Earlier this week I mentioned that the FFRF has written to the officials of Hawkins, a hitherto obscure hamlet in East Texas with a population that would easily fit inside my old high school. Since that time, there has been some public pushback against those who would request (however politely) that the town cease using public resources to endorse a particular religious viewpoint. The following video, for example, has gone viral on Facebook:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ipb8qWFbjs4
If I had a nickel for every time a Christian told me “IN GOD WE TRUST” on our currency proves that America is a Christian nation, I’d have an annoying pile of nickels. Perhaps even enough to buy one of those sexy Tapout t-shirts.
There is an irreconcilable conflict between the popular conception of what it means to trust in God and the highfalutin notion of ceremonial deism used by the appeals courts. Devout Christians often suggest that “In God We Trust” is indicative of our collective national dependence upon the God of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, but Justice Brennan has suggested 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.”
I’ve always been favorably impressed with Brennan’s erudition and judicial philosophy, but in this case it seems to me that he (and the courts more generally) have discounted the possibility that what they see as harmless—and well-nigh meaningless—ceremonial deism actually gives cover to those who would happily take us down a path to theocracy. Rote expressions of religious devotion may be taken far more seriously in Hawkins, Texas than in the hallowed halls of Harvard Law. While I do not expect the former to take the latter into account, it is vital that future jurists realize that language is usage, after all, and their sophisticated and worldly view of hackneyed devotional phrases may not comport well with that of the nation they help govern.