W ith Monday marking 50 years that In God We Trust has been on U.S. paper currency, we thought we d find out what our readers thought about this.
So we created an informal, unscientific poll to ask people if they believed the phrase should remain. Then we tucked the poll inside the Faith and FYI sections and gave people only a few days to respond. Well, readers responded.
We ended up with 136 e-mails and letters, a 2-inch thick stack, far more than expected. And it was quickly evident that many people were aimed and ready to fire on any attempts to scrub the motto off our bills. For many the issue was intertwined with their belief in God and in the country s religious heritage.
Some writers included civics lessons on the founding of the country and essays on aspects of the seeming assault on religion in the country. Apparently, here, In God We Trust is where many intend to draw a line. A whopping 94 percent of respondents said the motto should remain; 5 percent said no; and 1 percent said it didn t make a difference.
The results were similar to that of a 2003 Gallup poll in which 90 percent of respondents approved retaining the motto on coins. Although the words first appeared on coins in 1864 during the Civil War era, they weren t institutionalized until 50 years ago. In 1956, during the height of the Cold War struggle with the officially atheist Soviet Union, Congress passed a joint resolution, signed by President Dwight Eisenhower, declaring In God We Trust to be the national motto, wrote David Masci, senior research fellow for the Pew Forum in a recent forum weekly update.
The following year, on Oct. 1, the motto appeared for the first time on paper currency, on the back of the dollar bill, he said. Since then the constitutionality of the motto does it violate the notion of separation of church and state?
has been challenged several times in courts, so far unsuccessfully. Most recently atheist Michael Newdow, the California doctor and lawyer who tried to strike under God from the Pledge of Allegiance, filed a lawsuit to have the motto removed from the nation s currency. Last year a federal district court dismissed the case, and the ever-persistent Newdow has appealed to a federal appeals court.
On the other side of the coin, just the question should the motto stay or go? offended some readers. Some respondents to The Star s poll were so adamant that the phrase remain, they seemed to yell through their e-mails and letters.
You should be ashamed of yourself for allowing such a topic to be printed in the first place, one reader admonished with an exclamation point. People don t need to be thinking negatively as you have suggested. More than a dozen respondents predicted dire consequences if the motto is removed from the currency: The United States will be doomed, become a fallen nation and hell on earth, as it is in other countries.
Dropping the words, some wrote, will lead to the country s demise, become another nail in our coffin of being a leading nation and just possibly God will abandon America. Although few in number, the people who said the motto should go were equally firm in their stance. Several argued the motto on currency violated the principle of the separation of church and state and that it excludes people of some faiths and no faith.
For one thing, it isn t entirely true, said Joan Hancock of Raytown. If we were interested in a factually true motto on this subject, perhaps we should have chosen, In God Some of Us Trust or even In God a Majority of Us Trust.
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