This headline appeared recently: “NC lawmakers back ‘In God We Trust’ signs in schools. They say it’s not promoting religion.” Government by subterfuge, Raleigh’s specialty, is growing tiresome.
House Bill 965 will require that all public schools place a sign displaying both the national motto and North Carolina’s aspiration “To Be Rather Than to Seem” in a “prominent place” on campus. The bill’s sponsors, co-chairs of the NC Prayer Caucus, reportedly deny the new law will “promote religion in general or Christianity in particular.” Rep. Larry Pittman adds: “In God We Trust” merely “acknowledges a very important factor of our national history.” Pittman, who last year explained that “Lincoln was the same sort of tyrant (as) Hitler,” is always ready with a history lesson.
For perspective, can anyone imagine the NC Prayer Caucus rushing, in short session, to place America’s traditional motto, “e pluribus unum,” which has appeared on the Great Seal of the United States since 1782, in the foyer of every public school? Why would they possibly do that? That wouldn’t put God in the schools.
HB 965, like much of the General Assembly’s work, originated elsewhere. It’s a first stage of the Congressional Prayer Caucus’ “Project Blitz” — seeking to flood state legislatures with motto bills as part of a broader strategy to assert and depict “Judeo-Christian values and beliefs in the public square.” Motto laws, they accurately predict, will be difficult to oppose. When passed, they will lay the groundwork for more fruitful prizes like teaching the Bible and offering prayer in public schools.
“In God We Trust” certainly sounds like a religious endorsement. Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase introduced it onto coins during the Civil War saying “no nation can be strong except in the strength of God.” President Eisenhower endorsed the adage as our motto in the 1950s indicating it would “constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which will forever be our country’s most powerful resource in peace and war.”
And placing it in our schools carries the attempted exclusion common to efforts at establishment. The “we” in “In God We Trust” cannot mean all Americans, for that is surely untrue. It suggests instead, religious Americans, the ones who count.
But my point, oddly, is not that the new motto law will be declared unconstitutional; though it should be. Our establishment clause jurisprudence is an unholy and largely indefensible mishmash of contradictory rulings. My point is an ancillary one. Though our legislators claim the law is not designed to promote religion, that is, in fact, exactly, precisely and singularly what it is meant to do. Why dissemble? Why the deceit?
Read the full story at The News and Observer
