On Nov. 13 President Bush signed legislation that reaffirms the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” as the national motto. Bush affixed his signature to the law without offering a comment.
Congress rushed to enact the bill following a June federal appeals court ruling in California that the phrase “under God,” added to the pledge by Congress in 1954, was a government endorsement of religion in violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.
The measure drew just five no votes in the House and passed unanimously in the Senate.
In addition to affirming the references to God, the new law modifies the delivery of the pledge, mandating that when not in uniform, men should remove any nonreligious headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Prior to the new law, “any headdress” was to be removed while saying the pledge.
Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., told Focus on the Family that the law expressed the overwhelming will of the American people.
“The politicians are united in their sense that the public doesn’t want to change the Pledge of Allegiance to take ‘Under God’ out of it,” he said.
The new law also references historical background that documents the Christian foundations of the nation.
In related news, the actions of a patriotic Texan apparently influenced the U.S. government to display the national motto “In God We Trust” in every post office in America. Frank Williams, a resident of Montgomery County, Texas, purchased posters bearing the national motto for the post offices in his area.
But when postal officials ordered the posters removed from offices in Montgomery, Willis and Dobbin counties (with the exception of the office in the community of Cut and Shoot, where postmistress Ida Miera declared the posters would only be removed over her dead body), Williamson complained to the Postmaster General.
His protest was heard, and the U.S. Postal Service announced it has designed a poster with the national motto that will hang in all post offices nationwide, some 38,000.
The new poster resembles a giant postage stamp, bearing the likeness of the Statue of Liberty, with “In God We Trust” over its crown.
(BP)
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