Date: 2011-11-01
Speaker: DANIEL E. LUNGREN (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Mr. Speaker. in contrast to the suggestion made that we dont need to have this reaffirmation of our national motto. I provide this evidence. First of all. we had a lawsuit by an individual in my district that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court about the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Secondly. that same individual is now suing. attempting to get up to the Supreme Court on this very question of "In God We Trust." Third. just a couple of years ago. I had to fight very. very strongly to get the words "In God We Trust" emplaced. in fact. in the CVC. where it is now. And for all of those that weve referred to in our history. I think weve omitted one which is very. very important. the leader of the civil rights revolution. Martin Luther King made it very clear in his letter from the Birmingham jail that. in fact. we act out of the requirements made on us by the God in whom we trust. That makes us a Nation that respects the liberties and the individual worth of every single member of our society. If he had not. in fact. looked to our historic belief in God as a basis for those principles that all Americans abide by. that is. that we are equal in the eyes of God and therefore equal in the eyes of our government. he would not have been successful. This is an important message that we need to reaffirm. It is. in fact. under attack. We are not wasting time. For example. how could we waste time in making sure that "In God We Trust" is. in fact. enshrined in our laws and as our national motto? Religious faith has been an ever present fact in our history which must be included in any picture of who we are as Americans. The failure to include it among other representations would give an incomplete and inadequate picture of our national ethos. The motto "In God We Trust" first appeared on a United States coin in 1864 during the Civil War. and later became the official motto of our nation in 1956 by an act of Congress. It is codified as Federal law in the United States Code at 36 U.S.C. 302. which provides: "In God we trust" is the national motto. We must say no to any revisionists who seek to rewrite the American narrative. It was not secularism and materialism which inspired those from other continents to travel across dangerous seas to a foreign land where they sought refuge from religious persecution. Neither can the manifest destiny in the hopes and dreams of those who populated the land that we now call America be described apart from a spirit which led them to face challenges and even death to fulfill those dreams. No. It was something greater than themselves which guided them in such quests. This understanding of a greater purpose was reflected in the Mayflower Compact signed aboard the Mayflower in 1620. In acknowledging Divine Providence. John Winthrop and the other Pilgrim signers expressed the desire to form a democratic form of government and a mutual regard for one another as equals in the sight of God. There was a sense of destiny in those first Americans who were drawn here by that same vision. In a very real sense they conceived of themselves as a chosen people. They saw their covenant as connected with the blessing of a new land but even more importantly with an idea that America was a place with a transcendent purpose. This ethos of the older covenant provided them with a foundation rooted in a common commitment to the creation of a new political order. The Founding generation of our nation possessed that same sense of purpose. John Adams. the author of the Massachusetts constitution. a key player in drafting the Declaration of Independence. and the President of the United States represented this worldview. Adams was committed to this early understanding that a Hebrew metaphysic was the cornerstone of the new American culture. Adams understood that only the nature of an intelligent. wise. and sovereign God could not only create. but also sustain the morality necessary to civilization itself. He observed: We have no government armed with powers capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice. ambition. revenge. or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Adams understood that a constitution must be more than mere parchment or paper. Rather. our nations basic law must be grounded in a moral order which embodies the timeless first principles of an older covenant. Such sentiments followed what has become recognized as the clearest enunciation of those cardinal principles of American character. In his Farewell Address President Washington observed: Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity. religion and morality are indispensable supports. . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded by the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure. reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. The American Revolution was rooted in a very different worldview than its French counterpart. The conception of liberty to which the founding generation aspired was rooted in a Transcendent source. With respect to the philosophy underlying our political institutions and governance. we need look no further than the Declaration of Independence to discover what is perhaps the clearest statement of the source of those rights which would later be enshrined in our Constitution. We are informed in the Preamble that: We hold these truths to be selfevident. 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. The source of these unalienable rightsrights that cannot be given or taken awayshould be noted. Where do our rights come from? They are not the product of mere men. They are not the product of mere agreement. No. we are endowed with these rights by our Creator. The significance of this is that if our rights do not ultimately come from man. they cannot be taken away from us by mere men. It is the ultimacy of a transcendent source which gives rights their substance. The role of the Declaration as the principal statement of American political philosophy must surely have a prominent place in our effort to unfold a catechism of American character. It is significant that Abraham Lincoln in one of his debates with Stephen Douglas derisively stated that "[i]f the Declaration is not the truth. let us get the statute book. in which we find it. and tear it out!" There is a practical component to this argument in that "the United States Code includes the Declaration of Independence as one of the Organic Laws upon which all statutory law rests." However. there is a more compelling reason that Lincoln might have responded with such firmness. For he would later note at Gettysburg that it was "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation. conceived in Liberty. and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." On that day of November 19. 1863 at Gettysburg. it had been 107 years since those immortal words contained in the Declaration had been declared to the new nation. Lincoln saw the Civil War as an epochal struggle necessary to this promise of the Declaration. "that this nation. under God. shall have a new birth of freedomand that government of the people. by the people. for the people. shall not perish from the earth." This our history. and our concepts of human dignity and equal justice before the law are deeply rooted the notion of eternal justice. Perhaps no greater testimony exists to this fact than the Reverend Martin Luther Kings. Letter from a Birmingham Jail. He described his plight with the following eloquence: * * . I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their thus saith the Lord far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns. and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel . . . to practically every hamlet and city of the GraecoRoman world. I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond to the Macedonian call for aid. This great leader of the Civil Rights movement clearly understood the origin and nature of rights. He spoke of "Godgiven rights." In describing the concept of rights he wrote: One may well ask. "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws. there are just and there are unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all. Now what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a manmade code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas. an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Dr. King reasons from experience that rights must be rooted in a moral law that is itself rooted in the law of God. The expression of a majority is itself an insufficient basis for rights. The argument by Stephen Douglas on behalf of the doctrine of popular sovereignty (allowing states to determine the slave question by a popular vote) failed because of the moral premise that majority sentiment should not overcome the fundamental First Principle that it is not permissible to own another human being. The exercise of political will without moral justification is nothing more than the use of force legitimized by a vote. Douglas position that such a question could be left to the decision of the various states was in fact an argument on behalf of cultural relativism. Lincoln understood that this was not a sufficient basis for law and argued that "there is no right to do a wrong." Rights which are not grounded in a transcendent being ultimately are left to the historical vagaries of taste and opinion. This understanding concerning the centrality of religious faith in our nations history is also reflected in an opinion written by the late Supreme Court Justice William 0. Douglas. Perhaps one of the most liberal Justices ever to sit on the Court. Douglas nonetheless observed that "We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a supreme being." Of course. not every American believes in Godthat is not what Justice Douglass was getting at. Rather. his focus was on our history as a people. And it is undeniable that throughout our history the religious faith of the American peoplein all of its various formshas been an integral part of who we are as a people. A plurality of faith commitments has come together in the American experience to form a canopy of overlapping consensus concerning the providential nature of our history. This is our history. It is who we are as a people. Although we are not captives of the past. it would be nothing less than national suicide were we to fail to uphold the integrity of our collective story. Worse yet. we must never allow our history to be rewritten by those seeking to serve their own ends. For our understanding of our past serves to define who we are and to direct our aspirations for the future. To allow others to deny the foundational role of religious faith in our nations history is not only an assault on our history but an attempt to dramatically alter the direction of our nation in the years ahead.