Campaign to display religious motto sees some success
Tiffany Hsu reports on The LA Times (2.16.2008):
Nonprofit group has placed “In God We Trust” in public buildings. Opponents say such displays are unconstitutional and discriminatory.
The way Jacquie Sullivan sees it, the motto “In God We Trust” is more about patriotism than religion.So when the Bakersfield councilwoman, 68, heard on a Christian radio station in 2001 that protesters on the East Coast were trying to remove the phrase from public buildings, she considered it her civic duty to reverse the trend.
“I just shook my head in amazement when I heard,” she said. “I thought, if they’re working to take it down, I’ll start working to put it up.”
Sullivan launched a nonprofit group, In God We Trust — America, and began e-mailing informational packets to city clerks, with the help of a dozen volunteers and a tiny budget . . .“These cases say a lot about the encouragement of cultural literacy and the origins of the American law and public, and what the founders valued,” said Mike Johnson, senior legal counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund. “There’s some kind of education purpose to it, a recognition of our history and heritage that transcends a religious purpose” . . .
But Johnson said Americans United and the ACLU stir up controversy because of an inexplicable, growing hostility toward Christianity.
“They’re a tiny minority of the American public, but they are unfortunately very well funded and very vocal,” Johnson said . . .
Visit: In God We Trust America