She wants a higher power at City Hall
Five years ago, the Bakersfield City Council member lobbied hard to get "In God We Trust" displayed over the city's seal in the council's meeting room.
In the years since, she has persuaded 25 other California cities, from Kerman to Compton, to do the same, sometimes over strenuous protests from residents who see the mounting of the motto as a backdoor effort to foist a religious agenda on local governments.
At 67, Sullivan is undaunted by people she describes as "wanting to remove God from everything." Through her nonprofit, In God We Trust -- America, she aims to have the phrase prominently featured in all 478 of California's city halls and every other city hall in America.
That's just the beginning.
Not long ago, Sullivan suggested to an evangelical pastor named Chad Vegas that posters saying "In God We Trust" be placed in every classroom in the sprawling Kern County High School District. Vegas, a member of the district board, agreed -- opening a contentious debate that is to be settled by the board Nov. 5.
Board President Bob Hampton, a former teacher in the district, said he'll vote against the posters because they reflect a "spiritual agenda."
"The spiritual side of students belongs at home and at church, not in the educational system," said Hampton, who now runs a garbage disposal company.
But some Bakersfield residents see no harm in a tribute to God on classroom walls.
"Most kids in Bakersfield already have that seed planted, but for the others, it couldn't hurt," said 23-year-old Malia Casarez as she headed toward her shift at a haircutting salon. "My daughter is just 9 months old and I'm already scared of sending her to school, with all the things you hear about."
In a family room dotted with figurines of angels and flag-draped eagles, the diminutive, genteel Sullivan says she's always surprised by the hostility over a phrase that Congress chose as the nation's motto in 1956. To arguments that it was a product of the McCarthy-era "Red scare," she replies that it was a comfort for a troubled country then and should, more than ever, be one now.
When Sullivan learned that the new $1 presidential coin has "In God We Trust" inscribed on its rim instead of its face, she was shocked and fired off an op-ed piece to the Bakersfield Californian.
"That just doesn't reflect the will of the people," she said in an interview. "I'm amazed that this could have happened, especially on the president's watch."
Though her nonprofit's board includes well-known Republican political consultant Mark Abernathy and local Christian broadcaster Dan Schaffer, Sullivan casts her effort as neither political nor religious: " 'In God We Trust' is the perfect expression of what it takes to be a good American," she says, "because from my perspective as a believer, patriotism means love of God and love of country."
Vegas agrees completely. The 34-year-old minister said the classroom posters would "send a huge message to students: We'd tell them the schools in this district are not afraid of the word 'God' or the concept of God, and that they don't have to be either."
Shortly after he became a board member last year, Vegas succeeded in renaming the district's winter and spring breaks as Christmas recess and Easter recess. Hampton cast the only dissenting vote.
Vegas said he has received overwhelmingly positive reaction to his current proposal. In a radio interview, he described opponents, who include a couple of fellow board members and the local newspaper's editorial board, as "a group of liberal secular atheists who hate God, who are not patriotic."
He has since backed away from that description, but contends that the newspaper, which ran an editorial headlined "In Chad We Doubt," and other elements of Bakersfield's "aristocracy" do not understand the area's conservatism.
"A lot of people move here because it's a more conservative, family-oriented, faith-oriented place, and the aristocracy doesn't get it," he said.
If Vegas' proposal passes, Sullivan's organization will buy the posters from the American Family Assn., an influential conservative group that offers a step-by-step online guide to "getting the National Motto of the United States of America in local public school classrooms."
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