In God We Trust

Our closing hymn in sacrament meeting today, in recognition of Independence Day, was The Star Spangled Banner. We sang all three of the verses included in our hymnal. When we got to the line saying "And this be our motto, in God is our trust," I wondered how many people in the United States would currently take that as their motto.

In my Book of Mormon institute class (the first half), we were discussing Mosiah 29, where it talks about how when the people were righteous, they would tend to choose righteous laws and leaders. But when they started choosing iniquity, the time had come to meet God's judgments. At that time, we felt that about half the country was righteous. Our teacher said that when he was growing up, most of the country was living in righteousness. I don't know if our answer would have changed since that time.

But back to the motto. We don't really hide it. It's written on all our money, for one thing. But I wonder how many people are really aware of it. And I wonder, if we consistently sang every verse of the national anthem every time, would that have a noticeable effect on the religiosity of American citizens? Or would it just lead to more protests against state-supported religious displays?