America by Heart

by Sarah Palin

  . . . Nor have the views of our people on this matter significantly changed. Presidents continue to conclude the Presidential oath with the words “so help me God.” Our legislatures, state and national, continue to open their sessions with prayer led by official chaplains. The sessions of this Court continue to open with the prayer “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.” Invocation of the Almighty by our public figures, at all levels of government, remains commonplace. Our coinage bears the motto “IN GOD WE TRUST.” And our Pledge of Allegiance contains the acknowledgment that we are a Nation “under God.”

  Justice Scalia makes the point that it is not just in their diaries or personal letters that the Founders made the linkage between freedom and religion but also in their official acts and pronouncements as governmental figures. Both as creators and leaders of the new nation, the Founders understood our political freedom as resting on the indispensable support of religious faith. As men of their time, they simply couldn’t foresee a future when that wouldn’t be the case.

  When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America more than thirty years later, he saw the same thing. The America he observed was no longer a nation struggling to be born, but a strong, young republic. He was struck by how firmly Americans and American clergy believed in the separation of church and state, and yet how decisively religion shaped their politics and supported their freedom.

  Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion—for who can search the human heart?—but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society. . . .

  Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America I found they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country.

  What the Founders made explicit in their words and deeds, Tocqueville was able to observe simply by traveling around the country and talking to ordinary citizens. America was—and is—an exceptional place, a place where religion and freedom march in the same direction.

  Traveling around the country today, I know I’m not alone in my own reliance on faith. I meet so many Americans who have the sense of unique purpose that comes with belief in a loving and powerful God. Some see this confession of faith as dangerous. They regard religion itself as inherently divisive. They seem intimidated and frightened somehow, as though any discussion of the religious roots of America’s social and constitutional order is somehow manifestly intolerant. This viewpoint seems to assume that acknowledging the importance our Founders placed on religious faith is like saying that only a certain kind of people are welcome in America. In fact, precisely the opposite is true.

  The Founding Fathers were serious students of history. They had seen what centuries of state-sponsored religions and sectarian struggle had done to Europe, and they were determined that the same thing not happen here. Men such as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison were well aware of the wars spawned and the tyranny perpetuated when government takes the side of a particular religion rather than protecting the freedom of people to practice (or not practice) all religions.

  Reading about the faith roots of America in Matthew Spalding’s book We Still Hold These Truths, I learned that, from the very beginning, our Founders expressed a profound belief in religious tolerance. Thus at the same time that George Washington was setting aside November 26, 1789, as a day of prayer and Thanksgiving, he was reaching out to different religious faiths to assure them of their equal and protected place under the new government. (Now we celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November, but November 26 is personally significant to me because it is my sister Molly’s birthday. We say a prayer of sincere thanksgiving as we eat cake!) Early in his presidency, Washington wrote letters to the United Baptists, the Presbyterians, and others in which he congratulated Americans on creating a government “which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requir[ing] only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.” And he wrote one more letter, writes Spalding, to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, representatives of “one of the most persecuted religious minorities in all history”:

  The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it were the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

  It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

  Religious intolerance and discrimination on the part of believers and nonbelievers alike would certainly exist in the new republic. But the position of the government was clear. As Spalding explains, in America, having rights was not connected with any particular religious faith or any faith at all. Everyone’s religious freedom was protected by the government. All that was asked of individual Americans was that they obey the laws of the land.

  This is the kind of exceptionalism that Tocqueville would describe forty years later. Thanks to leaders such as Washington, America became a place where freedom and religion are not at odds but actually support and complement each other. There is no religious test for citizenship. You need not be a good Catholic, a good Pentecostal, or a good Muslim, just a good American. In America, there is no presumption that God is on the side of anyone or anything but freedom. No government of man can legitimately claim to represent the will of God, and no government in America can force its citizens to respect such a claim.

  Abraham Lincoln is a wonderful model for Americans trying to navigate contemporary life with tolerance for others while remaining true to their religious faith. On the north wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington is inscribed what many believe is Lincoln’s greatest speech, his Second Inaugural Address. It is just 703 words long, yet it mentions God 14 times and quotes the Bible twice. But it is no blustering sermon. Lincoln did not presume to know which side God favored in the Civil War. Even though the conflict was still raging and passions were high, he sought to heal the nation, not to judge. And despite his belief that slavery was a great moral wrong, he resisted the temptation to invoke God in support of his cause. Instead, his expression of deep faith in the most difficult circumstances imaginable was a profound statement of tolerance and healing.

  Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God;
and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we will be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. . . .

  With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

  That morning years ago in Big Lake, I discovered a wonderful truth: like all God’s creatures, I have a purpose in the world. We can spend a lifetime trying to find that purpose, and we may come close, but I don’t know many who have ultimately found it. Like most people, I join them along the path in searching, and endeavoring to appreciate each step along the way.

  I believe my country, too, has a purpose: to be a shining city on a hill, a beacon of liberty and hope for all the peoples of the earth. Our country was created by believing men and women to be a good and virtuous place, a nation capable of producing people fit to exercise the gift of freedom. And for those who fear that people of faith desire to rewrite the Constitution and the laws on the presumed authority of God, let me be clear that I don’t believe any of us can claim to know the mind of the Creator who gave us life and liberty. We can only seek His guidance, His protection, and His love.

  Eight

  I Hear America Praying

  On a remote outcropping in the middle of the 1.6-million-acre Mojave Desert sits a cross. At least, sometimes a cross is visible there. For years, it was covered by a plywood box. And when the Supreme Court ordered the box removed earlier this year, vandals quickly ripped the cross down.

  The plain white cross has come to be known as the Mojave Cross, and it has stood its vigil since 1934 when the local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) put it up to honor the servicemen and -women who lost their lives in World War I. It’s in an area so remote that an hour can pass between cars traveling on the road below. And yet, someone, somehow, found the cross so offensive they persuaded a judge to have it covered up.

  That someone was former Park Service employee Frank Buono. Because the cross was on federal land, Buono—along with the always helpful ACLU—was able to claim that it violated his right not to have the government establish a religion. How a lonely cross in the middle of the desert amounted to “establishing” a religion is a mystery to me. But it wasn’t a mystery to the judges on San Francisco’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court agreed with Buono and ordered the cross covered up. Even after Congress intervened and transferred the land on which the cross stands from the federal government to the private ownership of the VFW, Buono and the PASA—Perpetually Aggrieved Secularists of America (!)—objected. They took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the cross could stand—and the box had to go. That’s when someone took matters into his or her own hands and (in a display of the religious tolerance they hold so dear!) stole the cross.

  The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Mojave Cross case was a defeat for those who want to purge all religious expression from America’s public (and not so public) places. But this victory for religious expression may be a temporary one. The High Court didn’t rule on whether the cross violated the Constitution but instead confined itself to whether Congress’s transfer of the land to the VFW was proper. The cross can stand for now (that is, if the vandals let it); but Buono and his allies can still challenge its constitutionality in court. Which means that not only the Mojave Cross, but all crosses, Stars of David, and other religious symbols on federal land—including the thousands that dot sacred places such as Arlington National Cemetery—could be declared unconstitutional.

  In his book Rediscovering God in America (which takes the reader on a walking tour of the many references to God and faith in the nation’s capital), Newt Gingrich writes:

  There is no attack on American culture more destructive and more historically dishonest than the secular Left’s relentless effort to drive God out of America’s public square . . .

  For most Americans, the blessings of God have been the basis for our liberty, prosperity and survival as a unique country.

  For most Americans, prayer is real and we subordinate ourselves to a God on whom we call for wisdom, guidance and salvation.

  For most Americans, the prospect of a ruthlessly secular society that would forbid public reference to God and systematically remove all religious symbols from the public square is horrifying.

  Yet the voice of the overwhelming majority of Americans is rejected by a media-academic-legal elite that finds religious expression frightening and threatening, or old-fashioned and unsophisticated.

  It’s getting pretty tiresome cataloging all the ways religious expression is under attack in America today. It seems like every Christmas brings another story of a crèche being banned from the front of a public building. When I was mayor of Wasilla, I had to fight for six Christmases to keep the baby Jesus manger scene on display on Wasilla Lake. And the Ten Commandments are becoming harder to find in American courthouses than unicorns.

  Most Americans are honestly puzzled about why these religious displays are so darn controversial. The fact is that these challenges reflect more than just theoretical, legal, and constitutional differences. They are evidence of a profound cultural divide. As Newt has written, most Americans are people of faith. According to a 2008 Pew poll, 92 percent of Americans believe in God or a universal spirit, and more than half of us pray at least once a day. And yet we have an influential academic and legal elite that not only fails to share this belief, but seems actively hostile to it.

  One of the cases Newt talks about in his book is the attempt to purge the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Even though the individual at the center of the case—the atheist activist Michael Newdow—ultimately failed in his effort, the Pledge case is a good example of the differences between the views of the vast majority of Americans and those of much of the elite when it comes to religious expression.

  In 2003, Newdow objected to his young daughter having the opportunity to pledge allegiance to “one nation, under God” in her public school classroom every morning. (Newdow never married his daughter’s mother, who is raising the child to believe in God.) And even though the Supreme Court has ruled that students who object to the Pledge don’t have to say it, Newdow insisted that the phrase “under God” was a violation of his right to transmit his atheist views to his daughter. So he brought a lawsuit, and the liberal Ninth Circuit Court, as is its wont, ruled that the Pledge was unconstitutional, although thankfully, in 2004, the Supreme Court reversed the ruling.

  To understand the cultural issues at play in this case, a little history is necessary. Although the Pledge of Allegiance has been around since 1892, the words “under God” weren’t added until 1954. They were added by bipartisan legislation after the minister at President Eisenhower’s church said, in a sermon in which the president was present, “There [is] something missing in the pledge, [something that is] the characteristic and definitive factor in the American way of life.” According to an article I found from that time, Congress was deluged with mail in favor of the change. Churches, veterans’ groups, labor unions, and newspapers all got behind it. Not surprisingly, Congress approved the change by a unanimous vote.

  Fast-forward fifty years, and liberal activists have decided that the result of this unanimous vote of Congress is somehow “divisive.” The New York Times, writing in 2002, even called the 1954 change, undertaken in the midst of the U.S.-Soviet cold war rivalry, “a petty attempt to link patriotism with religious piety.” Petty? I hear a lot of people these days talk about the c
old war as though it were a paranoid fantasy of right-wing fanatics. But the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union were real—and consequential. One of those differences was belief in God. Communism is an explicitly atheist ideology. Congress’s 1954 amendment to the Pledge wasn’t “petty,” it was a genuine expression, not just of patriotism, but of the unique aspect of American freedom: the belief that it is God-given and can’t be legitimately taken away. Far from pandering to cold war paranoia, Congress was reminding America, and the world, of the wellspring of freedom.

  Ronald Reagan made this point in the way only he could in his famous “evil empire” speech. Lost in all the hoopla over the American president using these words to describe the Soviet Union is the fact that Reagan’s speech was devoted mostly to exploring faith in American life. The difference between our system of government and the Soviet system—one acknowledges God and the other doesn’t—has significance beyond religion, Reagan reminded us. The way the two countries treated faith, he said, had direct consequences for how they treated their people. Where there was God, there was freedom. Where He was not recognized, there was tyranny.

  During my first press conference as President, in answer to a direct question, I pointed out that, as good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution. I think I should point out I was only quoting Lenin, their guiding spirit, who said in 1920 that they repudiate all morality that proceeds from supernatural ideas—that’s their name for religion—or ideas that are outside class conceptions. Morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of class war. And everything is moral that is necessary for the annihilation of the old, exploiting social order and for uniting the proletariat.