“‘In God We Trust’ and the Ten Commandments on public walls prove America honors God.”

VerdictTrue fact, false conclusion

The motto, the Pledge’s “under God” and many Ten Commandments displays are real, and many people sincerely see them as honoring God. But when these displays are challenged, they have usually been kept by governments and courts calling them ceremonial, patriotic or historical, which is a long way from an official act of honoring God.Last checked October 2026

The claim at its strongest

The words are on every coin and bill. “Under God” is in the Pledge. Granite Ten Commandments monuments stand on capitol grounds, and Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Alabama have passed laws putting the commandments on classroom walls. For many Americans this adds up to a simple, sincere conclusion: the nation publicly honors God, and these displays are how it says so.

That conclusion has real support. The people who campaigned for these words usually meant them devoutly, and the officials who sign these laws often say so out loud. At the June 2024 signing of Louisiana’s classroom law, Gov. Jeff Landry said of Moses, as reported by CNN: “He got his commandments from God.” Courts have also repeatedly upheld these displays, and some justices have defended them in openly religious terms. The claim deserves to be tested on its own ground: what the government actually says these words mean when it has to defend them.

(When these words were adopted is covered on our page about the 1950s mottos. This page asks what happens to them in court.)

What governments and judges have said in court

“A patriotic or ceremonial character” (1970)

In 1970 a federal appeals court heard a challenge to “In God We Trust” on coins, currency and government publications. The Ninth Circuit upheld the motto in Aronow v. United States with this reasoning:

“It is quite obvious that the national motto and the slogan on coinage and currency ‘In God We Trust’ has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion. Its use is of a patriotic or ceremonial character and bears no true resemblance to a governmental sponsorship of a religious exercise.”

The court went further. “It is not easy to discern any religious significance attendant the payment of a bill with coin or currency,” it wrote, and it concluded that the motto “is excluded from First Amendment significance because the motto has no theological or ritualistic impact.”

The opinion also noted something a devout reader may find striking: such everyday secular uses of the motto were “viewed as sacrilegious and irreverent by President Theodore Roosevelt.” Roosevelt said as much in 1907, in a letter published in the New York Times. Putting the motto on coins, he wrote, “is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege,” and it was “eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins.”

Aronow still governs the motto in the Ninth Circuit. In 2010, in Newdow v. Lefevre, the court held that a new challenge was “foreclosed by our decision in Aronow.”

“Ceremonial deism” (1984)

The phrase most associated with this line of reasoning was put into wide legal circulation by Justice William Brennan, in his dissent in Lynch v. Donnelly (1984), a case about a city’s Nativity scene. Brennan, borrowing what he called “Dean Rostow’s apt phrase,” described the national motto and similar references as “ceremonial deism,” which he said are “protected from Establishment Clause scrutiny chiefly because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.”

Brennan offered this in dissent, as an explanation of why such phrases might survive. His formula stuck anyway, and later judges adopted it.

“Any religious freight … has long since been lost” (2004)

The fullest use came from Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow (2004), the challenge to “under God” in the Pledge. The Court’s majority dismissed the case on standing. O’Connor wrote separately to say the phrase was constitutional, and her reasoning rested on ceremonial deism, a category that she said “most clearly encompasses such things as the national motto.” She tested “under God” against four factors, including “Absence of worship or prayer” and “Minimal religious content,” and concluded:

“Any religious freight the words may have been meant to carry originally has long since been lost.”

She added that “the brevity of a reference to religion or to God in a ceremonial exercise can be important,” and that the phrase “purports only to identify the United States as a Nation subject to divine authority.” Chief Justice William Rehnquist, also concurring, put it more plainly: “Reciting the Pledge, or listening to others recite it, is a patriotic exercise, not a religious one.”

Six years later, the Ninth Circuit upheld the Pledge on the same footing in Newdow v. Rio Linda Union School District (2010): “the phrase ‘one Nation under God’ does not turn this patriotic exercise into a religious activity.”

“A broader moral and historical message” (2005)

The Ten Commandments followed a similar path. On June 27, 2005, the Supreme Court decided two cases. In McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky, it struck down courthouse displays in Kentucky, which had been revised into a “Foundations of American Law and Government” exhibit, because the counties’ history showed a religious purpose. Writing for the Court, Justice David Souter recalled that in Stone v. Graham (1980), a case about Kentucky classroom postings, the Court had already recognized that the commandments “are undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths.”

In Van Orden v. Perry, the Court upheld a granite monument on the Texas Capitol grounds, one of “17 monuments and 21 historical markers” there, inscribed as presented “by the Fraternal Order of Eagles of Texas 1961.” The deciding vote was Justice Stephen Breyer’s. He acknowledged that “the Commandments’ text undeniably has a religious message,” but concluded that in this setting the monument was “part of what is a broader moral and historical message reflective of a cultural heritage.” He noted that the Eagles were “a private civic (and primarily secular) organization” whose display reflected “efforts to combat juvenile delinquency,” and he judged the monument to be “serving a mixed but primarily nonreligious purpose.” He called it “a borderline case.”

So the monument most often pointed to as proof that Texas honors God survived because its controlling justice found its purpose to be primarily nonreligious.

“Historical significance as one of the foundations of our law” (2024–2026)

The newest classroom laws are written in the same register. Louisiana’s H.B. 71 (2024) states in its findings that the commandments “have historical significance as one of the foundations of our legal system,” and requires each poster to carry a context statement beginning, “The Ten Commandments were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.” Defending the law in the Fifth Circuit, Attorney General Liz Murrill repeated that framing: “the Commandments have historical significance as one of the foundations of our law.”

In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s November 4, 2025 announcement defending Senate Bill 10 described the commandments as “foundational words that have guided our laws and values for centuries” and the law as “a valid expression of Texas’s commitment to its historical and moral foundations.” The words “God” and “religious” do not appear in it.

What changed after 2022

It would be unfair to stop there, because the legal ground has shifted. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), the Supreme Court said it had “long ago abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot,” and that the Establishment Clause must be interpreted by “reference to historical practices and understandings.” Under the old test, a government defending a display had strong reasons to show a secular purpose. Under the new one, the central questions are whether a practice fits the nation’s historical tradition and whether it coerces anyone.

Government arguments changed with it. Texas’s brief to the Fifth Circuit in the S.B. 10 case says candidly: “While the Commandments are religious, they have an undeniable historical meaning.” Even so, most of the brief’s weight falls on history, education and passivity. It calls the commandments “a deeply significant moral and historical document,” describes “the passive display of the Ten Commandments on classroom walls,” and argues that “the Texas Legislature had numerous secular purposes in passing S.B.10.” When the full Fifth Circuit upheld the law 9–8 in April 2026, the majority reasoned that “the displays do not pressure anyone to engage in religious exercise or observance,” and that “[t]he mere fact that the displays use religious language does not convert them into a call to prayer.” The families who challenged the law have asked the Supreme Court to review it. As of October 13, 2026, the docket shows no action on the petition, with the respondents’ response due October 28. Louisiana’s own petition in the H.B. 71 case (No. 25-1360), filed after the full Fifth Circuit set aside the injunction against that law as premature, is also pending, with a response due October 19. (Our status post tracks the Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas cases.)

The uncomfortable part

Put the record side by side. In public, at the signing, the commandments come from God. In the briefs and press releases, they are mostly foundational, historical, moral and passive. On the coins, the motto is a national affirmation of faith; in the Ninth Circuit opinion that still controls there, it has “no theological or ritualistic impact.”

Litigators frame cases to fit the doctrine in front of them, and none of this proves anyone insincere. It does mean the displays cannot carry the weight the claim puts on them. As a matter of law, what keeps them on the wall has usually been the argument that they say less about God than a believer would hope.

Some Christians have noticed. Writing in April 2004, as the Supreme Court weighed the Pledge case, Baptist pastor James L. Evans of Pelham, Alabama, observed that upholding “under God” might require treating it as “functioning solely as a sort of ceremonial deism.” He wrote, “I am at a loss to understand how anyone will view such a ruling as a victory for the faith,” and asked: “Doesn’t that come dangerously close to taking God’s name in vain?” A decade later, Joe Carter, writing for The Gospel Coalition, argued that the “under god” of the Pledge refers to the deity of America’s civil religion, and that “the ‘god’ of America’s civil religion is not the God who died on the Cross.” Roosevelt’s objection in 1907 came from the same instinct.

Engaging the counterargument

“Legal meaning and devotional meaning can coexist.” This is the strongest objection, and it is partly right. A court can rule that a phrase is constitutional because it is ceremonial while millions of people still say it as a prayer. Nothing in Aronow or Newdow stops anyone from meaning the words. But the claim on this page is about what the nation does through its government, and the government’s own account of what the words do, when it has to give one in court, has been modest.

“Not every justice drains the words.” Also true. Rehnquist’s plurality in Van Orden said, “Of course, the Ten Commandments are religious.” Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting in McCreary (joined by Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas), argued that “Publicly honoring the Ten Commandments is thus indistinguishable, insofar as discriminating against other religions is concerned, from publicly honoring God,” and that this is permissible. That is the honest form of the claim, and it is a real position in American law. It was a dissent, though, and the cases that kept these displays in place mostly relied on the other reasoning. Since Kennedy, states can admit more religious content, as Texas’s brief does, but their defenses still rest on history and on the displays asking nothing of anyone.

“History is a fine reason to keep them.” Perhaps. But then the display proves that the nation has a tradition of displaying these words, which is a narrower claim, and a younger one than many assume: the motto became official in 1956, “under God” entered the Pledge in 1954, and the Texas monument dates to 1961.

The takeaway

The displays are real, and the devotion behind many of them is real. The legal record shows something else too: to keep God’s name in public places, governments and courts have repeatedly said the name is ceremonial, patriotic, historical or passive. A reader who values these words for their religious meaning is entitled to ask whether that is the kind of honor they had in mind.

Related claims

Sources

Court opinions – Aronow v. United States, 432 F.2d 242 (9th Cir. Oct. 6, 1970). OpenJurist – Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984), Brennan, J., dissenting. Cornell LII – Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1 (2004), O’Connor, J., and Rehnquist, C.J., concurring in the judgment. Justia – Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (June 27, 2005). Justia – McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky, 545 U.S. 844 (June 27, 2005); Scalia, J., dissenting. Justia · Cornell LII (dissent) – Newdow v. Lefevre, 598 F.3d 638 (9th Cir. Mar. 11, 2010). GovInfo – Newdow v. Rio Linda Union School District, 597 F.3d 1007 (9th Cir. Mar. 11, 2010). Opinion PDF – Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 597 U.S. 507 (June 27, 2022). Justia – Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District, No. 25-50695 (5th Cir. en banc, Apr. 21, 2026). Justia · Supreme Court docket No. 26-257 – Brumley v. Roake, No. 25-1360 (U.S., petition filed May 21, 2026). Supreme Court docket

Statutes, briefs and official statements – Louisiana H.B. 71 (2024 Regular Session), enrolled text. Louisiana Legislature – Brief of Appellants (Texas Office of the Attorney General), Nathan v. Alamo Heights ISD, No. 25-50695 (5th Cir., Nov. 24, 2025). PDF via ACLU – Texas Attorney General, “Attorney General Ken Paxton to Defend the Display of the Ten Commandments in Texas Public Schools Before Fifth Circuit” (Nov. 4, 2025). texasattorneygeneral.gov – Louisiana Attorney General, “Attorney General Murrill files opening brief in Fifth Circuit defending Louisiana’s Ten Commandments Law.” ag.louisiana.gov – Theodore Roosevelt to Roland C. Dryer, Nov. 11, 1907 (Library of Congress), published in the New York Times, Nov. 14, 1907. Theodore Roosevelt Center catalog · Contemporary newspaper printing (Washington dateline Nov. 13, 1907), University of South Carolina Libraries

Commentary and reporting – James L. Evans, “Taking God’s Name in Vain,” Sightings (University of Chicago Divinity School), Apr. 29, 2004. Link – Joe Carter, “Under Which God? — The Pledge, Public Prayer, and Ceremonial Deism,” The Gospel Coalition, Apr. 24, 2014. Link – Stephanie Gallman and Dianne Gallagher, CNN, June 19, 2024 (republished by KRDO). Link

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