In God We Trust

What do you believe and why? Here's the place to discuss anything relating to church and God.
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MnM
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In God We Trust

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Wasn't sure where to put this topic, so I put it here... but maybe It goes in the debate hall... I don't know.
So... I found this today.
http://ffrf.org/outreach/item/16760-why ... be-removed
Do you agree with the sender of this article? Should In God We Trust be removed from our money because all Americans aren't believers?
Should the words In God We Trust be kept on our money because it's a symbol of our heritage?
What do you think?
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Miss Friendship
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Another question to consider: Were Americans all believers ever?

And why haven't the atheists complained and got rid of this long time ago? o_0
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Eleventh Doctor
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How is it a symbol of our heritage? It was made the national motto and appeared on currency in 1956.
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I think it should go away. Separation of church and state and all that. I don't see why the government needs to be de facto endorsing a religion. It makes me uncomfortable.
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Why would it make you uncomfortable if religion is just a lot of fantasy superstition? O.o
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Rosy
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Miss Friendship wrote:And why haven't the atheists complained and got rid of this long time ago? o_0
I've heard complaints about this phrase as far bad as 2nd grade. I used to be adamantly against its removal, but really, if it was a reference to any religion aside from Christianity I bet a lot of Christians would be incredibly upset about it. The USA is not a Christian country, nor was it ever intended to be.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the government is restricted to secular actions alone, that it must neither advance nor hinder religion. "In God We Trust" is a religious phrase. It does not belong on the legal tender of our secular nation
This pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject.
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Miss Friendship wrote:Why would it make you uncomfortable if religion is just a lot of fantasy superstition? O.o
I've never once called religion fantasy superstition. Please don't put words in my mouth.

It makes me uncomfortable that the government is endorsing and promoting a religious belief system that doesn't represent me or millions of other Americans. I would prefer my government stay out of the religion business.

How would you feel if our money said a short Arabic phrase in honor of Allah? Or if the phrase referenced a Hindu god? Would you be comfortable with that?
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Miss Friendship
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I'm sorry. I would be curious though what you do view religion as.

I agree. They shouldn't be glorifying God or saying they trust Him, when clearly they trust themselves, power, and their own country and do not serve Him.

Good point. I wouldn't be. But it shouldn't be a big deal to me, as I don't have any attachment to my currency as it's not my Kingdom. ;)
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Miss Friendship wrote:They shouldn't be glorifying God or saying they trust Him, when clearly they trust themselves, power, and their own country and do not serve Him.
You just apologized for making assumptions about what someone believes and yet, once again, you are self-righteously assuming that you are an authority on what all of our nation's leaders—none of whom you know personally—believe about God and civil society. Have you considered that just maybe there is such a thing as a Christian in our national government who is trying to do his or her best to serve God by serving the country? That just maybe, your personal convictions about Christianity and politics are not the only legitimate interpretations of Scripture that exist and that therefore making sweeping judgments about people who do things differently from you is really not okay?
Eleventh Doctor wrote:How is it a symbol of our heritage? It was made the national motto and appeared on currency in 1956.
No, it didn't. According to the United States Treasury, "In God We Trust" first appeared on the two-cent coin in 1864, after a wave of religious fervor associated with the Civil War swept the nation. The phrase was declared the national motto in 1956 and first appeared on paper money in 1957, soon to be stamped on all forms of U.S. currency, but the actual statement and its appearance on our money is almost a century older than that.

As to whether or not I personally agree with it being on our coins, I'm honestly not sure. On the one hand, the phrase has been appearing on our currency since the 19th century, so there is a lot of history there. Even before it was stamped on all our currency, the religious sentiment of the American population has played a significant role in our various societies for over 300 years, beginning back with the tragedy of the Salem Witch Trials and continuing toward the First and Second Great Awakenings (both of which were undercurrents of social movements that emerged at their respective times), abolitionism, and the Civil Rights Movement, and undoubtedly other events and times in between. To reference religion on our money, therefore, is to make a nod, however mistaken it may be, to our religious heritage—because we do have one, even if what we are seeing today looks significantly different that what we might have seen even only forty years ago.

On the other hand, though, phrases on currency used by all Americans should, at least in theory, be reflective of what we as a society believe, and while a sweeping majority of Americans at least identified as Christians in years past, such is clearly not the case anymore—many Americans don't even identify within a monotheistic religion at all, and that's more than likely not going to change any time soon. As a result, it would be more prudent (and accurate) to remove that statement from our currency, because surely we can learn about our religious history by means other than our nation's minted coins and notes.
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Seperation of church and state was first said by Thomas Jefferson. All the Constitution says is that it will make no laws regarding the establishment of religion. You do realize that states after the Constitution was signed and the Bill of rights had state religions?
The Founding Fathers said, I quote, "That they are are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..." Therefore the basis for our freedom is found in their belief in God. Washington said, "The event is in the hands of God."
Franklin who may or may not have been a Christian said, "God governs in the affairs of men...." He said more about this and called for prayer.
Lincoln in the the Gettysburg address said. "That this nation under God, shall have a new birth of freedom etc."

Saying that America was not meant to be a Christian nation isn't entirely true, pretty far from the truth. At this current juncture of America, America is less Christian in entirety than at times. Never say though that America wasn't influence heavily by Christianity or even completely not founded on a Biblical basis.
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TigerShadow wrote:You just apologized for making assumptions about what someone believes and yet, once again, you are self-righteously assuming that you are an authority on what all of our nation's leaders—none of whom you know personally—believe about God and civil society. Have you considered that just maybe there is such a thing as a Christian in our national government who is trying to do his or her best to serve God by serving the country? That just maybe, your personal convictions about Christianity and politics are not the only legitimate interpretations of Scripture that exist and that therefore making sweeping judgments about people who do things differently from you is really not okay?
Actually, I was talking about the "country" here, not individuals, although I did use terms that indicated individuals, so I should have clarified. Our country, from it's very beginning, did respect God, I agree, but it was not a christian country. It got it's independence by rebelling against England, and slaughtering the people who already lived here. God clearly tells Christians to obey their authorities in Romans. And I can't even begin to horrified how Christians have done so much damage to Christ's name, by killing tribes of people, and claiming to serve Christ at the same time. And in recent decades, our country has allowed mass murder of children.

As for individuals working in the government, I am not saying, nor have ever said, they cannot follow Christ. I do believe there are many saved, God-honoring Christians in government. Do I think they would please God better by forsaking all earthly countries and serving His Kingdom alone? Yes. But I am not judging their entire destiny based off of this.
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MnM
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What I meant by it being a symbol of our heritage is that America was formed to be a Christian nation, just like Blitz said. Just listen to Stepping Stones in The Truth Chronicles. It used to be that almost every single American was a Christian. Our heritage is a heritage of Christianity. Yes, America is now a melting pot of people of many different faiths, but that didn't used to be the case.
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Okay where in the Constitution is the word God or Bible or Christian used? If you say it's in the Declaration of Independence that was written by Thomas Jefferson who denied the divinity of Christ.

As for being founded as a Christian nation, article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796 would disagree.
As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
And yes Tiger you're right, it was first used in the 1860s.
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Additionally, no one in this thread ever said that the separation of church and state was in the Constitution. However, the idea of a "wall of separation between church and state" is a principle that has been upheld by the Supreme Court in multiple rulings, including, but not limited to:
  • Lemon v. Kurtzman, 1971: established what became known as the Lemon Test for interpreting the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment—a particular law or policy in a government/government-funded institution must have a secular purpose, cannot either advance or inhibit religion, and cannot require excessive government entanglement with a particular religion or religious group).

    McCollum v. Board of Education, 1947: A "release time" program was required in a public school for religious study (or a study hall); because it was a required religious-based study time in a public school, it was a violation of the Establishment Clause.

    Zorach v. Clauson, 1951: As long as students were not required to attend religious-based released-time programs, nor were these programs set on school grounds, the programs were not violations of the Establishment Clause.

    Widmar v. Vincent, 1981: A public university must give equal access to all organizations that wish to use its facilities, be they religious or secular.

    Epperson v. Arkansas, 1968: Public school teachers cannot be legally prohibited from teaching evolution because the law preventing them from doing so was strictly religious in nature and violated both the Free Speech and Establishment Clauses.

    Edwards v. Aguillard, 1986: A law requiring the teaching of creationism alongside evolution was struck down because it was not for a secular purpose and entangled the state with religion by funding the schools where this was happening.

    Engels v. Vitale, 1962: A public school in New York held voluntary prayer recitations, but by providing the prayer in a government-funded institution, the school was approving a particular religion.

    Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 1999: Schools are not allowed to have public prayer during events such as football games because public religious speech at a state-sponsored institution is a violation of the Establishment Clause.

    Lynch v. Donnelly, 1983: A Christmas display including a nativity scene was upheld as legitimate because it was depicting the historical origins of the Christmas holiday

    McCreary County v. ACLU, 2004: A framed copy of the Ten Commandments was held to be a violation of the Establishment Clause because its purpose was to advance religion.

    Van Order v. Perry, 2005: A monument to the Ten Commandments on state capitol grounds was permitted because it was part of a memorialization of the history of Western law; being religious in public is not a violation of the Establishment Clause.
This is just a small selection of cases in which the Supreme Court has attempted to strike a delicate balance between the interests of the state and the interests of the church and ensured the separation of the two. Though the specific language "separation of church and state" is not found in the Constitution, it is found in the opinions of the various justices who have voted in favor of the above rulings and others; therefore, while the idea is not overtly expressed in the Constitution, it has been interpreted that way by the highest court in the country for decades and has its roots in our country's beginnings.

It should be noted that courts of the United States have in fact ruled on this very matter multiple times. The first was the 1970 case Aronow v. U.S., in which the U.S. District Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit wrote:
It is quite obvious that the national motto and the slogan on coinage and currency "In God We Trust" has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion. Its use is of a patriotic or ceremonial character and bears no true resemblance to a governmental sponsorship of a religious exercise.
Additionally, in one of the cases mentioned above (Zorach v. Clauson), the Court opinion stated that government recognition of the existence of God does not establish a state church, and in the 2004 case Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow (concerning the Pledge of Allegiance, a similarly controversial part of our nation's legacy), Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote a concurring opinion stating that acts of "ceremonial deism" such as stamping "In God We Trust" on our currency and using the phrase "under God" have lost their religious significance due to rote repetition", and as such are perfectly valid; the opinion also remarks, much like the aforementioned opinion of Zorach, that words and phrases like "under God" and "in God we trust" are intended to be patriotic references to the nation's religious history, and because they are patriotic rather than religious in sentiment, they do not constitute an establishment of a government religion.

In other words, the Supreme Court of the United States has found religious references on secular iconography to be perfectly valid and acceptable and that they do not constitute a violation of the First Amendment, the Establishment Clause of which the Court has done its best to interpret through a balanced, objective lens using language either similar or identical to Thomas Jefferson's in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Church—"a wall of separation between church and state".

Make of this what you will.
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MnM
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Eleventh Doctor wrote:Okay where in the Constitution is the word God or Bible or Christian used? If you say it's in the Declaration of Independence that was written by Thomas Jefferson who denied the divinity of Christ."
As for your first question, here is a short article on the subject:
https://www.apologeticspress.org/apcont ... ticle=2556
There are things in the Constitution that point to Christianity.
As for your second statement, I've heard that alot, but where do people get that from? I'm just wondering.
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George Mason, actually proposed the following wording for the First Amendment
Proposed, it failed because that wasn't the intention of the Founders or they would have accepted Mason's proposal.
Instead, the federal Constitution reads “Sundays excepted”—proving conclusively that America was Christian in its orientation and that the Framers themselves shared the Christian worldview and gave political recognition to and accommodation of that fact.
Sure they gave political recognition and accommodation to the majority religion at the time. I don't know where this came from
If the Founders had intended to encourage a day of inactivity for the government without regard to any one religion, they could have chosen Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.
Sunday made sense, countries that you don't consider Christian take off Sunday too.
Did you catch it? Their work was done “in the Year of our Lord.”
Again, that was a Western convention. It isn't like Christ and the Apostles used AD and BC.

I feel like these references are grasping at straws. It's there if you want to see it but it isn't even as explicit as the Declaration of Independence and it was pretty light on references as it was.

Here you go from the Monticello website: https://www.monticello.org/site/researc ... us-beliefs
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MnM
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Okay.. I do see what you mean about grasping at straws, but I'll come back to that.
My question is: If America was never a Christian nation, why does our Pledge of Allegiance say, "One nation, under God" or our money say, "In God We Trust". At one point in history our nation would have had to be recognized as a Christian nation for these words to even get to these places.
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MnM wrote:My question is: If America was never a Christian nation, why does our Pledge of Allegiance say, "One nation, under God" or our money say, "In God We Trust". At one point in history our nation would have had to be recognized as a Christian nation for these words to even get to these places.
The pledge didn't say that originally. "Under God" was added during the Cold War to emphasize the contrast between the religiously free U.S. and the enforced atheistic Soviet Union. As near as I can tell, it had something to do with acknowledging God, but a lot more to do with politics.

As to why our currency says "In God We Trust", I already gave the historical explanation: It was added due to a wave of religious fervor that swept the United States during the Civil War.

Here's the thing: just because our country happens to have a history of a majority population that is Christian does not mean that it is or has ever been, for all intents and purposes, a "Christian nation". The Constitution states in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment that we are not to have a state religion precisely because the Founders never envisioned the United States to have a specific enforced religion, just as we don't have an official national language even though the majority of the population speaks English. There is a difference between the establishment of a state religion and the majority of a country's population happening to hold to that religion—you can identify, say, Iran or Afghanistan as a "Muslim nation" because that is the enforced official state religion, but you cannot identify America as a "Christian nation" because we don't have an established church, and we were never intended to.
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Eleventh Doctor
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One nation, under God was added in 1954. In God We Trust was officially adopted in 1956, all though yes as you said it was used on coins in 1865 it was discontinued in 1883 until 1908. The reasoning at the time was to prove that God was on the side of the Union during the Civil War, I can find no connection to our country being founded as a Christian nation.

But let me say this, yes I agree that our country at one point would have to be recognized as a Christian nation. The issue is recognized by whom? After WW2 when the Cold War was starting there were groups within America who wanted to make the conflict between us and the Soviet Union one of religion too so they decided to emphasize American's Christianity. So did it have to do with a recognition of our countries piety before God or was it more to do with creating a deeper Us vs Them divide in the Cold War, you decide.

Also what Tiger said who posted as I was writing this and said pretty much what I said.
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The Declaration of Independence was not solely written by Thomas Jefferson. He simply led the writing. Anyway, I said that Christianity largely influenced the early America.
The interesting thing about most of the court cases that rule that the government is separate from religion happened in the last oh 100 years. Its identifies that before government and religion were closely tied together. Anyway only about 50% of Christians in America are even registered to vote, so the Christian communities effect on government hardly matter any more.
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