Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivered her State of the State address on April 8, focusing on several topics, including the success of the LEARNS Act. She also made a notable remark during her speech: “Jesus is our living hope for each of us, for our state, for our country. America was founded 250 years ago, as one nation under God.”
How these two ideas connect is unclear, but the governor’s statement raises a larger point that is worth discussion.
The country was founded 250 years ago, and it may be time to acknowledge that the phrase “one nation” has never fully reflected the reality of the United States, which has been built on purposeful division between race, gender and religion.
That’s where “under God” really comes in, because not only is it written into the U.S. Constitution that there should not be a single national religion, but religious freedom, for centuries, has really only been discussed in terms of Christianity.
Now, the governor has the right to express her religious beliefs, but to throw that Jesus may be our only hope in a State Address has people rightfully concerned. It sounds good to the ear, it may even be a comfort, but the roots are dividing and if division is our only hope, America may never progress to greatness.
Not only that, but the idea that Arkansas may be losing its faith and needs the government’s help with Club America, the Ten Commandments in classrooms and “In God We Trust” already in public classrooms across Arkansas is just propaganda that is useless in office and ridiculous in public.
Pushing for a more Christian nation is like putting pressure on a wound and ignoring the bleeding. The real bleed in Arkansas and America is that there are thousands of people who are not Christian, and not feeling okay about it is a personal feeling that is not a nationwide crisis.
In times of war, like with the war in Iran, religious divide and bigotry towards Muslim Americans hit a high, even before the current war. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American security concerns toward the region intensified, influencing both immigration policy and public perception. According to EBSCO, new policies were introduced, such as mandatory registration for certain immigrant categories, increased scrutiny of visa applications and measures aimed at identifying and deporting undocumented immigrants, particularly those from predominantly Muslim countries.
Or take the fact that when the Founding Fathers wrote “One nation under God,” they already had slaves. Slaves that were often forced to throw away their religion and forced to Christianity, but a specific Bible, a specific Christianity was meant to be followed.
Phrases like “one nation under God” are often used as a comforting blanket over a more uncomfortable truth that purposeful division has been part of America since the beginning.
To move toward genuine freedom and progress, the country has to evaluate what it was built on, not just what sounds reassuring in speeches, and be willing to change.
As soon as the founding fathers included “one nation under God” in the national vocabulary, it carried with it an idea of “we” and “them.”
Politicians love to throw the phrase around to bond us together, as if we could really relate to them. They love to idealize it – to pretend there was ever a point in our history when we were truly at peace with each other. But what would happen if we just threw it out? Not in a way that takes it off our dollars, and not in a way that rewrites the Constitution.
In order for us to really come together, we desperately need politicians who are willing to have real conversations that don’t throw around 250-year-old buzz words, and attack the real issue at hand, that until America can truly accept that we are one nation under many Gods, one nation with many races, and one nation with different cultures, we will never succeed past what we have always been, divided.