1838 8R South Peru - Edge Motto

Here is the complete rim :

It reads : Dios proteges el estado
Which means : God protects the country

I found your coin suspect indeed, because of some details, of the patina, and of the rim which was damaged inconsistently to the two other sides ...
But I was not sure :)

The spanish came there with as mission to give the holly words to those peoples - converting them to catholicism. There were many missionary from various catholic groups, in Peru the Jesuits were very active. Some ancient believes from the old Inca world were mixed together with catholic believes, which sometime give interesting things. But the place was clearly catholic when it became independent, with the spanish descendent having taken over the whole ancient believes. The cathedral and religious places were often build on ancient inca religious places for that purpose. Those believes were even punished, and pride for this history is coming back recently (the Inti Raymi celebrated in Cuzco each year is a good example).

So yes, this moto is related to christianity, but that's also the case on US money (In god we trust)