Written by Don Byrd
In Pennsylvania, the state House approved a measure on a 179-20 vote that would encourage school districts across the state to add the motto “In God We Trust” to public school buildings. House Bill 1640 does not require schools to display the motto, but declares the importance of such displays and notes that courts have found the motto in other contexts to be constitutional.
Rep. Rick Saccone believes that proliferation of the motto on school buildings “can help unite us,” but as the Pittsburgh Tribune Live reports, many church-state separation advocates believe it will achieve the opposite.
“It equates God-belief and religious piety with patriotism, and that’s wrong to do in public schools where students are of all religions and of no religion, and they are young and impressionable,” argued Elizabeth Cavell, staff attorney with the Madison, Wis.-based Freedom From Religion Foundation. The group sued Saccone and others over a 2012 resolution declaring that year to be “The Year of the Bible.”
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“Religion is divisive,” Cavell said. “It’s something that makes insiders of the majority-students — the god-believers who understand themselves to be included in the ‘we’ of ‘In God We Trust’ — and that’s not all students by any stretch.”
The bill is headed to the state Senate for consideration.
