Are you smarter than a British game show host? 

In 2006 the British version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” was having a special Valentine’s Day Celebrity Couples Edition in which famous people were trying to win money for their favorite charities.

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and his wife Jackie worked their way up to the half million mark and needed to answer only one more question to win a million pounds for their charity, the Shooting Star Children’s Hospice.  Here’s the question the show’s host asked the couple:

"Translated from the Latin, what is the motto of the United States?"

And here were the four possible answers from which to choose:
A – In God We Trust
B – One Out Of Many
C – All As One
D – Striving Together

They confidently answered, “A, In God We Trust.”

And they were told their answer was wrong, that the correct answer was “B, One Out of Many,” which is the translation of the Latin phrase, “E pluribus unum.” 

So, instead of jumping to a million pounds, their total dropped to 32,000 pounds, a big disappointment for both them and the charity for which they were playing.

The next day the show’s officials announced they would let the couple come back for another chance at a final question because the question was not up to the usual high standards of the show.  Although “One Out of Many” is the translation from the Latin of “E pluribus unum,” which appears on the Great Seal of the United States, the official motto of the USA is, actually, “In God We Trust.”

The happy ending of the story is that when they went back on the show, the celebrity couple declined to try the million pound question and walked away with half a million for the Shooting Star Children’s Hospice.

How could the game show have gotten it wrong?

“E pluribus unum” stood as our unofficial motto for nearly 180 years.  It refers to the fact that out of 13 colonies, we became one nation.  It is on the Seal of the United States and has appeared on our coins since 1795.  Historically, it is a key phrase in defining who we are as a nation.  But it was never officially adopted as our motto.  Our nation had no motto until 1956 when Congress passed a bill and President Eisenhower signed it into law, establishing as our national motto the phrase, “In God We Trust.”

The Star Spangled Banner, which became our national anthem in 1931, had already acknowledged something similar as our motto.  The fourth stanza includes the words: “And this be our motto: In God is our trust.”

Because of the long-standing use of “E Pluribus Unum,” it is easy to see how someone would mistake it for our current motto.

In fact, in November of 2010, our own President, speaking at the University of Indonesia,  made the same error as the British game show, saying “our motto is E pluribus unum.”

Why do you think our nation adopted “In God We Trust” as our motto after going 180 years without an official motto? 

In the mid 1950s we could see what had happened to other nations around the world that denied the existence of God, specifically communist countries.  We saw the people of those nations lose their freedoms, we saw the economy of those nations spiral downward, we saw the mood and spirit of those nations descend into darkness. 

Those nations whose leaders had rejected God stood in stark contrast with our own country, at that time enjoying a culture of Christianity.  Although we had our problems, we knew what they were and we were working to fix them.  And we recognized that the only hope we had was to depend upon God.  It just made sense that we adopt as our national motto a phrase that had long been stamped on many of our coins – not “E pluribus unum,” but “In God We Trust.”  Incidentally, although “In God We Trust” has been on some coins since as early as 1864, a law passed in 1954 requires the motto on all coins and paper currency.

It was that same year, 1954, that we added the words “under God” to our pledge of allegiance.  Before 1954 the pledge said simply, “one nation, indivisible.”  But Congress amended the pledge to make it read, “one nation under God, indivisible.”

The change came as the result of a sermon preached earlier that year by George MacPherson Docherty, at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, with President Eisenhower attending and sitting in the same pew that President Lincoln had once regularly occupied. 

The pastor preached a sermon in which he argued that the nation's might lay not in arms but its spirit and higher purpose. He noted that the Pledge's sentiments could be those of any nation, that "there was something missing in the pledge, and that which was missing was the characteristic and definitive factor in the American way of life." He cited the Gettysburg address in which Lincoln referred to our nation as being "under God."   Those words, “under God,” the pastor said, are the defining words that set the United States apart from other nations.

President Eisenhower liked what he heard, spoke to the pastor enthusiastically after the service, and the next day influenced a congressman to introduce a bill to add the phrase to the pledge.  It was passed quickly, signed into law, and took effect on Flag Day, June 14, 1954.

Most of us learned the pledge of allegiance with that phrase in it.  “One nation, under God.”  It’s as much a part of the pledge as “liberty and justice for all.”

So it surprised all of us when NBC began their coverage of the U.S. Open golf tournament in June with a moving patriotic video that had a sound track of children reciting the pledge of allegiance, but with the words “under God” edited out.  NBC officials apologized immediately for the error.

Another story caught my attention in June.  Those attending high school graduation in Medina, Texas, just barely got to pray after a federal appeals court overturned a judge’s ruling that would have prohibited any one on the program from saying a prayer or asking those present to bow their heads or join in prayer.

Sometimes I have to wonder, are we really one nation under God?  Can we really say that it is “In God We Trust?”  Or have these words become a meaningless motto, a pointless pledge, a reminder of days gone by when they might have been true, or at least we wanted them to be true?

I want to propose to you that the most important words in any of our national documents are those words, “In God We Trust.”  They are more important than the words, “We the people.”  They are more important than the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”  They are more important than the words, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  If our nation is to thrive, or even to survive, then we need to adopt those words, not only as a motto, but as a vision, a mission statement, a defining characteristic of our culture, of who we are and who we are committed to be.

The Declaration of Independence in which we rejected the rule of Britain is vital to our nation, but no more so than our Declaration of Dependence in which we submit ourselves to the rule of God.

Trust in God is what emboldened our founding fathers to start this nation, enabled our ancestors to strengthen this nation, and will empower us to keep this nation.