Congressmen Urge President to Acknowledge America’s Heritage

Illinois U.S. Representatives Don Manzullo and Peter Roskam and 40 of their colleagues in Congress are calling on President Barack Obama to acknowledge America’s Godly heritage.

Manzullo and Roskam co-signed a letter asking President Obama to correct remarks he recently made in Indonesia where he referred to America’s national motto as “E Pluribus Unum — out of one, many.” The actual national motto, adopted by Congress in 1956, is “In God We Trust.”

The letter also raised concerns about recent presentations by Obama in which he has excluded the word “Creator” from his recitation of the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration states that we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.” On three occasions in the last month Obama has deleted the word “Creator” from his quotes from America’s founding document.

“Once may be a mistake, but three times is a pattern,” said U.S. Representative Randy Forbes (R-VA), the chief author of the letter and chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus. “By misrepresenting things as foundational as the Declaration of Independence and our national motto, the President is inaccurately reflecting America and undercutting important parts of our nation’s history.”

Forbes and his co-signers point out in their letter that founder John Adams believed that “it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.”

Their letter to Obama says, “If Adams was right, by making these kinds of statements to the rest of the world, you are removing one of the cornerstones of our secure freedom. If we pull the thread of religious conviction out of the marketplace of ideas, we unravel the tapestry of freedom that birthed America.”

Obama’s incorrect reference to the national motto follows a recent episode involving the new lavish Visitors Center at the U.S. Capitol. When the new Center was unveiled, it included a major exhibit which also falsely declared that “E Pluribus Unum” is our national motto.

It took Congressional intervention to get the exhibit revised to include the true version of the national motto.