Understanding American Voters: ‘In God We Trust’

What makes America tick? It’s a question that Europeans have been grappling with for centuries.

How does the deep religiosity of Americans exist side by side with the strength of its democratic institutions and such strong adherence to the separation of church and state?

In seeking to explain, Nuno Sampaio writes for Portugal’s El Diario:

While a strong presence of religiosity is a distinctive feature of American society, the separation of church and state, since the founding of the United States, has been a pillar of progress for democratic institutions as well as an affirmation of religious belief. It was this separation that allowed for the full expression of both, and which, although it may seem paradoxical, was a catalyst for both. As such, it continues to inspire curiosity that the inscription that is understood to be a symbol of material well-being so dear to Americans on the one dollar note reads: “In God We Trust.”

Sampaio then explains to U.S. election watchers, “The complex financial situation that the sub-prime crisis has brought about has allowed economic issues to gain some added importance in the political debate. But the religious factor will continue to strongly influence U.S. electoral behavior. Regardless of how far the dollar falls, it will continue to read: ‘In God We Trust.’”

By Nuno Sampaio

Translated By Brandi Miller

April 23, 2008

Portugal – Diario Economico – Original Article (Portuguese)

In a year of presidential elections and with the delicate question of the pedophilia scandals, Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States of North America made, as it couldn’t fail to do, tremendous repercussions in the media – and rightly so. Curiously, to the eyes of an increasingly secular Europe, the importance that the phenomenon of religion has on the lives of Americans never fails to appear strange.

While a strong presence of religiosity is a distinctive feature of American society, the separation of church and state, since the founding of the United States of America, has been a pillar of progress for democratic institutions as well as an affirmation of religious belief. It was this separation that allowed for the full expression of both, and which, although it may seem paradoxical, was a catalyst for both. As such, it continues to inspire curiosity that the inscription that is understood to be a symbol of material well-being so dear to Americans on the one dollar note reads: “In God We Trust.”

In the nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville understood and described as few ever have, the religious dimension in America: “In the United States, on the seventh day of every week, the trading and working life of the nation seems suspended; all noises cease; a deep tranquility, say rather the solemn calm of meditation, succeeds the turmoil of the week, and the soul resumes possession and contemplation of itself,” he writes in Democracy in America.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the U.S. election.