Reply #34: I agree with you, but think Purity of Essence has a good point

[gottaB]

It's vitally important for liberals to lay out an agenda and a set of arguments in favor of secularism. Opposition to "In God we trust" should be included in that agenda, but way down the list. Liberals should be willing to consider a heavily qualified opposition (e.g., acknowledging the divisiveness of the issue) for the sake of advancing the agenda as a whole, which will require building alliances between disparate communities of belief, including Christian and other monotheistic activists. Under present circumstances, anything that fosters solidarity with a wide variety of religious minorities should be placed at the top of the agenda. Items which create tensions should be downplayed or placed on the back burner.

The goal, as I see it, should not be to insist on being right or to prove the rightness of this point, but rather to create the kind of political environment in which the rightness of this point becomes obvious to a large segment of the electorate, not necessarily an outright majority, but a segment large enough to neutralize resistance from the Christian conservatives. We are not at the present moment anywhere near reaching that goal.