"God Bless America": Do We Actually Mean It?
You hear it from senators and school board members, from country singers and late-night hosts trying to seem relatable, from your neighbor's bumper sticker and your grandmother's needlepoint pillow. "God bless America" may be the one phrase left in this country that crosses every line we've drawn — political, religious, economic, regional. Progressives say it. Conservatives say it. Atheists at ballgames say it without blinking. It has become less a prayer than a punctuation mark, the verbal equivalent of standing for the anthem: something you do because it's what closes things out. Which raises an honest question, and it's not a rhetorical one. If God actually did what that phrase asks — if He actually turned and blessed this nation — what would we be signing up for ? And once we know the answer, do the people saying those three words still want it? A Phrase Everyone Uses, and Nobody Quite Owns The phrase has a longer and stranger history than most p...