I love that our nation’s anthems are included in our church’s hymn book.  This country was founded on a belief in God and the freedom to worship how you like and, of course, the freedom to not worship Him as well. There is no doubt that he inspired our founding fathers.  Here is an excerpt from America the Beautiful, which we sang today. Thank you, heroes!

Oh, beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!

And some more lines:

God shed his grace on thee . . .
God mend thine ev’ry flaw . . .
May God thy gold refine . . .
God shed his grace on thee . . .

You can listen to America the Beautiful here.

And from the seldom sung third verse of our National Anthem The Star-Spangled Banner

Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when cause it is just,
And this be our moto: “In God is our trust!”

Listen to the national anthem here.

On a sorta related note: I had heard that the new presidential dollar coins did not bear the inscription “In God we Trust.”  Some people were boycotting them.  According to urbanlegends.com there was a batch erroneously printed without the inscription (probably quite valuable) but that correctly minted coins do in fact bear the inscription around the outer edge of the coin.  It is after all our national motto and we are “One nation under God” like it or not.  I happen to like it.