Should In God We Trust Stay the USA Motto - Article Example

Should "In God We Trust" stay the U.S. Motto Over the past few years, there is a noticeable resurgence of religious beliefs seep into the United s government, thanks to President George W. Bush. It has been as early as the year 2000 that there have been people talking about whether or not "In God we Trust" should remain America's motto, of if the line "Under God" should be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance1. According to Adel Awadalla (2004, p. 56), the motto "In God we Trust" is in fact Masonic. Yes, if we put our shoes in the Americans we're bound to think why they want to trust in a God in human form So who designed the dollar and the seal on the one-dollar Why he put these magical symbols on the seal on the one-dollar bill Who is the grand architect which masons worship Was that God the architect of havens and earth Or was that someone else "In God We Trust", but this is a secular state does not trust God's way, it has its own human way of rule, which means no Bible, Torah or Quran, Has any say in the way of life or in court or in the government. So, who is that "God Americans trust" And the word "trust", why not in God Americans believe or to God they aspire or to God they pray No Holy book has the word in God we trust And why the masons call god the grand architect God is the creator not only the architect, the architect does not create, make or touch anything except his instruction pencil, but God said in the Koran: "He "God" said: O Iblis (Satin)! What hindereth thee from falling prostrate before that which I have created with My hands Art thou too proud or art thou of the high" (38-75). "We have built the heaven with might, and We it is who make the vast extent (thereof)" (Koran- 51: 4) So, God is not only architect, but He is the Creator of whole humanity, and the whole thing else (Adel, 2004, p. 57). So, why they say the majestic designer If they didn't mean supernatural being, then whom are they complaining or talking about What is the drawing of this majestic designer How his design does look like So, who is the architect of the seal, and the U.S. one-dollar There have been two notable developments since World War II, both of which are gaps between "what everybody knows" and what in fact the case is. One is that religious learning, which traditionally has been a sectarian study of Christianity-centered in the seminaries of different values, has moved to the universities. U.S. citizens remain largely unaware of the secular scholarship of religious conviction (Judith, 1996). This gap has very real results and consequences, for instance in deciding public policy issues such as women's choice2 - when does a fetus have a 'soul' And become a 'person' - stem cell research, and the study of evolution in public schools (Judith, 1996). The other worth mentioning development is the hotheaded expansion of Eastern religious faiths in the U.S. Conservative estimates of the growth of Buddhism suggest a ten-fold increase in the last 40 years, to approximately two million supporters (Lewis, 2007). That is about half the number of Muslims and a third the number of Jews in America, in just 40 years (Samuel 1998, p. 65). Who, immediately after World War II, would have guessed there would be a major Buddhist center, Deer Park, in rural Oregon, W I, a few miles from Madison, W I and one of the American headquarters of the Dalai Lama (Lewis, 2007) A similar story could be told about the number of Hindus and Taoists in the U.S. since World War II. This gap between religious diversity and whatever everyone knows leads to both funniest stories and unnecessary conflicts (Lewis 2007). This image of "a wall of separation between church and state" has become a classic metaphor and legal concept in American judicial history, but the reality is far more complicated and compromised. As Ronald Thiemann examines with no small biting wit, "The day Justice Black penned those historic words; the U.S. Court of Law was summoned with the chant, 'God save this honorable court'" (Robert, 2006, p. 25). A few hundred yards across the Mall from the Supreme Court building, the two houses of Congress opened their sessions with prayers offered from chaplains supported by public funds and paid with currency inscribed with the motto, "In God We Trust" (p. 25). This tension between legal judgments requiring greater separation and the actual religious traditions and practices of Americans existed powerfully in the post-World War II years. Connections between religious commitments and patriotic loyalty were also increasingly claimed and emphasized. In 1954, Congress voted to add the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance to draw an over contrast to the atheistic threat to communism; three years later; it passed a joint resolution declaring "In God We Trust" the official motto of the United States (Lewis, 2007). Harold Bloom has often said that the American people are "religiously crazy" (Lewis, 2007). According to the Pew Research Center3 nearly half of U.S. citizens think that United States has had special protection from God for most of its history - this is something like Jewish's notion of "we are the chosen people of God" (I bid). The level of American's commitment to this ecumenical position, which certainly helps truth seeking, is seen across all religious faiths and backgrounds. Even the most strongly committed evangelical Protestants are evenly divided over whether their faith is the only route to eternal life or not. An idea that has inhibited truth seeking is that Christianity is under attack. Given that the large majority of Americans identify themselves as Christians, this seems implausible, but nonetheless is widely believed. The Gallup Poll in 2006, for instance, finds that 59 percent of American church goers feel like Christianity is under attack in the United States today, 42 percent agree there is a war on Christmas in the United States, 83 percent think nativity scenes should be allowed on public property, 93 percent think "In God we Trust" should remain on American currency and coins, 90 percent accept as true the phrase 'under God' should remain in the Pledge of Allegiance, 77 percent that the judges have gone too far in taking faith out of public life (Robert, 2006, p. 35). The presumption behind these numbers is that America is a specifically Christian country and that Christian symbols should dominate. Consistent with the above, many so-called inborn again Christians believe in the inerrancy of the Bible but can't name the Four Gospels or any of the letters of Paul. Apparently these people have an absolute faith in a book they don't read (Lewis, 2007). This "religiously crazy" nation thinks that it knows everything about religion, but in fact does not know enough. That is to say, it is illiterate about such things as the scholarship of Biblical studies, textual criticism, the history of religious ideas, the study of comparative methodology, the scholarship of comparative religions and the like (Robert, 2006, p. 30). We need to reckon further with this heavenly/humanly situation coinciding with the never-ending with the creaturely pride. Can divine autonomy be both utterly secure and, in the very nature of finality, humanly vulnerable Purists wedded to their suppositions of "Almightiness" need not to be worrying in making these more pertinent concerning "the God who is" yet must "be let it be" (Lewis, 2007). It is said that, centuries ago, there was a Christian saint who bore the name Quodvultedeus, or "what wills God". There has been in all theism - not least in Islam - a mind to name all humans so. The general assumption is of dependence, submission, ultimate determination by "the disposer supreme". "In God we Trust" is the rubric, not Americans "in trust with God". So say the American dollar bills of every denomination (Lewis, 2007). The legend seems contradicted everywhere by the realism of Quodvulthomo. The technocrat has become the "disposer supreme". Thanks to him there has been a long steady collapse of the sense of God as neither real nor notably imaginary (Judith, 1996). The credence about God that persists is readily seen as credulity that stems from wistfulness, from psychic anxiety and the desire for consolation. The reassurances that really matter have to come from the benefits of science, the competence of our own human technology, "In these we Trust" (Judith, 1996). However, the more we possess these the more critically we perceive them as a liability and that, not merely in the menaces they contain, but the case they make for hallowing, for being comprehended in dimensions larger than themselves (Adel, 2004, p. 57). What could these dimensions be Faith's answer is: "the authority of God". Yet that answer is ours to make, stands within out human options and is by its essence uncompelled. Our very trust in God - if such it be - proves to be "with us in trust". Faith, and theology, is in trust with God as scholars are in trust with knowledge, as jurors are with truth, as lovers are with love, as physicians are with physique. They have a serving stature vis--vis what lies with them in the very way in which it is beyond them. They have to do, in every case, with what depends and still transcends. Words, deeds, relationships are of this double order. Practitioners are in quest of what is in quest of them, called upon to fulfill what already fulfills them. What has required their submission has bestowed their authority. Attainment was made to wait upon intention. Thus God is actually known in divinely knowing ourselves. All 'truthfulness' with words or due senses of rights and wrongs in law, or worship in love, or unassuming nature with supremacy, is "letting God be". I believe we only do so in full integrity when we are moved by His "Supernatural Being who He is". Conversely, in the exactness we contradict, the love we refuse to acknowledge, the commands we betray, the treacheries we think, the nature we besmirch, I think we are "letting God not to be". All these proscriptions - to call them so - on the Godness of God are noticeably, and highly, possible. They happen repetitively. The fact must vigilant and purify our notion of all-powerfulness. "Hero worship" is practicable. "Taking the Name with little hope" would not need to be outlawed if it could not happen. "Have no other supernatural beings" would be no edict if there were no such a choice (Adel, 2004). Moses did not fall from Sinai into an enthusiastically welcoming reaction, no were tablets on stone catching, with the same fixity, to Jewish hearts. Thus the relevance of the world to Americans is bound into the relevance of Americans to God. There is this situation of divine purpose meant within human inner-purpose - so truly meant that it is free to be counter-purpose. We are entrusted with is God and there and in that we are "in Human trust with God" (Lewis, 2007). Neither removing "In God We Trust" from Americans currency is their way of ignoring the beliefs of the founder of this nation, as they were all reasonably religious nor even "Under God" was not initially in the Pledge of Allegiance, and that Dwight D. Eisenhower's Congress amended the Pledge by adding the line "Under God" to the Pledge in 1954 to show Americans was better than those Godless Communists they were opposed to (Lewis, 2007). Nay those gay couples in eternal relationships are worthy of the same benefits married couples receive, whether or not people consider it a marriage4. It is worth mentioning that these things because of a War President Bush started that a lot of youth had no interest in fighting. It seems that to keep people fearing life and needing him as President, Bush started a war on a homeless enemy - meaning, there are no borders to fight, and there is no land conquest. The war on terror is an ideological war, and as long as people have different opinions, there will always be an enemy to Bush, and Americans will always be fighting. Americans have affirmed divine sovereignty in sharply determinist form in some of its moods, not least - speciously - around its debates about grace. God, as power and will, has prevailed - against the parameters of the Gospel itself - over divine hesed, or "loving-kindness" (Adel, 2004). It is possible for theologians' minds to be afraid of dimensions of freedom, whether in respect of dogma or destiny. It is not, however, power that is ever at issue, only the nature of the power. Sheer arbitrations in the motto must not be possible in righteous love. References: Adel Awadalla. (2004). The Prophecy and the Warning Shrines Through the Mystifying Codes of Holy Koran. Trafford Publishing, pp. 56-60 Judith Hayes. (1996). In God We Trust: But which one Contributor Dan Barker, Freedom from religion foundation, Inc. Robert Kunzman. (2006). Gappling with the Good: Talking about Religion and Morality in Public. Religion in the public schools, United States. SUNY Press, pp. 25-30 Solomon, Lewis. D. (2007). In God We Trust: Faith-based Organization and the Quest to solve. Social Science: Sociology of Religion. Lexington Books. Samuel P. Huntington. (1998). The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of the World Order. Simon & Schuster, World Politics, pp. 65-70 Read More