Reaffirming ‘In God We Trust,’ Lawmakers State The Obvious

Legislation that reaffirms “In God We Trust” defies reason.

The phrase “In God We Trust” has made a comeback as of late. Officials from the town of Lake Forest, California, approved placing the national motto in its city hall last January, the same month Kentucky gave the green light to an “In God We Trust” license plate, 50,000 of which have been sold in four months.

And Oklahoma’s Ottawa County this week gave the green light to including the totem in a new court house. Remarked County Commissioner John Clarke, “As we looked at the issue we considered it part of our patriotic duty.”

“In God We Trust,” unconstitutionally adopted as our national motto in 1956, has also been reanimated on the national level, where House Republican Randy Forbes managed to wrangle 64 co-sponsors, including four Democrats, for his resolution “reaffirming” the phrase. Final approval remains on the House calendar.

Not reaffirming “In God We Trust” would turn the land of opportunity into “an atheistic nation imposed by the minds of people who revert to the hard-core left,” said one of the resolution’s supporters, bombastically conservative Congressman Steve King.

But if King, Forbes and their allies knew anything about our nation’s almost universally pious population, they would realize there’s absolutely no way in heaven or hell we will ever become the United States of Atheism.

According to a 2008 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey, 92 percent of Americans — including 70 percent of religiously unaffiliated atheists and agnostics — believe in a God or similar “universal spirit.” Twenty-one percent of that self-described atheist population agree.

More to the point, 56 percent of the nation says that religion is “very important” to their daily life, including 16 percent of the unaffiliated. Twenty-six percent of the entire country, meanwhile, describes religion as “somewhat important,” with 25 percent of the religiously unaffiliated agreeing.

Religion and its cavalcade of gods turn out to be more universal and omnipresent than lawmakers like Forbes and King would have us believe. That doesn’t, however, make these gods omnipotent.

God plays little role in people’s personal decisions. Though 78 percent of citizens say they believe in a definitive “right and wrong,” a slight majority of them, 52 percent, cite “practical experience” and “common sense,” not God, as their guiding light.

This fact evokes one of my pal Ralph Waldo Emerson’s most famous speeches, the “Divinity School Address,” delivered at Harvard in 1838.

“Benevolence is absolute and real,” he said. “All things proceed out of this same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications,… Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature.”

The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command… By it, is the universe made safe and habitable, not by science or power.

Emerson called this sentiment “divine and deifying,” one that shows “all sane men” whether they be European, Asian or otherwise, “the fountain of all good to be in himself, and that he, equally with every man, is an inlet into the deeps of Reason.”

Or, to put it in mythologist Joseph Campbell’s words, “Myths offer life models.”

These myth-based models, religious or secular, are equally valid and, in their purest form, true. They guide our society’s ethical, moral and legal norms. They become, as Pew found, “common sense.”

Americans tend to agree: 70% of the nation agree “many religions can lead to eternal life,” the perennial reward for living a decent life. In other words, 70% of the nation believe other people’s Gods — or common sense — to be legitimate and judicious. Despite some bad apples, like serial killers and rapists, we trust most of our countrymen and women’s reasoning and actions will be righteous and upright. They trust their comrades to act in a godly manner.

Legislative proliferation of “In God We Trust” therefore proves to be completely pointless, because our collective faith in the concept proves to be self-evident. This multifaceted, nebulous God has become a figure so ingrained in our culture that it’s akin to Uncle Sam, the not-exclusively-religious outgrowth of our nation’s melting pot.

If you need more proof, look at God’s pervasiveness in other aspects of our American culture: from the bureaucratic “Act of God insurance” to the post-sneeze “God bless you” or mid-coital “Oh, God!,” this God character is everywhere, and the American public doesn’t need lawmakers to remind us.