Don Wildmon

AFA/AFR founder

July 2001 – Jesus once told a parable about talents. Use them, He said, or you lose them. Like all the words of our Lord, they ring true with experience.

Christians have lost a lot of their rights in the past several years. Each one seemed so small, and to a handful so right, at the time. Today, school kids can't say an audible prayer. Communities can't post the Ten Commandments in their schools because, the Supreme Court says, students may read them. And having read them, they may meditate on them. And if they meditate on them, they may begin to act on them. Horror of horrors! Students acting out the Ten Commandments! What would this country come to should they dare to do such a thing!

Of course God has never left the classroom. And never will. And as long as kids have exams, some of them will continue to pray.

So let's come to the point. Our national motto is "In God We Trust." What would happen if that motto were printed on an attractive poster, framed and placed in every classroom in America? Who knows what would happen? Nothing perhaps. Or perhaps the poster would be read, meditated on and acted on.

The great defender of our constitutional rights, the ACLU, is afraid that something like that may happen. So they don't want our national motto to be displayed in classrooms. They are prepared to try to take another right away. The question is, will we let them? Or will we use the right instead of lose it?

Of course, the ACLU would be against schoolchildren pledging allegiance to the U. S. flag because it contains the phrase "under God." And what about the Declaration of Independence? It contains, you know, the phrase "with a firm reliance on the protection of the Divine Providence." Will they want to censor that to protect our school children? And would they keep our children from reciting the Declaration of Independence which says "to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them." Should that also be censored? And in our national anthem we sing, "Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just / And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust!'" Will the ACLU want to prevent students from singing our national anthem?

It is time we use our right to display our national motto, or lose our right to do so. It is time for us to take a stand, rid ourselves of our apathy, and exercise this crucial right.

That is why I'm asking you to join hands with thousands of other Americans and help place a framed copy of our national motto in classrooms in your community. Work with your local school administrators and teachers to accomplish this project.

If we don't use it, one thing is sure: We will lose it.