Rube Reality » 1st Amendment http://rubereality.com Ruminations of an unrepentant rube Tue, 07 Sep 2010 23:32:56 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Ceremonial Deism http://rubereality.com/2009/11/17/ceremonial-deism/ http://rubereality.com/2009/11/17/ceremonial-deism/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:52:04 +0000 Herkimer http://rubereality.com/?p=158 “In God We Trust” did not appear on any coin until 1864. It wasn’t used on all coins until Roosevelt’s presidency, it wasn’t mandated by legislation on all coins until 1955, nor made the official motto of the United States until 1956. Likewise, the Pledge of Allegiance wasn’t even written until 1892, and the words “Under God” weren’t added until 1954. So enough of this nonsensical revisionism that the Founding Fathers were all devoted Christians and founded this country as a Christian nation – those who utter such nonsense are bearing false witness. Even were that not the case, the difference between their faith and today’s “American Christian” is this: they were unwilling to cheapen God’s name by printing it on something so base as money or by using it in political slogans & statements.

…I would suggest that such practices as the designation of “In God We Trust” as our national motto, or the references to God contained in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag can best be understood, in Dean Rostow’s apt phrase, as a form a “ceremonial deism,” protected from Establishment Clause scrutiny chiefly because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.

From Justice Brennan’s dissenting opinion in Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984)

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