{"id":478492,"date":"2010-03-27T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-27T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/2010\/03\/27\/2636675\/in-god-we-trust-doesnt-fit-the.html#mi_rss=Opinion"},"modified":"2010-03-27T03:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-27T07:00:00","slug":"viewpoints-in-god-we-trust-doesnt-fit-the-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/478492","title":{"rendered":"Viewpoints: ‘In God We Trust’ doesn’t fit the bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tMichael Newdow, who is a lawyer and a doctor, challenges using “God” on money and in the Pledge of Allegiance. The Supreme Court rejected one case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With millions of people out of work, our education system in trouble, the state unable to finance services for its most vulnerable residents, is this really the time to be arguing about the wording of the Pledge of Allegiance? <\/p>\n

Much like the evangelical atheism billboards that have gone up along the freeways in recent months, Michael Newdow is focusing the limited resources of our courts on removing the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. It seems mostly an annoyance. <\/p>\n

Does it really hurt anyone to leave that phrase in there? Are any of us feeling forced by either a pithy billboard message or two words in a national ritual to have faith, or to abandon it? <\/p>\n

And yet, I think he has a point. <\/p>\n

Like Michael Newdow, I am a lawyer. I have been trained to think critically and to question our cultural assumptions. Probably like Newdow, I don’t believe that the history of the founding of this country or the drafting of the Constitution suggests that the United States was intended to be a Christian nation. The people whose vision of government we have inherited wanted to be sure that citizens of this country would never be oppressed by a government acting as an instrument of the Church. Any church. <\/p>\n

But it’s not lawyering that convinces me that the words “under God” in the pledge and “In God We Trust” on our coins and currency do not belong there. It’s my faith. <\/p>\n

I am also a United Methodist minister. I have committed my professional life to helping people see that God hopes for them something more than what we have learned to expect of our lives, our character, our relationships. The God I believe in – the God I know from the Judeo-Christian tradition I come from – has always been pretty intent upon not coercing people into faith. The idea of free will seems not only something that human beings insist on, but something built into the very fabric of creation. <\/p>\n

Instead of forcing or threatening people into relationship, the God I preach about woos us, like a hopeful lover. We make a choice to have faith or not, to trust God or not. <\/p>\n

To put a pronouncement of faith on every coin and dollar bill, to assume it for every person who handles money or who pledges allegiance to the flag as an act of patriotism, cheapens it. You can be a citizen and a patriot of the United States without believing in the God of Christianity or any other religious tradition. You can use money to buy things in this country without trusting God. <\/p>\n

Ironically, it’s often our worry or greed about money that keeps us from trusting God for what we need. <\/p>\n

Faith means nothing if we pretend that every person who buys something, or who has been granted American citizenship, has it. It ought to mean more. <\/p>\n

It does mean more. I’m going to keep preaching faith to everyone who walks into my church, with gratitude that this is a country where people can freely make the choice to come into that church, or not.<\/p>\n

I hope that someday this nation’s sense of inclusion and hospitality will lead us to remove from our pledge and our coins those phrases that presume too much and leave some people out. But this is not the time to argue about it.<\/p>\n

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\n\tKathleen McShane<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Newdow, who is a lawyer and a doctor, challenges using “God” on money and in the Pledge of Allegiance. The Supreme Court rejected one case. With millions of people out of work, our education system in trouble, the state unable to finance services for its most vulnerable residents, is this really the time to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-478492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}