Dorian Cope presentsOn This Deity

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”

“…Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing … but sing their hearts out for us.”

Nelle Harper E. Lee was born in Alabama in 1926 and wrote only one book in her lifetime, published on this day in 1960; the brilliant To Kill A Mockingbird. It won the Pulitzer-Prize and is one of the 20^th century’s greatest literary works.

Now 53 years old, the book has been translated into 40 languages, sold 35 million copies, and was made into a film starring Gregory Peck for which he rightly won an Oscar in 1962.

The story of To Kill A Mockingbird confronts huge subjects head-on: racism, class, courage, forgiveness, loss, justice, crime, punishment, death, violence, being a woman, class. Despite being as complex as Dickens and as tragically beautiful as Shakespeare, it is written plainly, simply, beautifully. The story unfolds through the observations of a six-year-old girl, Scout Finch, and it is through her eyes, through laughter, irony and satire we learn what it is to be a decent human being.

Always shy of publicity, Lee considers To Kill A Mockingbird to be entirely self-explanatory and has always shied away from publicity or explanation. “Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that To Kill a Mockingbird spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct…” she says.

When in 2011 she was asked why she never wrote anything else, she said: “Two reasons: one, I wouldn’t go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill A Mockingbird for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again.” Now aged 86, Harper Lee is partly deaf and blind, wheelchair-bound and suffering memory loss.

People of faith open their ancient, so-called ‘holy’ books to guide them in life. But for those of us living free of the dogma of invisible sky-gods, we turn to Dickens, Shakespeare and To Kill A Mockingbird for relevant, rational, universal moral guidance. Indeed, To Kill A Mockingbird topped a 2006 survey of librarians, ahead of the Bible and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

“I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”

[Written by Jane Tomlinson]

On 11^th July 1954, the U.S. Congress enacted Public Law 84-140, which decreed that “In God We Trust” would henceforth appear on all American currency. This pious new motto was a direct violation of the First Amendment – the separation of Church and State – which had been central to the framing of the Constitution, a deliberately and painstakingly secular document. The founding fathers had chosen a secular national motto: “E Pluribus Unum”, or “Of many, One”. They’d cautioned again and again about the need for State to be entirely separate from Church: as Thomas Jefferson put it – a “wall of separation”; as James Madison put it – a “perfect separation.”

But in the mass hysteria of 1950s McCarthyism, Congress was determined to set the United States apart from those “godless communists.” In addition to changing the currency, further federal laws evoking this supposedly shared American God were evangelically implemented over a frenzied five-year period. Out went the noble “E Pluribus Unum” and in came “In God We Trust” as the new national motto. “Under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance. And “So help me God” was added to federal oaths – despite the fact that the Christian Bible clearly states not to swear by God or any other person, place, or thing when taking an oath.

To those who dared voice objection – primarily Jews, who felt certain that this “God” they were all meant to trust was not Yaweh (nor was it Allah, Vishnu, and certainly not female) – President Eisenhower declared that if people disagreed with “In God We Trust” then their own patriotism should be challenged.

It is, however, this absurd, meaningless motto in violation of Americans’ most basic and fundamental rights that should in fact be challenged.

While America’s wacky Christian Right continues its incessant campaign to put its supporters on the federal courts where they can make a mockery of core constitutional principles, every American dollar and coin bearing this motto reflects its government’s irrationality, promotes ignorance and blind acquiescence of its citizens, and condones the destructive influence of religion in the modern world.

Only in Truth and Reason should we Trust!