The fact that the believers in God, those who penned the Credo below, outnumber and, what is more important, reject the “believers” in science? In any case religion is the elephant in the room where we are all living together, and does need to be walled off unlike our neighbors to the South.

It’s probably true that most people, even more so today than in the 18th. century, subscribe to a belief in God as the foundation for everything else. And that those who would place science, and in particular the theory of evolution in its place, as the real foundation, still represent a distinct minority of men and women. But if the believers, clothed in a religion and attending a church, continue to persuade and in some instances compel the rest of us to turn to God for salvation, as is stated in the Credo below, while remaining ignorant of science, there is little hope for our survival on this earth.

And what about the children? Because they of course are the future. What should they be doing? Passing around copies of the Credo? In this instance the children, in the form of the Boy Scouts of America, are doing just that,  passing around copies of the Credo, being taking advantage of. Whereas they ought to have been in class, reading about the discoveries of Charles Darwin and some of the other thousands of extraordinary scientists of the past few hundred years, or playing  the violin, or competing on the athletic field, while all the time just learning about themselves, not from church dogma, but just by looking about them with the goal of understanding themselves, their nature, and that of the world about them.

“For the Freedoms Foundation, “The Credo of the American Way of Life” was more than a list of political and economic rights. It was rather, as its name indicated, a creed—a statement of religious belief and commitment to a sanctified cause.

When Eisenhower launched his “crusade” for the White House in 1952, he pointedly made the credo part of his campaign. For starters, the Republican nominee led a drive to have a monument in its likeness erected in the nation’s capital, to honor the American ideal of “permitting the creative spirit of man made in the image of his Maker to reach its highest aspirations, to seek its own destiny, and to serve in the cause of freedom for its fellow man.”

While the credo monument never materialized, its message was spread widely in a massive get-out-the-vote campaign coordinated by the Freedoms Foundation and the Boy Scouts of America. Together, the two organizations put up a million posters in store windows and plastered another ninety thousand cards on trains and buses. On November 1, 1952, the Saturday before the election, they placed more than thirty million additional pieces of literature on doorknobs across the country. Shaped like the Liberty Bell, the door hangers featured the image of the credo on one side and a plea from earnest-looking Scouts to “Think when you Vote” on the other.

[Excerpt From: Kevin M. Kruse. “One Nation Under God.”]