In God We Trust

Introduction to American History

July 30, 2011

In God We Trust

As the official motto of the United States goes, “In God we trust.” Religion has never failed to play an important role affecting politics in the United States. Christianity, especially, has significantly affected this nation and its people. Owing to different understandings toward this very religion, from the settlement in Plymouth in the 17th century till present, different groups of people have been able to use it as a slogan or a banner to dissent against authority, in order to attain the rights they longed for and deserved. Those dissenters look up to God as their savior who is able to liberate and free them from oppression of injustice. Even though they share the general idea that God is their promising freedom, they do not use God in the same way, or always utilize the same doctrine in Christianity. Confronting different situations and difficulties, they apply Christianity in different ways so as to achieve their political dissension. This essay, thus, is going to explore the relationship between religious and political dissent in the case of Anne Hutchinson, Nat Turner, and Wovoka.

In order to explore the relationship between religious and political dissent, it is important to understand what the word “dissent” means. “Dissent” is originally from a Latin word “dissentire”, which means to differ in sentiment (“Dissent” OED). In the other words, to dissent is to express different feelings or attitudes, and to disagree with or object to something. Therefore, this essay is, too, going to present what those three figures dissented, as exploring the correlation between religious and political dissent.

First, in the age when religion and the government were not separated, dissenting against religion would cause a chain reaction of being against the government. In the 1630s, “non-Puritans who migrated to the Massachusetts Bay colony were required to attend the Puritan church,...