‘In God we trust’

In politicians, well, not so much

Signs are everywhere. We’re not talking about the supernatural kinds of signs that provide the faithful with guidance toward or away from some decision or event. No, these are the temporal variety, the modern-day hieroglyphs some future archaeologist will perhaps attempt to decipher. We wish him or her the best.

On just a short drive along U. S. 71B last week, they dotted Northwest Arkansas’ daily migratory flock, otherwise known as automobiles.

One dogged driver displayed a “Rescue Mom” sign on her back window, with a small paw print between the two words.

Plenty of motorists used their automotive free speech to signal membership in a certain porcine cult-like following.

Alongside one of them, another car’s sign surrounding a license plate offered “No worries: God’s got it covered.”

Signs, every one of them, have meaning.

That future archaeologist might unearth a monument near a once-domed structure near a large community named after a small pebble. The marble monolith will still list a set of 10 suggestions to the humans of the past. It will be perplexing. The stone’s carved words will call them “commandments,” but that won’t make sense, given the ample archaeological evidence about human behaviors around the same time that monument must have originated.

Such scientists may find proof of other signs from around the same archaeological period. “In God we trust,” they once said more legibly. And they’ll be found by the hundreds in buildings the ancestors once upon a time used to educate the young ones. “These structures,” the scientists will describe as they present their research at a conference, “are believed to have been important to the religious instruction of offspring of the period.”

Those of us back here in the 21st century will know better, as 2018 becomes the “Year of the legislatively enforced national motto” in the public schools in Arkansas.

In 1861, a Pennsylvania pastor wrote to the U.S. Treasury secretary imploring him to include a statement about American’ faith in God on the nation’s coins. Within three years, the phrase “In God we trust” appeared on a 2-cent coin, according to the Treasury Department. By 1956, Congress and President Dwight Eisenhower declared the phrase the national motto. It’s been on our coins since 1938.

For state Rep. Jim Dotson of Bentonville and other lawmakers, it’s not enough for the motto to appear on pocket change and bills. He sponsored Act 911 last year, requiring the state’s public schools to display durable posters featuring the motto, the U.S. flag and the Arkansas flag in classrooms and libraries and in other public buildings in the state. The act ensures no public funding of the signs — doing that would be a sure way to trigger a court rejecting the plan as state sponsorship of religion — and requires the posters or signs shall be donated or purchased with donated funds.

The operating theory appears to be that as long as no public funds are expended, lawmakers can chip away at the absence of religion in schools, something blamed in conservative circles for the erosion of all things decent in public life.

Fellow ultra-conservative lawmaker Sen. Jason Rapert of Conway leads a group he’s called the American History and Heritage Foundation. That group donated 891 of the posters to Bentonville Public Schools and another 222 to the Pea Ridge School District. American Legion Post 77 of Bentonville raised money for the frames, according to Dotson.

We love our national motto and its Pledge of Allegiance, too, just as we love the freedoms our nation continues to stand for. But it’s hard not to view Dotson’s bill for what it is, a cynical ploy to appeal to his base of voters — one that will undoubtedly be successful. Like efforts to have the Bible taught in public schools as historical documents, the signs are a mechanism supporters believe to be a defensible path to get God back in public schools.

We’ve long faithfully believed God never left the schools. Although state sponsorship of any faith has been tamped down — as it should be — the individuals who attend school, who work in schools, bring their faith with them every single day. Prayer isn’t banned. But school district-led prayer is. What person of faith needs the state of Arkansas to be an enforcement mechanism for their God?

Dotson says displaying the national motto is a valuable learning tool, although we doubt he’d be leading the charge if the motto said anything else. The presentation of the signs isn’t about educating kids, but hoping to proselytize to them. Lawmakers will deny that all day long, aware they would make the practice harder to defend in court. But do not be deceived.

Trusting in God is not the issue. Indeed, we recommend it. It’s more the matter of putting any faith in politicians who try to use their public office to advance their religious convictions.

In them, we do not trust.