THERE ARE FEW QUIET DAYS in Washington, D.C., but Monday, May 17, 1954, was particularly frantic. For nearly a month, some twenty million Americans had been watching the dramatic showdown between Senator Joseph McCarthy and the United States Army in congressional hearings broadcast live on ABC and the DuMont network. But that morning, President Eisenhower stunned the nation by barring all Pentagon officials from testifying, and suddenly McCarthyism’s climactic battle came to an abrupt halt. Then, only hours later and a block away, the United States Supreme Court issued its long-awaited ruling in the school desegregation case of Brown v. Board of Education. At 12:52 p.m., Chief Justice Earl Warren began delivering the unanimous opinion that tore down the constitutional foundation for racial segregation, speaking slowly but surely in awareness of the moment’s importance. When he finished at 1:20 p.m., wire services sent the news across the nation as the Voice of America trumpeted it around the globe in thirty-four languages. Riveted by these events, reporters gave little thought to the hearings taking place that afternoon in Room 424 of the Senate Office Building, where a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee sat to consider a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States. If passed, it would have declared, “This Nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Saviour and Ruler of nations through whom are bestowed the blessings of Almighty God.”1
The campaign for this “Christian amendment” had been under way, in fits and starts, for nearly a century. Like most efforts to add religious elements to American political culture, the idea originated during the Civil War. In 1861, several northern ministers came to believe that the conflict was the result of the godlessness of the Constitution. “We are reaping the effects of its implied atheism,” they warned, and only a direct acknowledgment of Christ’s authority could correct such an “atheistic error in our prime conceptions of Government.” These clergymen banded together to create the National Reform Association, an organization that was single-mindedly dedicated to promoting the Christian amendment. It won the support of prominent governors, senators, judges, theologians, college presidents, and professors. “It can never be out of season to explain and enforce mortal dependence on Almighty God,” Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts applauded. Despite his own frequent invocations of faith, however, Lincoln ignored the calls for an amendment, and the effort stalled. Campaigns devoted to the cause appeared sporadically in the decades that followed, but they all failed to find traction.2
The religious revival of the Eisenhower era, however, gave this long-frustrated movement its best chance yet. In 1954, Republican senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont advanced a new version of the amendment in what would be its latest and greatest campaign. Bald with a short, sandy-colored mustache, wire-rimmed glasses, and a pipe perpetually in hand, the soft-spoken seventy-three-year-old did not look the part of a conservative firebrand. But his convictions ran deep. A former industrialist and head of the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, Flanders had been an outspoken opponent of the New Deal, which he believed was designed “to establish permanent Federal control over business.” “A fundamentalist on free enterprise,” in the words of a Saturday Evening Post profile, Flanders was no different when it came to his faith. Soon after his arrival in Washington, he became a loyal ally of Abraham Vereide, serving as a regular participant in the Senate prayer breakfasts and then chair of his International Council for Christian Leadership. Spurred on by these associations, the senator revived the Christian amendment and advanced it further along the legislative process than ever before. Though overlooked at the time, the 1954 Senate hearings represented a major milestone.3
Despite such progress, advocates of the Christian amendment still faced an inherently difficult challenge in the Senate. By its very nature, their proposal to change the Constitution forced them to acknowledge that the religious invocation was something new for the document. The founding fathers had felt no need to acknowledge “the law and authority of Jesus Christ,” and neither had subsequent generations of American legislators. Some of the more imaginative advocates of the Christian amendment at the Senate hearings simply waved away this history and argued that leaders such as Washington and Lincoln had supported the idea even if they never acted upon it. For evidence, they repeatedly made reference in their testimony to letters and meetings in which these presidents allegedly had lent support to their cause. At the hearings, the presiding senator kindly offered to have these documents inserted into the official transcript once they were found. But the published record provided a quiet rebuke to such claims, noting that inquiries to the Library of Congress and other authoritative sources showed that the alleged documents did not, in fact, exist.4
Other supporters of the Christian amendment took a different, if equally imaginative, approach to the issue of original intent. R. E. Robb, a newspaper columnist from South Carolina, compiled a collection of religious invocations from American history, stretching from the Mayflower Compact of 1620 to early twentieth-century America. From them, he testified, “we are warranted in stating categorically that this is in fact basically and fundamentally a Christian nation.” However, Robb admitted, “the Nation itself does not say so. Its official spokesman, its written or enacted Constitution, is silent on the subject.” No matter; there was another “unwritten and vital” constitution whose authority superseded the written one. “The vital, the actual Constitution of this Nation is and always has been Christian, from the first settlers down to the present,” Robb argued. “But the written Constitution, which should accurately reflect the vital Constitution, is sadly lacking in respect to its acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as the Supreme Ruler and His law as the supreme authority of the Nation.” Therefore, it needed to be amended.5
There was, according to advocates of the Christian amendment, ample evidence of the religious intent of this unwritten constitution, intent that had been expressed in a variety of official and unofficial ways. The head of the National Reform Association, a Presbyterian minister from Los Angeles named J. Renwick Patterson, presented the Senate with a litany of examples showing how “the spiritual has been woven into the fabric of American life” as part of the “unwritten law of the land.” He singled out the public prayers given in presidential inaugurations and congressional sessions, the chaplains employed by the military and Congress whose salaries were paid with public funds, the tax-exempt status of churches, and the traditional notion of Sunday as a day of rest. “All of these things testify to the place Christianity had had in the past and continues to have in our national life,” Patterson noted. “But when it comes to our Constitution, our fundamental law, there is complete silence regarding God. He isn’t even mentioned. There is no recognition, no acknowledgment. In our Constitution there is absolutely nothing to undergird and give legal sanction to the religious practices mentioned above.” Recognizing there was no constitutional authority for these activities, he argued not that these practices should be abandoned but rather that the Constitution should be rewritten to support them.6
The 1954 campaign for the Christian amendment failed, as had all the previous ones. Nevertheless, Patterson’s observations about religious references in American political life remained an important point. Two years earlier, in a unanimous opinion for the Supreme Court case of Zorach v. Clauson, Justice William O. Douglas had taken note of some of these same examples of public religiosity—“prayers in our legislative halls; the appeals to the Almighty in the messages of the Chief Executive; the proclamations making Thanksgiving Day a holiday; ‘so help me God’ in our courtroom oaths”—and asserted that they did not represent a violation of the First Amendment doctrine of separation of church and state. Notably, the liberal Douglas used these examples exactly as the conservative Patterson would in 1954: to draw a stark conclusion. “We are,” Douglas stated matter-of-factly, “a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” The Constitution, the Court seemed to say, might not officially acknowledge the authority and law of God, but neither would it object to any government official who did.7
A decade later, in a 1962 lecture at Brown University, the dean of Yale Law School, Eugene Rostow, referred to these extraconstitutional religious practices in American political life as “ceremonial deism.” His choice of words captured the conventional wisdom on these issues well. The invocation of “deism” called to mind the specific religious practice of many of the founding fathers, of course, but it also reflected the ways in which public acknowledgments of a deity tended to be vague and divorced from any particular sect. “God” was regularly invoked; “Jesus Christ” rarely, if ever. While other crusades for public religiosity had stressed a Christian identity—often an implicitly Protestant Christian identity, as seen in the work of Spiritual Mobilization or the International Council for Christian Leadership—the God celebrated in acts of ceremonial deism was more easily embraced by other faiths. Indeed, during the 1950s, Catholics played pivotal roles in spreading such religious symbolism, especially with the twin mottos that represented the pinnacle of the phenomenon: “In God We Trust” and “one nation under God.” Catholic congressmen wrote much of the key legislation that enabled these changes, Catholic fraternal organizations lobbied for their passage, and leaders in the Catholic clergy lent their support. Jews, for the most part, were supportive as well, with prominent rabbis and leading Jewish congressmen sanctioning the changes. Much like the public statements of President Eisenhower, the “deism” of such invocations welcomed a wide range of religious worship.8
Rostow’s framing of these religious references as “ceremonial” in nature was also telling. In the eyes of the law—even a stalwart liberal such as Justice Douglas—these invocations were ceremonial in the sense that they were merely ornamental. They had no meaningful substance, and as a result, courts routinely held that those who objected to their use had no standing to challenge them. Legal scholars likewise dismissed the importance of these issues, as Rostow did when he characterized them as “so conventional and uncontroversial as to be constitutional.” Surprisingly, this attitude was echoed by the era’s most vigilant guardians of the wall separating church and state. The American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, paid practically no attention to these issues when they were considered before Congress. As McCarthyism consumed the country, the ACLU focused its energies there. Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (POAU), the most significant organization of its kind, worried largely about Catholic organizations seeking public money for parochial schools. Although they raised a few pro forma objections, these civil liberties organizations largely acceded to the argument, made often by proponents of ceremonial deism, that the First Amendment mandated the separation of church and state, not the separation of religion and politics. Support for a specific sect, especially when it came to the use of taxpayer money or government policy, was beyond the pale. But general support for the sacred was perfectly fine. Like many others, these civil liberties organizations believed official invocations of a vague “God” had no substance or significance.9
And yet the “ceremonial” nature of public religious invocations did not diminish their importance. Quite the contrary—it vested them with incredible weight. In the eyes of many Americans, the official embrace of religion by the nation’s leaders was, in effect, as politically significant and legally binding as any formal amendment to the Constitution possibly could have been. This religious revival in government, which had begun in earnest with Eisenhower’s innovations, rapidly expanded as legislators got into the spirit. Though Congress dismissed the 1954 Christian amendment, during that very same session legislators enthusiastically and, indeed, effortlessly adopted the religious mottos “In God We Trust” and “one nation under God,” as well as a host of other changes that echoed and amplified this theme. These measures may not have had the legal impact of a constitutional amendment, but they were, for all intents and purposes, formal acknowledgments that the United States government recognized the law and authority of Almighty God. In the end, the “unwritten constitution” was written into American law and life after all.
THE ORIGINAL PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE, much like the Constitution itself, did not acknowledge the existence of God. Its author, Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister from Rome, New York, was a decidedly religious man, but when he wrote the pledge in the 1890s he described himself as something that would seem an oxymoron in Eisenhower’s America: a “Christian socialist.” A first cousin of Edward Bellamy, author of the 1888 socialist utopian novel Looking Backward, Francis Bellamy helped found the Society of Christian Socialists a year later in order “to show that the aim of socialism is embraced in the aim of Christianity” and “to awaken members of Christian Churches to the fact that the teachings of Jesus Christ lead directly to some specific form or forms of Socialism.” He became so busy spreading the gospel of Christian socialism that he left the ministry in 1891. Soon after, he went to work for Youth’s Companion magazine, touring America to promote a commemoration of the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival. In his public lectures, Bellamy promoted “a new Americanism.” The old interpretations of liberty, he said, “had meant liberty for great corporations to oppress the people” and “liberty for the atoms on the top of the sand heap to press down harder and harder on the atoms below.” But America had “had enough of that kind of liberty.” Instead, the nation needed liberty for all Americans, a true equality that would ensure that “every man shall have the equal right to work and earn bread for his family; that every child shall be taken and given as good a chance as the government can afford.”10
In that spirit, Bellamy organized a national program of public school celebrations for Columbus Day in 1892. His plans centered on a then-novel proposal for every schoolhouse in the nation to display the American flag and lead students through a brief ceremony celebrating it and the country it represented. The idea quickly caught on. After a White House meeting with President Benjamin Harrison, Bellamy secured a congressional resolution making Columbus Day a national holiday. The next step was arranging for the program, which in Bellamy’s mind would involve “an original Carol, an original Address, [and] an original Ode, prepared by the best American writers.” With his attention fixed on these matters, Bellamy paid little attention to the comparatively minor details of the flag salute. A colleague who had been assigned that duty was unable to come up with anything suitable, however, and Bellamy had to tackle it himself. He spent only two hours drafting the pledge, but he was satisfied with the result: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands—one Nation indivisible—with Liberty and Justice for all.”11
Though widely used in the 1892 Columbus Day ceremonies, Bellamy’s pledge did not officially become the pledge until after the Second World War. Indeed, at the turn of the century, a number of different pledges competed for the loyalty of American schoolchildren. In New York State, schools that held flag ceremonies had a choice of five pledges, none of which made any reference to a deity. In San Francisco, the sixty different public schools followed their own preferences, resulting in a considerable range of pledges. Only after the First World War was there any real effort to select a single pledge for the entire nation, a movement that peaked with a pair of National Flag Conferences in 1923 and 1924. Concerns over labor radicalism and new immigration from southern and eastern Europe were widespread at the time, and Bellamy, by this point in his late sixties and much more conservative, offered his pledge as the solution. He argued that it would dispel the influence of a wide variety of domestic radicals, “including direct action communists and revolutionary socialists who are boring into the labor unions and are inciting revolt among all classes of working people.” To ensure the loyalty of new immigrants, his pledge was altered in 1923 to change the somewhat vague “my flag” to “the flag of the United States.” (In case the country in question remained unclear, “of America” was added the following year.) “This pledge,” Time later noted, “rapidly became a fixture of U.S. school life, as standard as Palmer penmanship and chewed erasers.” In December 1945, an act of Congress finally made it the official Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag.12
Through all these various revisions, the pledge remained godless. But as the Christian libertarian movement of “under-God consciousness” swept the nation in the early 1950s, a campaign to add that phrase to the pledge began in earnest. The idea originated with the Knights of Columbus, a leading Catholic fraternal organization. In April 1951, its Supreme Board of Directors adopted a resolution requiring its Fourth Degree Assemblies—divisions devoted to the promotion of patriotism, of which there were 750 in all—to insert “under God” after the words “one nation” when reciting the pledge at their meetings. As the phrase gained greater prominence during the “Freedom Under God” festivities held on the Fourth of July that year and the next, the Knights decided all Americans would benefit from their revision. In 1952, the national board of the organization called on Congress to add “under God” to the pledge, with copies of the resolution sent to President Harry Truman, Vice President Alben Barkley, and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. Moreover, the Knights of Columbus urged its nearly six hundred thousand members to write their representatives in Congress about it as well.13
In April 1953, Representative Louis C. Rabaut, a Democrat from suburban Detroit, received one such letter. While “outwardly brusque,” a newspaper profile noted, the elderly congressman consistently displayed a “soft spot” for children’s issues, perhaps because he had nine children and twenty-nine grandchildren of his own. A devout Catholic—one son was a Jesuit priest and three of his daughters were nuns—Rabaut was immediately taken with the arguments for adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. He soon introduced a bill to do just that, saying that the words would serve as “public proclamation of our religious traditions and our dependence on divine providence.” The congressman noted in passing that an acknowledgment of God in the pledge would serve as a “bulwark against communism,” but his argument focused on the relationship between religion and individual freedom. “It is my hope that the recitation of the pledge, with this addition, ‘under God,’ by our schoolchildren will bring to them a deeper understanding of the real meaning of patriotism,” Rabaut said. “Love of country is a devotion to an institution that finds its origin and development in the moral law and commands our respect and allegiance so long as it provides that liberty and justice for all in which freemen can work out their own immortal destinies. Our country was born under God,” the congressman insisted, “and only under God will it live as a citadel of freedom.”14
Rabaut’s emergence as chief congressional champion of the pledge proposal demonstrated how quickly the campaign for “under-God consciousness” had spread beyond the original intentions of its creators. In its early years, Protestant leaders—ministers such as Fifield, Vereide, and Graham and laymen such as Eisenhower and Pew—had championed a slate of events and ideas that, while nominally ecumenical, were in practical terms overwhelmingly Protestant in composition and character. Soon enough, however, Catholics such as the Knights of Columbus and Rabaut had joined the cause. Over the previous decade, Catholic politicians and lay organizations had been on the defensive, as Protestants complained about their ambition to secure public funding for parochial schools. But Rabaut was evidence that Catholics could blend religion and politics in ways that Protestants not only accepted but applauded. And if his religion was notable, his politics were too. In 1953, the Michigan congressman received a perfect rating from Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the progressive organization founded by prominent liberals including Reinhold Niebuhr, Walter Reuther, and Eleanor Roosevelt. The involvement of liberal Democrats such as Rabaut demonstrated that the “under-God” campaign had moved well beyond the original intent of Christian libertarians who hoped it would undermine the New Deal.15
The popular reaction to Rabaut’s proposal showed how support for the campaign of “under-God consciousness” now spread across the spectrum of both religion and politics. In May 1953, a Gallup poll reported that 69 percent of Americans favored adding “under God” to the pledge, with only 21 percent opposed and 10 percent undecided. Catholics and Protestants overwhelmingly favored the idea, with a majority of Jews supporting it as well. At the grass roots, Democrats and Republicans alike rallied around the idea. Yet the House initially made no effort to act on Rabaut’s bill. The Knights of Columbus renewed their campaign, while other fraternal organizations, including the American Legion, announced their support as well. Yet Congress still failed to act.16
It ultimately took a sermon from a Presbyterian to prompt action. Reverend George M. Docherty, a tall Scotsman with thinning brown hair, had been recruited in 1950 to take over New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Known as “the church of the presidents” because fourteen chief executives, including Lincoln, had worshiped there, it held a prominent position both within Presbyterian circles and in popular culture at large. (Reverend Peter Marshall, Docherty’s predecessor in the pulpit, had been a world-renowned minister and author. The 1955 film based on his life, A Man Called Peter, was nominated for an Academy Award.) Docherty took over the pastorate of New York Avenue Presbyterian before he turned forty, and he was immediately marked as a rising star. Though he did not become an American citizen for another decade, he was an early convert to the campaign to merge religion and patriotism in the nation he now called home. When Billy Graham held services at the Capitol in February 1952, for instance, Docherty sat at a place of honor on the platform and offered his full-throated support to the endeavor. “I am certain,” he told a reporter from the Post, “that this young man is being used by God in the Nation’s Capital to remind all of us of the sovereignty of God.”17
A few months later, Docherty had his own chance to be used by God, when he addressed the Washington Pilgrimage of American Churchmen. As its name suggested, the Pilgrimage involved hundreds of leading laymen and church figures, representing several faiths from across the country, converging on the capital. Believing that “faith is the foundation of freedom,” they visited various shrines and monuments in order “to demonstrate to the world that belief in God has served as the basis of American government and the democratic way of life.” As he mulled his thoughts on that theme, Docherty was drawn to the Gettysburg Address, especially Lincoln’s hope that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” When a chance conversation with his second-grader son turned to the Pledge of Allegiance, Docherty realized that the flag salute failed to follow Lincoln’s example of acknowledging God. He decided to make the omission the central theme of his May 1952 address. “It was received by the Washington Pilgrims with acclamation,” he later remembered. “But after the congratulations and the ceremonies of presentation, the Washington Pilgrimage did nothing about it.” According to the Post, “several of Dr. Docherty’s colleagues in this city declared it would violate the principle of separation of church and state” and therefore “dropped the idea” of pursuing it further. The minister remained undeterred and held on to the sermon.18
Docherty found an opportune chance to deliver it again when Dwight Eisenhower attended the annual “Lincoln Sunday” service at New York Avenue Presbyterian on February 7, 1954. That morning, the president and First Lady sat in the same pew where Lincoln had once prayed, with the remainder of the fourteen-hundred-seat sanctuary filled to capacity. “At this season of anniversary of the birth of Lincoln,” Docherty began, “it will not be inappropriate to speak about freedom, and what is called ‘the American way of life.’” That phrase was at once intimately familiar yet fairly vague, the Scotsman noted, so he illustrated its meaning with images that might have come from Madison Avenue: baseball games, popcorn, Coca-Cola, Sears, Roebuck, and so on. “And where did all this come from?” Docherty asked. “It was brought here by people who laid stress on fundamentals. They called themselves Puritans.” While it is easy to scoff at the idea that postwar America’s obsession with consumer goods could be traced back to the staid Puritans, Docherty’s argument resonated with an audience accustomed to such rhetoric. These “Fathers of a Mighty Nation,” he continued, had carried to the New World certain “fundamental concepts of life” taken from the teachings of Moses and Jesus Christ, and those religious concepts still represented the true heart of the nation. “This,” he concluded, “is the ‘American Way of Life.’”19
Even though religious principles were central to the nation’s character, Docherty believed there was little evidence of them in public professions of patriotism. Turning to the Pledge of Allegiance, the Scotsman told the assembled that he had an advantage over American parents who listened to the “noble words” of their flag salute with rote familiarity. “You have learned them so long ago,” he said, “like the arithmetic table or the Shorter Catechism, something you can repeat without realizing what it all really means. But I could sit down and brood upon it.” Having done so, he had concluded “there was something missing in this Pledge, and that which was missing was the characteristic and definitive factor in the ‘American Way of Life.’ Indeed, apart from the mention of the phrase, the United States of America, this could be the pledge of any Republic. In fact,” he added ominously, “I could hear little Muscovites repeat a similar pledge to their hammer and sickle flag in Moscow with equal solemnity.” To distinguish their national pledge from all others, Americans needed to stress the issue that distinguished their nation from all others—the fundamental role of religion. “It should be ‘one nation, indivisible, Under God,’” the minister insisted. “To omit the words ‘Under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance is to omit the definitive character of the ‘American Way of Life.’”20
Docherty addressed the question of the separation of church and state directly. “What the Declaration [sic] says, in effect, is that no state church shall exist in this land,” he said. “This is separation of Church and State; it is not, and never was meant to be, a separation of religion and life.” He believed that his proposal was broad enough to encompass all Americans. “It must be ‘UNDER GOD’ to include the great Jewish Community, and the people of the Moslem faith and the myriad of denominations of Christians in the land,” he said. “What then of the honest atheist? Philosophically speaking, an atheistic American is a contradiction in terms.” The Presbyterian praised atheists for being “fine in character” and “good neighbors” but suggested they were “spiritual parasites.” “I mean no term of abuse in this,” the minister added. “A parasite is an organism that lives upon the life force of another organism without contributing to the life of the other. These excellent ethical seculars are living upon the accumulated Spiritual Capital of a Judaio-Christian civilization, and at the same time, deny the God who revealed the divine principles upon which the ethics of this Country grow.” And whether atheists admitted it or not, those divine principles were in evidence all around them, in the prayers offered before presidential inaugurations and sessions of Congress. Like the supporters of the Christian amendment testifying before the Senate that year, Docherty invoked an ever-expanding list of religious references in American public life as a rationale for creating yet another.21
Docherty’s sermon elicited a tremendous reaction. As the minister later reflected, “One of the advantages—and dangers—of being a preacher in the nation’s capital is the ease with which a given sermon, such as one preached when the president is in church, can be given front-page headlines in the press.” Eisenhower lit the fuse, endorsing the minister’s proposal as he left the church. The next morning, the offices of senators and representatives phoned the pastor to request copies of his sermon; it was soon reprinted in the Congressional Record and distributed widely. A Paramount Pictures recording of the event played in newsreel segments in theaters across the country for weeks afterward. The Hearst newspaper chain launched a major editorial campaign in favor of the change, while several radio commentators pressed the issue as well. Resolutions supporting the proposal were issued by organizations ranging in size and significance from a Brooklyn club for retired policemen to the Massachusetts state legislature. Veterans’ groups, fraternal clubs, labor unions, and trade associations joined the cause as well. “Congress is being flooded with mail,” the New York Times soon reported. “The letter writers by the thousands daily are demanding that Congress amend the pledge of allegiance so that the pledge is made to read ‘one nation under God.’”22
Passage of a bill based on Rabaut’s proposal now seemed inevitable. As an editorial in the Christian Century noted, “This is the sort of proposal against which no member of Congress would think of voting, any more than against a resolution approving of motherhood.” Opposition was light. The ACLU, for instance, decided not to intervene. “If some outstanding religious leaders would speak out on the basis of the church-state separation point, it might hold up action,” an official noted. But he immediately added, “I doubt whether any such leaders would make this statement.” Objections from clergymen were indeed few, with the most notable coming from the Unitarian Ministers Association, which passed a resolution opposing the proposal at its annual convention in May 1954. A speaker warned that the measure was a sign that religion was becoming little more than a fad. “If you don’t bring God into every Cabinet meeting, political convention or other assembly,” she noted sarcastically, “it is bad public relations.”23
If anything, the proposal to add “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance was perhaps too popular, with legislators scrambling to claim credit for the idea. The House of Representatives found itself in a state of chaos as multiple bills calling for the change competed for attention. The idled proposal that Representative Rabaut had introduced the previous April was still pending, but it was soon joined by another sixteen bills: seven from Democrats, eight from Republicans, and one from an independent.24 Notably, the congressmen behind these bills had agreed on little else that year. As the ADA’s voting scorecards made clear, the Democrats and the lone independent had been reliably liberal, while the Republicans had been just as consistently conservative. Only the broad concept of “one nation under God” proved elastic enough to bring them together.25
But liberals and conservatives had wildly different interpretations of the phrase’s meaning. For Republicans, “one nation under God” simply extended old Christian libertarian arguments. When Michigan representative Charles Oakman introduced his proposal, for instance, he spoke at length about how the nation’s founders “recognized the inherent truth that any government of and by the people must look to God for divine leadership in order to protect itself from tyranny and despotism.” For Democrats, in contrast, “one nation under God” signaled not opposition to government power but an alliance with it. “This country was founded on theistic beliefs, on belief in the worthwhileness of the individual human being which in turn depends solely and completely on the identity of man as the creature and son of God,” noted Representative Rabaut. While groups such as Spiritual Mobilization stopped there, using the concept of “freedom under God” to wage war against the welfare state, the liberal Democrat stressed the common good, in an echo of the Social Gospel. “Children and Americans of all ages,” he insisted, “must know that this is one Nation [in] which ‘under God’ means ‘liberty and justice for all.’”26
Democrats and Republicans were able to set aside partisanship in this instance, largely due to Eisenhower’s successful rebranding of the federal government as a “government under God.” Now that the political system was so suffused with prayer, the state no longer seemed “pagan,” as Christian libertarians had once argued, and liberals could present themselves as acting in accord with God’s will too. And much as Eisenhower helped bring right and left together, Docherty also encouraged their cooperation by pointing to a common enemy in the Soviet Union. Though only a brief passage in his sermon, his line about the “little Muscovites” had been singled out in news reports and reprinted over and over again, a development that did a great deal to further the cause of “one nation under God.” For two decades, those advocating the ideology of “freedom under God” had wanted to discredit and dismantle the New Deal state, only referencing the Soviet Union occasionally. But as the entire American political spectrum rallied around the phrase “one nation under God,” the New Deal state was no longer the counterpoint to godly politics. The Soviet Union now took its place.
So as Democratic and Republican congressmen argued for their various proposals to change the pledge, they loaded their speeches with approving references to Docherty’s “little Muscovites” line. Oakman, for instance, read long passages from the sermon into the Congressional Record, purposely ending on that very passage. “I think Mr. Docherty hit the nail squarely on the head,” he said. “One of the most fundamental differences between us and the Communists is our belief in God.” Rabaut, opposed to his Michigan colleague on most every issue, also quoted Docherty’s sermon, though he focused even more narrowly on the “little Muscovites” part. “Dr. Docherty and I are not of the same Christian denomination, but I may say that in this matter he has hit the nail right on the head,” Rabaut said. “You may argue from dawn to dusk about differing political, economic, and social systems, but the fundamental issue which is the unbridgeable gap between America and Communist Russia is a belief in Almighty God.” These comments gave the public at the time—and scholars ever since—the mistaken idea that the pledge change was largely, or even solely, a result of Cold War anticommunism. But in reality it was the result of nearly two decades of partisan fighting over domestic issues. The Cold War contrasts were largely a last-minute development, one that helped paper over partisan differences.27
As the House sorted through its seventeen separate bills, the Senate moved with uncharacteristic speed. Senator Homer Ferguson, a conservative Republican from Michigan, introduced the first and only pledge proposal in that chamber just days after Docherty’s sermon. A fellow Presbyterian, Ferguson claimed that the minister’s advice needed to be followed to remind Americans that “our Nation is founded on a fundamental belief in God and the first and most important reason for the existence of our Government is to protect the God-given rights of our citizens.” Speeding through the Senate, his resolution won passage on May 11 and went to the House. But Rabaut, who had fought his House colleagues to secure credit for changing the pledge, refused to step aside for the Senate. The two proposals were virtually identical, with only the placement of a single comma distinguishing one from the other, but Rabaut refused to cede his ground. In a violation of congressional etiquette, he convinced the House to ignore the Senate resolution, pass his own measure in its place, and force the Senate to adopt the House law instead. Because supporters of the change wanted to have the bill signed into law by Flag Day, then quickly approaching, Ferguson graciously ignored the breach of protocol and urged his colleagues to pass Rabaut’s resolution. On June 8, they did.28
On Flag Day, June 14, 1954, President Eisenhower signed the bill into law. Congressional advocates had hoped to televise the moment, but the president decided instead to sign the bill privately and issue a public statement. “From this day forward,” Eisenhower announced, “the millions of our school children will proclaim daily in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.” Members of Congress held an event of their own on the steps of the Capitol. Most of the congressional leadership attended, including Senate majority leader Bill Knowland of California and Senate minority leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. A flag given to Vice President Nixon by the American Legion during that year’s “Back to God” ceremonies was raised over the Capitol building. Rabaut and Ferguson jointly led the assembled in reciting the new Pledge of Allegiance, which was followed by a lone bugler’s rendition of “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” CBS broadcast the event live on television, with Walter Cronkite leading the coverage of what he called “a stirring event.” “‘New glory for Old Glory’—a wonderful idea,” he said. “Maybe if we all remember to display our flags today and every special day, we will remember more clearly the traditions of freedom on which our country is founded.”29
Celebrations of the new Pledge of Allegiance continued into the following year. To mark the first anniversary, Rabaut convinced a composer best known for writing the song “Tea for Two” to set the words of the new pledge to music. On Flag Day 1955, the twenty-man Singing Sergeants choral group performed the patriotic tune on the floor of the House, accompanied by the full United States Air Force Band. More significantly, the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ) made “One Nation Under God” the principal theme of its Brotherhood Week. Some ten thousand cities and towns across the country took part in the ceremonies, celebrating the theme with special religious observances, speeches at civic clubs, and film shorts in theaters. Separate from the NCCJ events, local communities highlighted the message in events of their own design. In October 1955, for instance, the annual Burbank on Parade festival featured hundreds of marching majorettes, fifteen marching bands, and seventeen parade floats, all devoted to the theme “One Nation Under God: A Portrait of American History.” By 1957, the phrase had become so popular that the Washington Pilgrimage, the group that originally rebuffed Docherty’s pledge proposal as too radical, revised its stance. Not only did the Pilgrims travel to Washington under the banner of “This Nation Under God,” but they also secured a formal proclamation from the commissioners of the District of Columbia attesting that their group had been the first to hear Docherty’s revolutionary idea.30
In short order, the phrase “one nation under God” quickly claimed a central position in American political culture. It became an informal motto for the country, demonstrating the widespread belief that the United States had been founded on religious belief and was sustained by religious practice. Although its creation depended a great deal on the groundwork of the Christian libertarian movement, the new pledge moved well beyond that original base of conservative Protestants to unite Americans from across the religious and political spectrum. Soon this unofficial motto was joined by an official one.
MUCH LIKE “ONE NATION UNDER GOD,” “In God We Trust” had its origins in the bloodier chapters of nineteenth-century American history. Francis Scott Key’s “The Star-Spangled Banner,” composed during the shelling of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812, originally contained an often-forgotten fourth stanza with the couplet “Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just / And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’” A half century later, the Civil War inspired Americans to rediscover the phrase. In 1861, a Pennsylvania minister wrote an urgent plea to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase. “From my heart I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters,” mourned Reverend M. R. Watkinson. He urged the secretary to secure “recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins” as penance. Chase seized on the idea. “Trust in God should be declared on our national coins,” he instructed the director of the US Mint. “You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words this national recognition.” The mint offered several suggestions, but Chase ultimately selected “In God We Trust” and lobbied for legislation authorizing the new slogan. It soon appeared, on bronze 2¢ pieces, in 1864.31
Soon after, proposals to add the phrase to paper currency were made as well. Lincoln, aware that the gold supply supporting “greenbacks” was dwindling, joked that a more appropriate motto might be found in the words of the apostle Peter: “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee.” In the end, Lincoln dismissed the idea. Still, the motto quickly began to grace a wide variety of coins: the gold double eagle, eagle, and half eagle—pieces valued at $20, $10, and $5, respectively—as well as the dollar, half-dollar, quarter, and nickel. While Chase applied the motto enthusiastically, many of his successors lacked his passion. In 1883, the motto was removed from the nickel and would not return for another fifty-five years. In 1907, designs were commissioned for new $10 and $20 gold coins, accompanied by instructions from Theodore Roosevelt to drop the phrase. “My own firm conviction,” the president reasoned, “is that such a motto on coins not only does no good, but positive harm and is in effect, irreverence, which comes close to sacrilege.” By this time, however, the words had become fixed in the public’s mind, and an outcry led to a quiet reversal of Roosevelt’s order. From that point on, the phrase was inscribed on most of the nation’s coins.32
The fortunes of “In God We Trust” took a new turn during the religious revival of the postwar era. In 1952, Ernest Kehr, the Catholic author of a popular newspaper column for stamp collectors, came up with the idea of creating new postage bearing the phrase. Such a stamp, he argued, would be a strong warning to America’s enemies that “before they can attack democracy and freedom, they first must destroy a people’s faith in God.” He recruited other newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations to spread the idea and convinced national organizations such as the American Legion to pass resolutions of support as well. The campaign soon secured Congress’s attention. In the Senate, two bills were introduced in late March 1953, with Democrat Mike Mansfield, a Montana Catholic, and Republican Charles Potter, a Michigan Methodist, offering nearly identical measures calling for “In God We Trust” to be added to all future stamps. (In yet another sign of the broad political support for ceremonial deism, these senators stood at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. According to ADA voting guides that year, Mansfield sided with the progressive organization on thirteen of fifteen key votes; Potter, only two.) Three days later, Representative Rabaut sought to link his name to the cause as well, introducing a bill in the House requiring that all mail be postmarked with the phrase. With Congress on board, proponents of the plan then turned their attention to postal officials. “Putting it mildly,” the Washington Post reported in April 1953, “Post Office Department officials have been harassed in recent weeks by a flood of letters urging that the national motto ‘In God We Trust’ be placed on all future postage stamps.” This “deluge of letters,” the New York Times added, was so unprecedented in the history of the postal service that officials suspected a coordinated campaign lay behind it all.33
Although the press reported that Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield was “not happy” about the campaign, he responded dutifully to the requests. In April 1954, he unveiled a new 8¢ stamp, a red-white-and-blue image of the Statue of Liberty with the words “In God We Trust” arrayed as a halo around the statue’s head. As one account noted, the stamp claimed “a number of ‘firsts’”: the first regular-issue stamp with a religious theme and the first low-price stamp with a multicolor design. Most notably, it was the first stamp to be officially introduced by a sitting president, in what postal officials called “the biggest ceremony of its kind in the history of the United States Post Office Department.” Eisenhower, Summerfield, and Secretary of State Dulles all offered their thoughts on the stamp, with a tri-faith selection of religious leaders—Dr. Roy Ross, executive secretary of the National Council of Churches, a leading Protestant umbrella organization; Francis Cardinal Spellman, Catholic archbishop of New York; and Dr. Norman Salit, president of the Synagogue League of America—offering blessings as well. Interest in the event was so high that Vice President Nixon hosted a luncheon for an overflow crowd of three hundred government officials and guests at the Shoreham Hotel.34
NBC carried the proceedings live on TV. “The issuance of this stamp,” Summerfield proclaimed, “symbolizes the rededication of our faith in the spiritual foundations upon which our Government and our Nation exist.” Because the postage had been issued in an amount used for international letters, he called it a “Postal Ambassador” that would travel abroad at an estimated rate of two hundred million letters a year. “We want men of good will everywhere to know that America will always remain a God-fearing, God-loving nation, where freedom and equality for all are living and imperishable concepts,” Summerfield added. In his extemporaneous remarks, Eisenhower sounded the same themes. “Throughout its history, America’s greatness has been based upon a spiritual quality,” he said, noting that the new stamp offered every American a chance to spread that message far and wide. “Regardless of any eloquence of the words that may be inside the letter,” Eisenhower reflected, “on the outside he places a message: ‘Here is the land of liberty and the land that lives in respect of the Almighty’s mercy to us.’ And to him that receives that message, the sender can feel that he has done something definite and constructive for that individual.”35
The response to the new “In God We Trust” stamp was overwhelming. On its first day of availability, nearly nine hundred thousand stamps were sold; within weeks, twenty-five million more were distributed to post offices across the country to answer the still-growing demand. “Will the stamp set the precedent for others embodying religious belief,” worried the editors of Church and State, “and for other acts of government in aid of religion?” Many believed that the first regularly issued, religiously themed postage set a clear precedent. “The Post Office Department is to be complimented on the issuance of this stamp,” Rabaut noted after its unveiling, “and I hope it witnesses the adoption of a policy with regard to new issues which will make our postage stamps true symbols of the history and traditions of our Nation.” The Catholic congressman proposed a “world peace prayer” stamp to commemorate the first-ever Marian Year that Pope Pius XII had declared for 1954. Meanwhile, his colleagues offered ideas of their own, including two Christmas stamps, a Jewish synagogue tercentenary stamp, and postage depicting the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches taking place that year in Evanston, Illinois.36
The phrase “In God We Trust,” used on many American coins since the Civil War, became an important touchstone of religious nationalism during the Eisenhower administration. In 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, President Dwight Eisenhower, and Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield helped introduce a popular new postage stamp with the phrase. Corbis Images.
At the same time, Rabaut continued his campaign to have the motto of “In God We Trust” used as the postmark on all mail. “The new 8-cent stamp is, of course, a step in the direction of proclaiming our national belief,” he told the House. “Use of the motto as a cancellation mark would give it a wider distribution and bring it more constantly to the attention of our people.” When that proposal failed to progress, Rabaut tried a slightly different approach the next year, suggesting that a new canceling stamp be issued with the words “Pray for Peace.” The measure sped through the House, though it met some resistance in the Senate. Supporting the idea, Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island pointed to the recent precedent of adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and suggested this would be another way to get an “inspirational element” into American life. “What harm does it do?” the Catholic senator asked. Senator Clifford Case, a New Jersey Republican and a Presbyterian, responded that “it is a question of who does it. I don’t think the government has any business to tell anybody to do anything in a religious way and this in a sense is that.” Pastore protested, “We are not telling anybody to do anything.” “If we authorize it,” Case replied, “we are.” Such concerns were in the minority, however, and the Senate soon passed the measure. Despite reservations about the $250,000 cost of creating a new canceling stamp, the president swiftly signed the proposal into law. Taking note of the revival at the Post Office, the theologian William Lee Miller joked that now “the devout, in place of daily devotions, can just read what is stuck and stamped all over the letters in their mail.”37
Following the enthusiastic reaction to the arrival of the “In God We Trust” stamp in April 1954 and the addition of “under God” to the pledge in June 1954, the public clamored for religious language to be placed on paper currency as well as coins. On August 21, 1954, the American Numismatic Association passed a resolution at its annual convention in Cleveland calling for the inscription of “In God We Trust” on all forms of American money; just nine days later, the American Legion passed an almost identical resolution at its annual convention in Washington, D.C. Donald Carroll, the state commander of the Florida American Legion, who offered the resolution, insisted he arrived at the idea independently, following a talk he had given in Gainesville. “I had been talking on the subject of this government being based upon a belief in God,” Carroll told a friend, “and the fact that the pledge to the flag has been recently amended to include the words ‘under God,’ and the fact that all our coins and also two recent issues of an eight-cent stamp and a three-cent stamp bore the motto ‘In God We Trust.’” After the speech, a man asked why paper currency did not carry the same inscription. It struck Carroll as an excellent question, one he raised at the Legionnaires’ convention in August and then again in a letter to his congressman that December.38
Congressman Charles E. Bennett was the perfect champion for the proposal. The Jacksonville representative was, if anything, a fighter. He had resigned a seat in the state legislature to enlist in the Second World War, earning distinction as a guerrilla in the Philippines before contracting polio and losing use of his legs. Returning home, he won a congressional seat as a Democrat in 1949 and held it, long past the point when the rest of his region became reliably Republican, until he finally decided to resign in 1993, after forty-four years of service. Despite his many accomplishments, Bennett constantly felt the need to prove himself. To convince constituents that his handicap did not hold him back, for instance, he never missed a single roll call in the House. A devout member of the Disciples of Christ, he served as the chamber’s conscience. In 1951, he proposed a new code of ethics—he called them “the Ten Commandments”—which then became the nation’s first ethical code for government employees seven years later. Seeking to set a good example, Bennett refused to accept his congressional salary, his veteran’s disability checks, and his Social Security benefits. Not surprisingly, one colleague grumbled that the Floridian was perhaps “a little too pious.”39
All these traits recommended Bennett as a champion of Carroll’s idea, but Carroll believed another stood out. “You would be a most natural one to sponsor Federal legislation to require the addition to our paper money of these words,” he wrote, “for you are (unless the position has recently been changed) Chairman of the House ICCL Group.” As it turned out, Bennett’s one-year term as the leader of Vereide’s prayer breakfast group had concluded the previous spring. But during his tenure as chair, he had proven himself to be committed to the ICCL cause of bringing religious revival to the political world. In January 1954, Bennett attended a major conference for government officials at the Fellowship House, where he offered both a scripture lesson and his thoughts on the need for public faith. “The minds and hearts of people are being challenged as never before in the last fifty years,” Bennett said. “The future is in the hands of those who really have a strong faith in God.” Not surprisingly, his fellow ICCL members agreed. Senator Homer Ferguson said they needed to “remember the words carved above the door in the Senate, ‘In God We Trust.’” (Ironically, Ferguson, whose greatest claim to fame would be adding “under God” to the pledge a few months later, added, “We cannot do this by only repeating those words or carving them in concrete and stone. Each of us as we go about our tasks must live those words.”)40
For Bennett, religious organizations such as the ICCL offered not just inspiration for action but assistance as well. In January 1955, soon after he introduced the bill calling for the motto’s addition to all paper currency, he searched for supporters. “Perhaps some of your Representatives or Senators in ICCL might put in a good word for it,” Carroll suggested. Actually, they already had. Senator Carlson, for instance, had been blanketing his colleagues with letters to recruit them for the currency proposal in particular and the larger ICCL cause in general. By all appearances, the letters were effective. “I am very much interested in your movement to put God back into the government of this great nation,” responded Representative Philip J. Philbin, a Catholic Democrat from Massachusetts. “I think there is much room in this country for restoring those great spiritual values which lie at the very base of our great government and our great free system of enterprise.”41
As congressional support grew, Bennett sought endorsements from the executive branch. Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey demurred at first, claiming that “a clear precedent appears to have been set in past years for Congressional action in such a matter.” But once Eisenhower expressed his support, the Treasury Department came on board, adopting a role that was both supportive and supporting. Its officials let congressional advocates take the lead but offered assistance at every turn. They explained that the cost of changing the design of currency was usually prohibitively high, but as luck had it, the department was already installing a new procedure for printing currency that required the creation of brand-new dies, rolls, and plates. “We find that, in connection with this redesigning, the inscription ‘In God We Trust’ can be included in the design with very little additional cost,” a Treasury official reported. Eisenhower authorized the plan in late April 1955 and then reviewed draft designs for the new money, ultimately choosing one that located the motto most prominently on the back of the bill.42
A few weeks later, the House Committee on Banking and Currency convened to consider the proposal. Democrat Herman Eberharter, a liberal Catholic from Pittsburgh, was so enthusiastic about the idea that he cut short a three-month convalescence from a major illness and returned to the House for the hearing. To his delight, he found his colleagues virtually unanimous in their support. The lone objection came from Representative Abraham Multer from Brooklyn. As a Jew, he was wary of dissenting too strongly on issues of faith. “I want it made crystal clear on this record that I think I am as religious as any man in the House,” the liberal Democrat began. “We may differ in our forms, but I respect every other person’s form or ritualistic observance, and I know they do mine, too.” But, he added, “I feel very strongly that it was a mistake to put it on coins in the first place, and this is perpetuating a grievous error.” The inscription debased God, Multer argued, and brought no one closer to Him. “I don’t believe it has inspired one single person to be more religious because we have these words on our currency,” he said. “If we are going to have religious concepts—and I am in favor of them—I don’t think the place to put them is on our currency or on our coins.” Despite these sentiments, Multer indicated he would do nothing to oppose the bill. Accordingly, the Banking and Commerce Committee gave its unanimous support to the measure. Its official report asserted that the phrase “In God We Trust” best expressed “the spiritual basis of our way of life,” and the committee therefore urged the House of Representatives to mandate its use on all coins and currency. The House did so, with almost no debate and a quick vote, on June 7.43
The bill’s movement through the Senate was even easier. Earlier that term, Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas introduced a proposal that was virtually identical to the one Representative Bennett had ushered through the House, and now, in his role as chairman of the Senate Banking and Commerce Committee, the liberal Democrat moved the bill through his chamber with ease. Fulbright knew his colleagues were on board. “We thought it was so nearly in unanimity in the subcommittee, I didn’t call hearings,” reported Oklahoma’s Mike Monroney, a moderate Democrat. “In fact, we didn’t even have a meeting.” Instead, he canvassed members of the subcommittee and, finding them all in favor, passed the proposal on to the full committee. The senators were unanimously in favor but felt duty-bound to mention the few complaints they had received. Monroney reported receiving a telegram that morning, “the first adverse comment we have had,” while his colleague Wayne Morse of Oregon, a liberal Republican, added that there had been, “to my utter surprise,” a half dozen notes of protest sent to his office from ethical and humanist groups. Although the committee acknowledged these complaints, it never bothered to discuss their content. Despite their own political and religious differences—Fulbright was a Disciple of Christ, Monroney an Episcopalian, Morse a Baptist—the senators came together in their common embrace of the motto and passed it unanimously. The full Senate followed, passing the measure in another unanimous voice vote on June 29.44
As the bill moved to the White House, supporters hoped they might secure a public ceremony for the signing. “The National Association of Evangelicals asked about it,” a presidential aide noted, “and are very much interested in the bill.” But Eisenhower begged off, noting that so many important bills had passed at the end of the congressional session that he wanted to keep such ceremonies, in the words of his aide Bryce Harlow, “to a bare minimum.” He signed the bill privately on July 11, making sure Bennett received one of the pens. Even without a ceremony, White House officials still hoped they could use the new law for political gain. In March 1956, the deputy press secretary, Murray Snyder, reported that he had been in contact with the Treasury Department about their progress in adding “In God We Trust” to the redesigned dollar and had asked them “to consult with the White House on the timing of the launching of this new bill.” To his delight, he learned that “it might be summer or perhaps early fall, which would be wonderful for our purposes. It seems to me it should be timed to coincide with a major holiday so that the full benefits of a ‘non-political’ ceremony might be derived—all the coverage the traffic will bear.”45
Due to delays in the installation of the new high-speed printing presses at the Treasury Department, however, the first batch of bills with “In God We Trust” were not produced until the following year. Even as the printing began, Treasury officials explained to an eager public that “placing of the notes in circulation would have to be delayed until October to permit the production of an adequate supply for all sections of the country.” The bureau had to work nonstop, “twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for three months,” in order to produce some forty million new bills with the motto. Adding another souvenir to his collection, Bennett arranged to have a picture taken of him turning in an old dollar bill to Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson in exchange for a new one. The White House staffers who had hoped to capitalize on the bills’ release did not make out as well. “America must have a trust in God,” the Oregonian observed, “but the motto might be better inscribed on our hearts than on our bank notes.” The Chicago Tribune, meanwhile, sarcastically saw some benefit in the change, noting that the motto’s addition coincided with a government announcement that the cost of living had gone up once again, the fifteenth hike in sixteen months. “In these days of inflation,” the paper joked, “politicians turn thankfully to a spiritual anchor.”46
Even as the motto was added to currency, its supporters looked to increase its presence in other ways. Bennett sought to clear up the popular confusion over whether the phrase—or any phrase—was the official national motto. He asked the Legislative Reference Service at the Library of Congress for insight. “Four mottoes have been adopted by law for various purposes,” its researchers reported. “The earliest well-known motto is E Pluribus Unum, ‘One out of many,’ on the obverse of the seal of the United States.” Next, there were the two mottoes that were “adopted for the reverse of the seal: Annuit Coeptis, ‘God has favored our undertakings’ and Novus Ordo Seclorum, ‘a new order of the ages.’” However, because the reverse of the seal had never been cut or used publicly, the researchers noted, “these two mottoes could hardly compete with E Pluribus Unum, which has been in use since 1782. They do, however, appear on our current one dollar bills.” The fourth and final motto, of course, was “In God We Trust,” which through its usage on coins and now currency had emerged as the strongest rival. Still, the report concluded, “if one motto were to be designated as being more clearly ‘the’ motto than any other, it would seem to be E Pluribus Unum. This has priority in time, having been officially chosen in 1782 and confirmed by the new Government under the Constitution in 1789; and it is the only motto on the obverse of the Seal of the United States, the seal that has been used throughout our history as a nation. The motto on the seal of a government is generally considered to be the motto of that government.”47
Bennett nevertheless believed that “In God We Trust” should be the official motto. In July 1955, just days after Eisenhower signed into law the currency change, Bennett barraged his colleagues with letters announcing plans for another congressional resolution: that “the national motto of the United States is hereby declared to be ‘In God We Trust.’” He noted his recent findings, with a slight interpretative twist that placed his preferred motto on an even plane with the one on the seal. “The Library of Congress, after research, has stated that there is no officially recognized motto of the United States,” he reported, “although ‘E Pluribus Unum’ and ‘In God We Trust’ have been at various times and places used where a national motto would be appropriate.” The latter, he added, had a distinct advantage: it “would keep us constantly reminded of the spiritual and moral values upon which our Country was founded and upon which it depends for survival.” On July 21, he introduced the measure on the floor of the House, where it was referred to the Judiciary Committee.48
The measure languished for a short while before picking up speed the following winter. In February 1956, a House Judiciary subcommittee held hearings with Bennett as its sole witness. “In sponsoring this legislation,” he told his colleagues, “it is my position that it would be valuable to our country to have a clearly designated national motto of inspirational quality and in plain popularly accepted English.” The members of the subcommittee agreed, passing the proposal along to the full Judiciary Committee. Hoping to enlist the support of its powerful chairman, Representative Emanuel Celler of New York, Bennett resorted to flattery. The inspiration for the motto proposal, he wrote Celler, “comes from your own leadership in the 71st Congress in the congressional adoption of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ as our national anthem, which contains the phrase, ‘And this be our motto, In God is our trust.’” He referenced Celler’s argument for the anthem in 1930. “It is my belief that similarly legalizing ‘In God We Trust’ as our national motto is”—and here he cited the chairman’s own words—“a ‘method of further increasing the patriotism of the people of our country.’” The approach worked. Celler brought the bill before the full committee in a matter of days and quickly secured its approval. After a few weeks, the House passed the resolution on April 17 and sent it on to the Senate.49
Only after the House vote did civil libertarians raise objections, and even then halfheartedly. As in the campaign to add “under God” to the pledge, the ACLU was largely preoccupied with other matters and unable to devote any sustained attention to matters of church and state. When Democratic senator Thomas Hennings held major hearings on the state of civil liberties in fall 1955, for instance, the organization’s officials noted in internal memos that “the ACLU should not testify in the religion area because we will be making an appearance on other more important matters.” The organization paid so little attention to the motto developments, in fact, that its leaders apparently only heard about the bill three weeks after its passage in the House, even though it had been widely reported in the press. On May 6, 1956, ACLU associate director Alan Reitman issued a memorandum noting that the head of their Philadelphia chapter had “heard that a bill has passed the House of Representatives to change the U.S. motto from ‘E Pluribus Unum’ to ‘In God We Trust’” and asking for additional information. Even after learning more, though, Reitman remained largely ambivalent. “I know that we are pressed on all fronts with crises, but we do not have many separation of church-state cases, and this appears to be an important one,” he wrote. “I do not suggest that we drop all other project[s], but perhaps we can place a few stumbling blocks in the way of the bill, even by talking with some other organizations.” As they looked around, however, ACLU officials found that other organizations had also ignored the measure. “The P.O.A.U. is taking no stand on the bill,” an aide reported. The American Humanist Association complained about it in a press release, he added, but that was about it.50
The ACLU did draft a polite letter of protest to members of the Senate. “In our opinion, this change would be at the very least an approach toward the infringement upon the Constitutional guarantee that there shall be no establishment of religion in this country,” it read. “It would also, through the implicit authority of the national motto, constitute a religious test for government employees.” The organization acknowledged that most Americans were religious, “but the place for that act of devotion is to be found in their house of worship or in their hearts. They should not, through their Congress, require one other person who is a non-believer to link his civic loyalty with their doctrinal belief.” The letter concluded by requesting a public hearing on the matter and asking for an invitation to testify if one was held. The organization mailed the protest to members of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee when it first considered the bill in May 1956. When they ignored the request, the ACLU sent the same letter to members of the full committee in June.51
These actions were, in the end, both timid and tardy. Months earlier, when the first hints of opposition had emerged, supporters of the proposal rushed to action. In late April, Bennett wrote Senator Spessard L. Holland, a fellow Floridian, to warn that “there have recently been received some letters which apparently come from atheists or agnostic organizations.” He suggested that “it would seem to be a good thing to have this bill passed before the mail creates any problems. As I understand it, the members of the Committee are favorably disposed toward the legislation, and a prompt disposal of it would eliminate a lot of unnecessary correspondence.” Despite Bennett’s best efforts, however, the Senate took its time. These fears were unfounded, though; no significant opposition ever materialized. The Judiciary Committee reported favorably on the House resolution on July 20, and the full Senate voted it into law three days later. The White House political office checked to see if any departments had objections, but found none, and so the president signed the measure into law on July 30, 1956.52
In little more than two years’ time, “In God We Trust” had surged to public notice, first taking a place of prominence on stamps and currency, and then edging its way past “E Pluribus Unum” to become the nation’s first official motto. The concept of unity from diversity could not compete with that of unity from divinity. “In God We Trust,” along with its counterpart in the Pledge of Allegiance, “one nation under God,” quickly emerged as the twin pillars of the ceremonial deism sweeping through the Capitol. The Eisenhower administration had already done a great deal to put religion into politics, ranging from the religious elements in the inauguration ceremonies and cabinet meetings to more formal events such as the “Back to God” broadcasts and the National Prayer Breakfasts. As important as those developments were, however, such initiatives were tied closely to the president and, like any administration’s policy, might not have lasted longer than his term. In contrast, the changes to the Pledge of Allegiance and the national motto, initiated and authorized by Congress, could claim a much broader parentage. Protestants, Catholics, and Jews had all played a part in their creation, and so had members of both political parties from across the ideological spectrum.
As central expressions of patriotism, these changes guaranteed that religious sentiment would be not just a theme pressed by a transitory administration but rather a lasting trait of the nation. The addition of “one nation under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance ensured that the new fusion of piety and patriotism that conservatives had crafted over the past two decades would be instilled in the next generation of children and beyond. From then on, their interpretation of America’s fundamental nature would have a seemingly permanent place in the national imagination. And with “In God We Trust” appearing on postage stamps and paper currency, the daily interactions citizens made through the state—sending mail, swapping money—were similarly sacralized. The addition of the religious motto to paper currency was particularly important, as it formally confirmed a role for capitalism in that larger love of God and country. Since then, every act of buying and selling in America has occurred through a currency that proudly praises God.