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| A God-Awful Flag | |||||||
| With Georgia redesigning its state flag to include the words ‘In God We Trust,’ our columnist looks into the legal history of that phrase | |||||||
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| April 21 issue — The Georgia House of Representatives passed a bill recently that would redesign the state flag. In hopes of ending a decade-long controversy, the new scheme would eliminate the famously divisive Confederate battle flag imagery from the state flag for the first time since the mid-1950s. In its place, Georgia will return to a design based on the original Confederate national flag—the famous “Stars and Bars”—that featured a blue field with three stripes of red and white. On the middle white stripe, the words “In God We Trust” will be written. |
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AND THEY THINK this design is going to end the controversy? That has to be the most-offensive flag in the world! Yeah, and the Confederate imagery is problematic, too! Not to sound like the no-good, Northeastern, liberal, Yuppie, pluralistic, peacenik, atheist that I am, but isn’t anyone troubled that putting “In God We Trust” on a state flag is an overt attack on the Constitutionally mandated separation of church and state? Apparently no one in Georgia is. “Southerners are real God-fearing people,” David Martin, an aide to Georgia state Rep. Roger Bruce, told me. “Up north, people fight things like prayer in school. But there’s no real discussion on those things here. On the flag, the only debate was the use of the Confederate battle emblem versus the Confederate ‘Stars and Bars’.” Bruce’s opposition to the new flag—which passed by a 111-67 vote—focused solely on the Civil War-era imagery. To him, any use of Confederate symbols—whether the well-known battle flag of that defeated rebellion or the lesser-known national flag of that failed, corrupt, rogue state—romanticizes some “good ol’ days” that weren’t so good for a vast portion of the population. Subsequently, Bruce’s mailbag is not exactly brimming with people complaining about the religious sloganeering on the new flag. “I got a letter just the other day from a guy who said I should be grateful for slavery because without slavery, I wouldn’t be living in the United States today,” Bruce said. When you get letters like that, he added, any concern about a flag that reads “In God We Trust” tends to dissipate. “I personally don’t have a problem with ‘In God We Trust’ on the flag,” he said. “Hey, it’s on our money and I don’t see anyone trying to give back their money.” True, on a dollar bill, “In God We Trust” is right there, just above the word “ONE” on the back. (It’s on all the others, too—although I couldn’t confirm the 50 because I haven’t seen one of those since the Internet bubble burst.) So it’s not as if the State of Georgia invented the notion of wrapping yourself in a flag that’s wrapped around God. The government has been doing it since “In God We Trust” started appearing on coins during the Civil War. So why is that legal? After all, the Constitution of the United States says quite clearly that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” From time to time, my fellow atheists have challenged “In God We Trust” in court, but they always lose (we tend to prefer “E Pluribus Unum”—”From Many, One”—as a motto that better represents what the country is supposed to be about). In the most famous such case, the court ruled that “In God We Trust” is “of a patriotic and ceremonial character” and, as such, “bears no true resemblance to a governmental sponsorship of religious exercise.” Perhaps the court would consider one piece of evidence from the very government that is indeed sponsoring this religious exercise. According to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving Web site, “In God We Trust” was created “largely because of the increased religious sentiment existing during the Civil War.” The history lesson goes on say that then-Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase wanted it because, “No nation can be strong except in the strength of God. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins.” His people came up with “God, Our Trust,” which sounded to Chase a bit dyslexic, so he changed it to “In God We Trust.” Congress ratified it in 1864. The Supreme Court has never heard a case involving theocratic sloganeering on our national currency, but the issue may soon come up. Last year, a federal court ruled in favor of a California man who argued that the phrase “under God,” which had been inserted into the Pledge during our nation’s crusade against “godless Communism” in the 1950s, represented a government sponsorship of religion. Judging from the reaction to the Court’s ruling, you’d think the judges had voted to mandate cannibalism in elementary schools. Congressmen actually bit and kicked each other to be first in line to condemn the ruling. Private groups started holding public recitations of the Pledge—complete with bellowing out the words “under God.” Talk radio even found a new topic of vitriol besides former President Clinton! Pretty much everyone expects that the Supreme Court will take up—and overturn—the Ninth Circuit ruling, which held that “the statement that the United States is a nation ‘under God’ is an endorsement of religion” and declared the Pledge, “a profession of religious belief, namely, a belief in monotheism.” “To recite the Pledge is not to describe the United States; instead, it is to swear allegiance to the values for which the flag stands: unity, indivisibility, liberty, justice and—since 1954—monotheism.” It also “sends a message to non-believers that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community...At a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise.” |
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Robert Tiernan, a lawyer and former altar boy who argued—and lost—the last big “In God We Trust,” isn’t sure if he believes in God now, but either way, he believes in a much higher power: secular government. “The Framers went out of their way to keep religion out of government,” he said. “Even the oath of office does not say, ‘So help me God.’ The minute you start putting God in government, all sorts of bad things happen.” Tiernan cited The Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials and Islamic extremists as deity-driven disasters, but to me the issue is far more subtle. After all, the president is always invoking God, so it’s no wonder that Education Secretary Rod Paige admitted the other day that “I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community...In a religious environment, the value system is set. That’s not the case in a public school where there are so many different kids with different kinds of values.” The only “different” thing Rod Paige should be discussing right now is a different job. Too bad we won the war in Afghanistan; Paige would have been a perfect education minister for the Taliban. Tiernan is a strong believer that the weaker the relationship between the legislators and the Lord, the stronger the relationship between the citizenry and spirituality. “After all, we have something like 2,000 religions in this country,” he said. “Countries without a separation of church and state tend to have one.” Which, believe it or not, brings us back to the Georgia flag debate. The only person who objected to the use of “In God We Trust” on the Peachtree state banner was, ironically, a devout Christian representative named Tom Bordeaux. True, he didn’t object because he has a problem with our national motto, but because he thinks people’s faith in God is tarnished by cheap sloganeering. “It’s being put on the flag to increase its acceptability to voters,” Bordeaux said. “I had a colleague say that putting ‘In God We Trust’ on the flag will ensure that it will pass because, as he put it, ‘Who will vote against God?’ I think that’s a sacrilege to use God to sell a flag.” Amen to that, brother. Gersh Kuntzman is also a columnist for The New York Post. His Web site is at www.gersh.tv © 2003 Newsweek, Inc. | ||||||||||||||||||
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