‘One Nation, Under God’

Was the United States ever ‘one nation’ in its allegiance to the Almighty? If so, what happened along the way to change that?

by Ellsworth Johnson

School days across the state of Texas begin the same way. Everything stops, and we are bidden via intercom to rise and face the two flags in our classrooms, one of the United States, the other of the Lone Star State. The Pledge of Allegiance is read, occasionally by a student but usually by the Principal or an Assistant Principal, and the now-optional “under God” is always included. Afterward, the state Pledge is read:

Honor the Texas flag;
I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas
One state under God, one and indivisible.

This is followed by a moment of silence.

In my classroom, I model the seriousness and respect these declarations deserve. I stand up straight, put my hand over my heart (as we were trained to do in our youth, many moons ago), and repeat the words aloud along with the reader; on any given day only two or three of my students are brave enough to follow suit. And if ANYONE starts talking during the moment of silence, I snap them back into place without hesitation.

We mouth the words daily, but are they true? Is the United States today really “one nation under God”? Given the canyonesque political, cultural and social divisions in our country, it is hard to argue we are indeed even “one nation” any more, united in purpose, vision and belief. Further, many population segments proudly and defiantly reject God, labeling Him and those who believe, as “rigid”, “exclusive” and “narrow-minded”.


Faith of Our (Founding) Fathers… and Grandfathers

To investigate whether this was ever indeed a Christian nation, let’s start with the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, in 1620. The Mayflower Compact is a document written en route aboard the well-known sailing ship, an attempt to unify divided visions of where to land the ship (Massachusetts, or Virginia?). It sought to temporarily establish a government until a more official one could be drawn up in England that would give them the right to govern themselves in America. It reads, in part:

Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony …, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid…

Right from the beginning, we see the men had their sights set firmly on God.

Fast forward to 1776, and the iconic signing of the Declaration of Independence. A group of 56 men risked their lives, and livelihoods, to proclaim to the world that they were no longer subject to the British Crown, and instead had the God-given mandate of self-government. Included is a phrase we all have etched in our collective consciousness:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…

That’s right: even 150 years later, the increasingly-prosperous men who led the nation toward its epic struggle for independence enshrined their quest in the recognition that they were created beings, and they operated under their Creator’s authority and mandate. Beyond that, they held that Creator and His creation were “self-evident”, obvious to even a blind man with a cane, and certainly beyond doubt or debate.

Language declaring the importance placed by the Colonists placed on God and Christianity made it into many state Constitutions, also beginning in 1776. In fact, professed belief in God, the Bible and the Trinity was an express requirement for holding public office in a majority of the original 13 colonies, through application of a test or proclamation of an oath. Four states (New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina and Massachusetts) went farther, limiting office holders to those of the Protestant denomination: Catholics need not apply.

This changed when the United States Constitution was written and approved in 1787. Article VI took direct aim at religious tests for public office, explicitly forbidding them as a qualification for Federal office holders; it also encouraged states to follow suit by removing such provisions from their constitutions, which, over a period of about a decade, most did. The First Amendment famously declares in its Establishment Clause that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.

It can be argued that passage of the Constitution, noble and necessary as it was for framing our national governmental structure, was the “beginning of the end” for the staunchly Christian America which existed up to that point.


Building A Wall: ‘Separation Between Church And State’

On January 1, 1802 President Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptist Association containing a phrase which, in the two succeeding centuries, would be used to justify removal of religion from American public life. The letter was a response to the Association’s congratulatory address to Jefferson for his successful election. Concerned about the strong entanglement of church-state affairs encouraged by his predecessors Washington and Adams, and feeling a need to defend himself against political opponents who branded him an ‘atheist’, Jefferson used the phrase “a wall of separation between church and state” to articulate his view of the proper relationship between religion and governmental affairs.

This “separation of church and state” is NOT part of the Constitution. It has been interpreted by some, however, to be the “real meaning” of the Establishment Clause, or at least implied by it; this is the true root of the divisions caused by application of this doctrine. Jefferson did not intend, nor could he have foreseen, the effect his letter would have on the public expression of Christianity in the United States.

The doctrine was first cited by the Supreme Court in the 1879 case Reynolds v. United States, where a member of the Mormon Church (Brigham Young’s secretary, in fact) challenged federal anti-bigamy laws. The Court ruled that even though freedom of religion is protected by the First Amendment, such freedom cannot be used to justify illegal activity.

A more significant decision in 1948, McCollum v. Board of Education, effectively removed religious instruction from public schools. In that decision, the Court wrote "in the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between church and state.'". As described in a 1998 article by James Hutson, curator of an exhibit on Jefferson’s original letter for the Library of Congress:

...it appeared that the court had used Jefferson's "wall" metaphor as a sword to sever religion from public life, a result that was and still is intolerable to many Americans. (1)

God Bless America!

Since then, the attack on religion in American public life has intensified. Emboldened by the mistaken “Constitutional separation of church and state” doctrine, opponents have used Supreme Court rulings to score major victories in the last half-century, particularly in public schools:

• prayer was taken out of public schools (Engel v. Vitale, 1962; Murray v. Curlett, 1963)


• Bible reading is forbidden in public schools (Abington Township School District v. Schempp, 1963)


• states cannot require teaching of "creation science" in all instances in which evolution is taught. (Edwards v. Aquillard, 1987)


• unconstitutional for a school district to provide any clergy to perform nondenominational prayer at elementary or secondary school graduation (Lee v. Weisman, 1992)

In addition, lower-profile skirmishes continue house-to-house on the local level: fights over Nativity scenes emerge nationwide every Christmas, the Ten Commandments are no longer prominently displayed at courthouses around the country, and many crosses were forcibly removed from public lands in the 1980s and 1990s.

Fortunately, we still live in a country where government sanction is not a prerequisite for faith in God. Joshua’s final words to the Israelites provide the answer to what we, as a marginalized minority, must do:

"… choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." -- Joshua 24:15

CHOOSE GOD. Immerse yourself in His Word, seek His face daily, let YOUR light shine so that men may marvel, and to every man have an answer for the hope which lies within you. Then, just maybe, a little at a time, the tide may be turned in the other direction.

Or, we can do it the hard way. For a brief period after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon and (intended) the White House, every car in the country, it seemed, had a “God Bless America” sticker or flag (or two!) on it. As all air traffic ceased nationwide, we lit red, white and blue candles on our front lawns. For a short while, we WERE "one nation under God", without regard to race, religion or any other dividing factor, seeking His divine protection from the evil many in the world wished upon us.

Pray, without ceasing, that it does not come to this again! Pray that America, its people and its leaders choose to be led once more “through the night, with the Light from Above”.


(1) “ 'A Wall of Separation': FBI Helps Restore Jefferson's Obliterated Draft”, Library of Congress Information Bulletin, June 1998 (Volume 57, No. 6)

Copyright 2009 by Ellsworth Johnson. All rights reserved.