. What if our Republic were not shattered beyond reconstruction? Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation? What I propose is that instead of the goddess of liberty we shall have next inside the 13 stars a ring inscribed with the words PERPETUAL UNION; within the ring the allseeing eye, crowned with a halo; beneath this eye the American flag, bearing in its field stars equal to the number of the States united; in the folds of the bars the words GOD, LIBERTY, LAW.
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.
To you first I address a subject that must be agitated.
This letter set off a series of events that cause a 1864 law to be passed allowing the "In God We Trust" motto to be placed on one, two and three cent coins. At this time the congress was controlled and sympathetic to the historical equivalent of the Religious Right and caved in without thinking about the constitutional aspects. Watkinson and the congress of the time is our worst nightmare. Watkinson in addition religionizing the currency also went so far as to suggest amending the preamble of the constitution. A Petition was drawn up and formally presented to congress to change the preamble to the following:
"We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government..."
Luckily the petition did not pass and we are allowed some degree of religious freedom in this country. On the coin front, however, Watkinson was wildly successful, by 1873 after passing several laws the "In God We Trust" motto was allowed on all coins and in 1908 it became mandatory on all U.S. coins.
In 1955 state-church separation became a victim of the cold war. The cold war was represented as a fight against the godless communists. The McCarthy era respect for individual rights led to President Eisenhower to sign Public Law 140 making it mandatory that all coins and paper money reflect an unconstitutional Christian state. In 1956 E Pluribus Unum was pushed aside as the national motto in favor of the religious motto. As part of a broad anti-communist/anti-atheist program that same year the words "under God" were added to the pledge of allegiance making it illegal for non-Christians to swear allegiance to their country under oath. This program also added the phrase "so help me god" to the oath administered to all judges.
The motto has been challenged at least twice, Once in 1970 (Aronow v. United States) and once in 1978 by the grandma of atheism (Madalyn Murray-O'Hair v W. Michael Blumenthal, Secretary of Treasury). Unfortunately both times the courts have closed their eyes and come to the conclusion that the phrase really isn't religious (really) just like prayers at government meetings aren't religious (really).
And I will conclude with this: http://www.religioustolerance.org/nat_mott.htm
The original national motto: "E Pluribus Unum"
The original motto of the United States was secular. "E Pluribus Unum" is Latin for "One from many" or "One from many parts." It refers to the welding of a single federal state from a group of individual political units -- originally colonies and now states.
On 1776-JUL-4, Congress appointed John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson to prepare a design for the Great Seal of the United States. The first design, submitted to Congress on 1776-AUG-10 used the motto "E Pluribus Unum." It was rejected. Five other designs also failed to meet with Congress' approval during the next five years. In 1782, Congress asked Mr. Thomson, Secretary of Congress, to complete the project. Thomson, along with a friend named Barton, produced a design that was accepted by Congress on 1782-JUN-10. It included an eagle with a heart-shaped shield, holding arrows and an olive branch in its claws. The motto "E Pluribus Unum" appeared on a scroll held in its beak. The seal was first used on 1782-SEP-16. It was first used on some federal coins in 1795.
The replacement motto: "In God We Trust:"
Almost a century and a half ago, 11 Protestant denominations mounted a campaign to add references to God to the U.S. Constitution and other federal documents. Rev. M.R. Watkinson of Ridleyville PA was the first of many to write a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase in 1861 to promote this concept. 2 Watkinson suggested the words "God, Liberty, Law." 3 In 1863, Chase asked the Director of the Mint, James Pollock to prepare suitable wording for a motto to be used on Union coins used during the Civil War. Pollock suggested "Our Trust Is In God," "Our God And Our Country," "God And Our Country," and "God Our Trust." Chase picked to have "In God We Trust" used on some of the coins. The phrase was a subtle reminder that the Union was on the side of God regarding slavery. Congress passed legislation. Since a 1837 Act of Congress specified the mottos and devices that were to be placed on U.S. coins, it was necessary to pass another Act to enable the motto to be added. This was done on 1886-APR-22. "The motto has been in continuous use on the one-cent coin since 1909, and on the ten-cent coin since 1916. It also has appeared on all gold coins and silver dollar coins, half-dollar coins, and quarter-dollar coins struck since" 1908-JUL-1. 3
Decades later, Theodore Roosevelt disapproved of the motto. In a letter to William Boldly on 1907-NOV-11, he wrote: "My own feeling in the matter is due to my very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins, or to use it in any kindred manner, not only does no good but does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege...It is a motto which it is indeed well to have inscribed on our great national monuments, in our temples of justice, in our legislative halls, and in building such as those at West Point and Annapolis -- in short, wherever it will tend to arouse and inspire a lofty emotion in those who look thereon. But it seems to me 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."
In 1956, the nation was suffering through the height of the cold war, and the McCarthy communist witch hunt. Partly in reaction to these factors, the 84th Congress passed a joint resolution to replace the existing motto with "In God we Trust." The president signed the resolution into law on 1956-JUL-30. The change was partly motivated by a desire to differentiate between communism, which promotes Atheism, and Western capitalistic democracies, which were at least nominally Christian. The phrase "Atheistic Communists" has been repeated so many times that the public has linked Atheism with communism; the two are often considered synonymous. Many consider Atheism as unpatriotic and "un-American" as is communism. The new motto was first used on paper money in 1957, when it was added to the one-dollar silver certificate. By 1966, "In God we Trust" was added to all paper money, from $1 to $100 denominations. 3
Most communists, worldwide, are Atheists. But, in North America, the reverse is not true; most Atheists are non-communists. Although there are many Atheistic and Humanistic legislators at the federal and state levels, few if any are willing to reveal their beliefs, because of the immense prejudice against Atheism.
During the 1950's the federal government's references to God multiplied:
The phrase "under God" was added to the otherwise secular Pledge of Allegiance.
"So help me God" was added as a suffix to the oaths of office for federal justices and judges.
American paper currency since 1957 has included the motto "In God We Trust."
Found at: http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067499
The Pledge of Allegiance
Why we're not one nation "under God."
By David Greenberg
Updated Friday, June 28, 2002, at 1:39 PM PT
Poor Alfred Goodwin! So torrential was the flood of condemnation that followed his opinion—which held that it's unconstitutional for public schools to require students to recite "under God" as part of the Pledge of Allegiance—that the beleaguered appellate-court judge suspended his own ruling until the whole 9th Circuit Court has a chance to review the case.
Not one major political figure summoned the courage to rebut the spurious claims that America's founders wished to make God a part of public life. It's an old shibboleth of those who want to inject religion into public life that they're honoring the spirit of the nation's founders. In fact, the founders opposed the institutionalization of religion. They kept the Constitution free of references to God. The document mentions religion only to guarantee that godly belief would never be used as a qualification for holding office—a departure from many existing state constitutions. That the founders made erecting a church-state wall their first priority when they added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution reveals the importance they placed on maintaining what Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore have called a "godless Constitution." When Benjamin Franklin proposed during the Constitutional Convention that the founders begin each day of their labors with a prayer to God for guidance, his suggestion was defeated.
Given this tradition, it's not surprising that the original Pledge of Allegiance—meant as an expression of patriotism, not religious faith—also made no mention of God. The pledge was written in 1892 by the socialist Francis Bellamy, a cousin of the famous radical writer Edward Bellamy. He devised it for the popular magazine Youth's Companion on the occasion of the nation's first celebration of Columbus Day. Its wording omitted reference not only to God but also, interestingly, to the United States:
"I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
The key words for Bellamy were "indivisible," which recalled the Civil War and the triumph of federal union over states' rights, and "liberty and justice for all," which was supposed to strike a balance between equality and individual freedom. By the 1920s, reciting the pledge had become a ritual in many public schools.
Since the founding, critics of America's secularism have repeatedly sought to break down the church-state wall. After the Civil War, for example, some clergymen argued that the war's carnage was divine retribution for the founders' refusal to declare the United States a Christian nation, and tried to amend the Constitution to do so.
The efforts to bring God into the state reached their peak during the so-called "religious revival" of the 1950s. It was a time when Norman Vincent Peale grafted religion onto the era's feel-good consumerism in his best-selling The Power of Positive Thinking; when Billy Graham rose to fame as a Red-baiter who warned that Americans would perish in a nuclear holocaust unless they embraced Jesus Christ; when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles believed that the United States should oppose communism not because the Soviet Union was a totalitarian regime but because its leaders were atheists.
Hand in hand with the Red Scare, to which it was inextricably linked, the new religiosity overran Washington. Politicians outbid one another to prove their piety. President Eisenhower inaugurated that Washington staple: the prayer breakfast. Congress created a prayer room in the Capitol. In 1955, with Ike's support, Congress added the words "In God We Trust" on all paper money. In 1956 it made the same four words the nation's official motto, replacing "E Pluribus Unum." Legislators introduced Constitutional amendments to state that Americans obeyed "the authority and law of Jesus Christ."
The campaign to add "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance was part of this movement. It's unclear precisely where the idea originated, but one driving force was the Catholic fraternal society the Knights of Columbus. In the early '50s the Knights themselves adopted the God-infused pledge for use in their own meetings, and members bombarded Congress with calls for the United States to do the same. Other fraternal, religious, and veterans clubs backed the idea. In April 1953, Rep. Louis Rabaut, D-Mich., formally proposed the alteration of the pledge in a bill he introduced to Congress.
The "under God" movement didn't take off, however, until the next year, when it was endorsed by the Rev. George M. Docherty, the pastor of the Presbyterian church in Washington that Eisenhower attended. In February 1954, Docherty gave a sermon—with the president in the pew before him—arguing that apart from "the United States of America," the pledge "could be the pledge of any country." He added, "I could hear little Moscovites [sic] repeat a similar pledge to their hammer-and-sickle flag with equal solemnity." Perhaps forgetting that "liberty and justice for all" was not the norm in Moscow, Docherty urged the inclusion of "under God" in the pledge to denote what he felt was special about the United States.
The ensuing congressional speechifying—debate would be a misnomer, given the near-unanimity of opinion—offered more proof that the point of the bill was to promote religion. The legislative history of the 1954 act stated that the hope was to "acknowledge the dependence of our people and our Government upon … the Creator … [and] deny the atheistic and materialistic concept of communism." In signing the bill on June 14, 1954, Flag Day, Eisenhower delighted in the fact that from then on, "millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town … the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty." That the nation, constitutionally speaking, was in fact dedicated to the opposite proposition seemed to escape the president.
In recent times, controversies over the pledge have centered on the wisdom of enforcing patriotism more than on its corruption from a secular oath into a religious one. In the 1988 presidential race, as many readers will recall, George Bush bludgeoned Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis for vetoing a mandatory-pledge bill when he was governor of Massachusetts, even though the state Supreme Court had ruled the bill unconstitutional. Surely one reason for the current cravenness of Democratic leaders is a fear of undergoing Dukakis' fate in 2002 or 2004 at the hands of another Bush.
The history of the pledge supports Goodwin's decision. The record of the 1954 act shows that, far from a "de minimis" reference or a mere "backdrop" devoid of meaning, the words "under God" were inserted in the pledge for the express purpose of endorsing religion—which the U.S. Supreme Court itself ruled in 1971 was unconstitutional. Also according to the Supreme Court's own rulings, it doesn't matter that students are allowed to refrain from saying the pledge; a 2000 high court opinion held that voluntary, student-led prayers at school football games are unconstitutionally "coercive," because they force students into an unacceptable position of either proclaiming religious beliefs they don't share or publicly protesting.
The appeals court decision came almost 40 years to the day after the Supreme Court decision in Engel v. Vitale. In that case, the court ruled it unconstitutional for public schools to allow prayer, even though the prayer was non-denominational and students were allowed abstain from the exercise. When asked about the unpopular decision, President John F. Kennedy replied coolly that he knew many people were angry, but that the decisions of the court had to be respected. He added that there was "a very easy remedy"—not a constitutional amendment but a renewed commitment by Americans to pray at home, in their churches, and with their families.
I found this: http://quasisemi.com/ego/money.htm
I recently sat down with my wallet and began ritualistically crossing out the "In God We Trust" off the back of all my bills. I do this regularly to support the idea of separation of church and state. This particular time I came across a ten dollar bill that lacked the offending mark. Closer examination indicated that it was a 1950 series ten dollar bill. In addition to the lack of a "In God We Trust" mark this bill also promised to pay me ten dollars in legal currency upon presentation to the department of the treasury, an interesting element for another writer and another article.
It got me to thinking that if the God Mark wasn't there in 1950 when and where did this offending mark come from? In 1782 Jefferson, who coined the phrase 'wall of separation between church and state,' authored the first national motto. From an Deist and separationist like Jefferson this motto was clearly secular. "E Pluribus Unum," (One from Many) was this first motto and still part of the great seal of the United States. This motto appeared on the first coin in 1798 and in 1837 was required by law to appear on all U.S. coins. It still appears on coins today.
This motto stood without challenge for nearly a century. In a letter dated November, 13 1861 from Rev. M. R. Watkinson, a Minister of the Gospel from Ridleyville, PA, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase was urged to recognize God on our coins for what strike me (non-lawyer) as unconstitutional reasons. The letter went as follows:
Dear Sir: You are about to submit your annual report to the Congress respecting the affairs of the national finances.
One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins.
You are probably a Christian. What if our Republic were not shattered beyond reconstruction? Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation? What I propose is that instead of the goddess of liberty we shall have next inside the 13 stars a ring inscribed with the words PERPETUAL UNION; within the ring the allseeing eye, crowned with a halo; beneath this eye the American flag, bearing in its field stars equal to the number of the States united; in the folds of the bars the words GOD, LIBERTY, LAW.
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.
To you first I address a subject that must be agitated.
This letter set off a series of events that cause a 1864 law to be passed allowing the "In God We Trust" motto to be placed on one, two and three cent coins. At this time the congress was controlled and sympathetic to the historical equivalent of the Religious Right and caved in without thinking about the constitutional aspects. Watkinson and the congress of the time is our worst nightmare. Watkinson in addition religionizing the currency also went so far as to suggest amending the preamble of the constitution. A Petition was drawn up and formally presented to congress to change the preamble to the following:
"We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government..."
Luckily the petition did not pass and we are allowed some degree of religious freedom in this country. On the coin front, however, Watkinson was wildly successful, by 1873 after passing several laws the "In God We Trust" motto was allowed on all coins and in 1908 it became mandatory on all U.S. coins.
In 1955 state-church separation became a victim of the cold war. The cold war was represented as a fight against the godless communists. The McCarthy era respect for individual rights led to President Eisenhower to sign Public Law 140 making it mandatory that all coins and paper money reflect an unconstitutional Christian state. In 1956 E Pluribus Unum was pushed aside as the national motto in favor of the religious motto. As part of a broad anti-communist/anti-atheist program that same year the words "under God" were added to the pledge of allegiance making it illegal for non-Christians to swear allegiance to their country under oath. This program also added the phrase "so help me god" to the oath administered to all judges.
The motto has been challenged at least twice, Once in 1970 (Aronow v. United States) and once in 1978 by the grandma of atheism (Madalyn Murray-O'Hair v W. Michael Blumenthal, Secretary of Treasury). Unfortunately both times the courts have closed their eyes and come to the conclusion that the phrase really isn't religious (really) just like prayers at government meetings aren't religious (really).
And I will conclude with this: http://www.religioustolerance.org/nat_mott.htm
The original national motto: "E Pluribus Unum"
The original motto of the United States was secular. "E Pluribus Unum" is Latin for "One from many" or "One from many parts." It refers to the welding of a single federal state from a group of individual political units -- originally colonies and now states.
On 1776-JUL-4, Congress appointed John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson to prepare a design for the Great Seal of the United States. The first design, submitted to Congress on 1776-AUG-10 used the motto "E Pluribus Unum." It was rejected. Five other designs also failed to meet with Congress' approval during the next five years. In 1782, Congress asked Mr. Thomson, Secretary of Congress, to complete the project. Thomson, along with a friend named Barton, produced a design that was accepted by Congress on 1782-JUN-10. It included an eagle with a heart-shaped shield, holding arrows and an olive branch in its claws. The motto "E Pluribus Unum" appeared on a scroll held in its beak. The seal was first used on 1782-SEP-16. It was first used on some federal coins in 1795.
The replacement motto: "In God We Trust:"
Almost a century and a half ago, 11 Protestant denominations mounted a campaign to add references to God to the U.S. Constitution and other federal documents. Rev. M.R. Watkinson of Ridleyville PA was the first of many to write a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase in 1861 to promote this concept. 2 Watkinson suggested the words "God, Liberty, Law." 3 In 1863, Chase asked the Director of the Mint, James Pollock to prepare suitable wording for a motto to be used on Union coins used during the Civil War. Pollock suggested "Our Trust Is In God," "Our God And Our Country," "God And Our Country," and "God Our Trust." Chase picked to have "In God We Trust" used on some of the coins. The phrase was a subtle reminder that the Union was on the side of God regarding slavery. Congress passed legislation. Since a 1837 Act of Congress specified the mottos and devices that were to be placed on U.S. coins, it was necessary to pass another Act to enable the motto to be added. This was done on 1886-APR-22. "The motto has been in continuous use on the one-cent coin since 1909, and on the ten-cent coin since 1916. It also has appeared on all gold coins and silver dollar coins, half-dollar coins, and quarter-dollar coins struck since" 1908-JUL-1. 3
Decades later, Theodore Roosevelt disapproved of the motto. In a letter to William Boldly on 1907-NOV-11, he wrote: "My own feeling in the matter is due to my very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins, or to use it in any kindred manner, not only does no good but does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege...It is a motto which it is indeed well to have inscribed on our great national monuments, in our temples of justice, in our legislative halls, and in building such as those at West Point and Annapolis -- in short, wherever it will tend to arouse and inspire a lofty emotion in those who look thereon. But it seems to me 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."
In 1956, the nation was suffering through the height of the cold war, and the McCarthy communist witch hunt. Partly in reaction to these factors, the 84th Congress passed a joint resolution to replace the existing motto with "In God we Trust." The president signed the resolution into law on 1956-JUL-30. The change was partly motivated by a desire to differentiate between communism, which promotes Atheism, and Western capitalistic democracies, which were at least nominally Christian. The phrase "Atheistic Communists" has been repeated so many times that the public has linked Atheism with communism; the two are often considered synonymous. Many consider Atheism as unpatriotic and "un-American" as is communism. The new motto was first used on paper money in 1957, when it was added to the one-dollar silver certificate. By 1966, "In God we Trust" was added to all paper money, from $1 to $100 denominations. 3
Most communists, worldwide, are Atheists. But, in North America, the reverse is not true; most Atheists are non-communists. Although there are many Atheistic and Humanistic legislators at the federal and state levels, few if any are willing to reveal their beliefs, because of the immense prejudice against Atheism.
During the 1950's the federal government's references to God multiplied:
The phrase "under God" was added to the otherwise secular Pledge of Allegiance.
"So help me God" was added as a suffix to the oaths of office for federal justices and judges.
American paper currency since 1957 has included the motto "In God We Trust."
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religious gossip...
Date: 2005-01-20 07:44 pm (UTC)