Myth:
Acknowledging the existence of God and the importance of belief in God in American history is not a religion. Therefore, government acknowledgment of God is not an unconstitutional establishment of religion.
Response:
No government body or institution is permitted to promote, endorse, or support any religion. Conservative Christians who want government to do exactly that have trouble arguing directly in favor of it, so they seek ways to argue that such actions are something different entirely. For example, positive government references to Christian beliefs and practices are merely ways to "acknowledge" the importance of belief in God in American history, not an endorsement of that belief. Right?
Implicit Endorsement
One problem is that you can't take a current, active, popular belief and speak well of its history without at least implicitly endorsing it in the present. Indeed, that's arguably the point — after all, none of those seeking an "acknowledgement" of the role of Christianity in American history ever seems to care about a similar acknowledgment of the role of ancient Greek and Roman politics, culture, or religion. Current government could acknowledge their role without implicitly endorsing them today.
Not every acknowledgement is also an endorsement, even when it comes to current events. Governments can issue "acknowledgements" as annual proclamations, for example, with little concern over being seeing as endorsing much. A problem develops, however, when government is regularly "acknowledging" the same thing over and over and over — which is precisely what conservative Christians arrange to have happen. They seek to have their religion "acknowledged" all the time and the inevitable effect is for their religion to be perceived as being endorsed.
Acknowledging God
More important is the question of whether the government should indeed acknowledge God at all. They key problem is that it's not possible to "acknowledge God" in any general sense; instead, some specific conception of some specific god must be acknowledged.
Should the state promote the idea of praying to Allah while facing Mecca? Or perhaps praying to Kali? I know, maybe the American government acknowledge the existence of Zeus and endorse sacrifices made to Apollo? Even if we ignore such extreme cases and imagine the government "acknowledging" more specific Protestant or Catholic ideas of "God," it's still inappropriate.
Instead of simply acknowledging God, why not acknowledge Jesus? After all, people who say that the government should acknowledge God do so in the context of arguing that America is a Christian Nation with a Christian Heritage, and what could be a better way to “acknowledge” this than to “acknowledge” Jesus?
I’m sure you can see the problem here. Any time the government tries to acknowledge a god, it is taking sides in religious debates. But the government doesn’t have the authority to take sides in religious debates — and that means that it doesn’t have the authority to single out any particular god for acknowledgment, any particular god for prayers, or any particular god for endorsement.
Christians who recognize that the government shouldn't acknowledge Jesus shouldn’t be arguing that it should acknowledge "God" instead, since the arguments for both are nearly identical. Christians who do want the government to acknowledge Jesus would be effectively admitting that they prefer a theocracy over a free democracy — a nation where one religion is privileged by the state while other religions are treated as inferior.
