“Under God” Overruled
By Callimachus | Related entries in General Politics, In The News, Law, ReligionGet ready for the rhetorical fireworks.
Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional, a federal court judge ruled today, saying that the pledge’s reference to “under God� violated school children’s right to be “free from a coercive requirement to affirm God.�
[There are many versions of this online; I cite this particular article because it's written by my good friend, former co-worker, and forever drinking buddy Suzanne Herel.]
Students aren’t required to recite the Pledge, of course. Years ago, religious groups like the Mennonites and the Jehovah’s Witnesses fought for the right to have their children opt out. They won it, thanks to courageous judges who, during the dark days of World War II, ruled that the freedoms we cherish were more important than patriotic goose-stepping.
When the state-employee teacher leads the whole class in a patriotic prayer, that’s turning a classroom into a pulpit, just like any other official school prayer. Whether there is a god or no god, whether there is one god or many, is not what a public classroom teacher is paid to teach.
The “under God” often is portrayed as a harmless social convention with minimal religious content (the government’s official position). And at the same time, paradoxically, it is defended as a vital part of the nation’s identity and, as my Congressman has put it, a “fundamental recognition that there is a superior power at work in the world.”
Appeals have been made to the alleged piety of the Founding Fathers, who now are, according to Sen. Kit Bond, “spinning in their graves.” (Note to historians: evidently, Eisenhower was a Founding Father.) That’s absurd, but since liberals seemingly have conceded the whole of American history to conservatives, it goes answered.
The original Pledge is the work of Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister. A Baptist then was not always something Jerry Falwell would invite to dinner. Bellamy was a “Christian Socialist.” He was known to leave a church if he found racism there. He was chased out of his own Boston church for his socialist sermons, and he ended up working for a family magazine, which is where the pledge first was published in 1892.
His pledge embodies the ideas of his cousin Edward Bellamy, who wrote the socialist utopian novel “Looking Backward” (1888). The Bellamys and many like them sought a government-run planned economy, with middle-class values and political, social, and economic equality.
The original pledge is this: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Bellamy longed to work in “equality” somewhere, but even a utopian was sensible enough to know that the guardians of the schoolchildren would never allow them to speak a word fraught with disturbing questions about blacks and women.
“No, that would be too fanciful,” Bellamy wrote, “too many thousands of years off in realization. But we as a nation do stand square on the doctrine of liberty and justice for all.”
Like any national symbol, the Pledge has been pulled out of shape by a tug of values. In 1923 and 1924, the National Flag Conference, under the leadership of the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution, changed the Pledge’s words “my Flag,” to “the Flag of the United States of America.” Bellamy objected, but he was ignored.
In 1954, Congress, after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, added the words “under God.” It was the height of the Cold War, a struggle seen by many conservative religious groups as fundamentally between God’s own America and the officially godless Soviet Union.
With two words, they turned a patriotic oath into a public prayer. Bellamy was dead. But it’s not hard to guess what he would have thought about it.
Some anti-abortion types recite their own version of the Pledge, closing with: “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, born and unborn.”
A liberal alternative has also been proposed. It gets back to Bellamy’s original and runs something like: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with equality, liberty and justice for all.”
[Oh, those hidebound liberals, always trying to turn back the clock to the hoary past.]
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 14th, 2005 and is filed under General Politics, In The News, Law, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 14th, 2005 at 8:18 pm
Very well written post, Callimachus. You’re seriously bucking the established trend by actually putting the issue into context. Donklephant indeed. ;-)
My personal view is that we should go back to the original. Or maybe a hybrid which just takes out the “under God” part. Bellamy may have been a Baptist minister. But, it seems self-evident from the original that he intended for the pledge to be secular.
September 14th, 2005 at 9:17 pm
I thought even conservatives had abandoned the “G” word lately. Shouldn’t we change it to, “One nation, under an Intelligent Designer”? Or maybe, “One nation, under the Flying Spaghetti Monster?”
On a more serious note, the issue most people focus on with this is the “under God” aspect, but should their be a “coercive requirement” to affirm allegiance to the State? Patriotism is fine and all, but is it something that should be forced onto children?
Call me a cynic, but the image of a mass of children chanting in unison a pledge that they probably don’t understand the meaning of seems a little Orwellian. Not that it is particularly harmful or oppressive. It just seems like something you would associate more with the Soviet Union than the U.S.
September 14th, 2005 at 9:42 pm
Well done, Callimachus.
I oppose the Pledge not just because of “Under God” but because it is, as you say, a “patriotic prayer” and amounts to, in my opinion, indoctrination. Reciting the pledge may not be “required” but I would argue that kids feel compelled to do so not the least by teachers and administrators attitudes.
I am most troubled that it starts in Kindergarden when kids don’t hardly know what it means yet (they’ve got more important things to think about — try regaling a five year old with your thoughts on the meaning of the Pledge and see what I mean.) By the time they reach the age where they start thinking about what it means and considering how they feel about saying it, they have already recited it close to 1500 times, and the words have already carved their channel in the person’s psyche.
It’s not quite 62,000 repetitions but I am reminded of Huxley’s Brave New World.
“…not what a public classroom teacher is paid to teach” indeed.
September 14th, 2005 at 10:14 pm
We teach children reading by rote.
we teach children mathematics by rote.
why would we not teach them patriotism by rote?
I am saddend by this verdict, as it seems so clearly wrong-headed. However, I am more saddened by the triumphalist statements made be people who are opposed to the idea of a pledge of allegiance. It’s a tremendously valuable tool, and it’s better to use tools than to discard them.
Montag, the pledge is hardly Huxleyan in nature: what axioms are inherent in the pledge?
that this is one nation
that this one nation is subordinate to a Supreme Being
that the nation is not to be divided
and that all citizens should receive justice and liberty.
1 & 3 aren’t arguable. #2 is only arguable by those who belive that there is no Supreme Being (’cause if you believe in one, clearly said Being is above a mere nation), and #4 expresses what I consider to be a fine hope and promise.
September 14th, 2005 at 10:52 pm
Reading and Math are taught using many different strategies. Rote memorization plays a much smaller part now than it once did. And rightly so. Education should focus on understanding rather than on memorizing.
That the nation is “indivisible” can absolutely be argued. Why else all the talk in the press after the last election about how ‘divided’ we are? And the pledge doesn’t put forth the notion that “all citizens should receive justice and liberty”; it says there is liberty and justice for all. Again, an arguable point.
An indivisible nation with liberty and justice for all is a fantastic ideal that I value. I’d just rather not have my kids brainwashed into complacency that this ideal already exists. I want them to think critically about things, strive for understanding and apply that understanding toward reaching that ideal.
September 14th, 2005 at 11:02 pm
Actually, “indivisible” was a key word in the original pledge. Remember, in 1892, there were still a great many Civil War veterans active in the land. The word is in there as a direct refutation of the actions of the Southern states in 1861. Yet it feels like a fossil today. Nobody argues for secession anymore.
September 15th, 2005 at 12:41 am
Montag wrote:
Bunk. How are you going to understand anything if you have to start over from first principles every single time? I used to tutor, and later teach, mathematics at the college level. The students who hadn’t bothered to memorize the basics from earlier classes were always behind. Nothing was more aggravating than having to reteach algebra or trig to calculus students because they hadn’t bothered to memorize the earlier material. (Those that hadn’t memorized the relevant material usually had never really understood it, either.) Memorize the formulae for conic sections, people, and the various translation rules for algebraic equations before taking calculus!
If memorization and rote work were good enough for Gauss, it should be good enough for anyone else.
September 15th, 2005 at 5:41 am
Icepick, I completely agree. As a teaching strategy, first you do, then you understand. This is quite well known among language teachers, among others.
I’ve taught children and adults, and in my experience most students learn better after doing some examples, and then talking about why those examples worked, and what it showed.
September 15th, 2005 at 4:47 pm
The Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. What’s next, declaring the Declaration of Independence un-constitutional because it refers to God?
September 15th, 2005 at 6:53 pm
But how can you ask a small child to seriously “pledge” before his or her mind has grown mature enough to understand the meaning of commitment? Many religions don’t allow children to join until they reach an age of understanding, when they can make a deliberate conscious decision to commit themselves to the faith. Doesn’t a pledge of national allegiance beg for the same level of maturity?
September 15th, 2005 at 6:58 pm
KnarfO, the relevant text is Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ….
The “of” vs. “from” dichotomy, while popular, is false. The reality is much subtler. It doesn’t fit on bumper stickers.
As for the Declaration, it is not law of the land anywhere, so it has no constitutionality.
September 18th, 2005 at 9:47 pm
[...] On Donklephant: A Prairie Home Prosecution, “Under God� Overruled, Foreign Aid, Help Wanted and Human Nature Rears Its Natural Head [...]
December 8th, 2006 at 11:39 am
well i think that the under god clause in the pledge of alligiance should not be removed cause it wouldnt sound right! And that who ever didnt liked that saying should leave this state and country!!!! :}thats all i want to say!
December 8th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Jehovah’s Witnesses and the flag salute.
Kids suffer because of arbitrary rules by Jehovah’s Witnesses leaders,senile old men squatting in their insulated ivory tower.
I was born into the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1957.I was the good little JW boy who got beaten up in the school yard for not saluting the flag and remaining seated for the Star Spangled Banner as demanded by my Jehovah’s Witnesses leaders.
This was the ‘better dead than red’ era of the 1960’s, I suffered much,only to learn that the Watchtower corporation is just another made up man-made club.
I now proudly fly the Flag at my home.
—
Danny Haszard
December 8th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
I totally agree with mariana. You sick, mind-less, fools! How can you agree with taking out the under God clause? I understand that this country is a melting pot and that you should respect other people’s religion and ideals, but that does not give them the right to change what this country stands for. This country was founded by men who believed in God and it to stay that way.
If you have problems in your country, you can come to the United States, but you cannot change the United States to be like your old country.
Muslims, Jews, and Christians all believe in God and should stand up against this god-less tyranny. You god-less heathens who try to change the pledge or any other Godly thing in this country should leave. The country will not change its ways for you. You are not important enough. So if you dont like it, leave and dont come back!
December 9th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
The whole point of the first Amendment and of leaving “God” our of the Constitution is that the Founders created a secular form of government in full conscious spite of their personal religious feelings.
The arguments in your article displayed fundamental ignorance about the history and governmental principles of our country: a nation intended as the pre-eminent pluralistic (i.e., secular) nation in the world, the most liberal of any previously known, a democratic constitutional republic dedicated to civil liberties with the specific mandate to protect and promote minority belief.
Historically, we were founded, not as a Judeo-Christian nation, but as a pluralistic one, which we are increasingly so. We were carefully created to be nation where diverse beliefs can flourish. To what benefit? Well, because of that, America is the most religiously diverse country in the world – with over 3,000 registered religions (which doesn’t even count the varieties of secular philosophies). The difference, you see, between the US and other countries where there are state religions (or even widespread religions) is that our country was founded in opposition to the idea that tradition rules the day, or that the majority is entitled to impose their beliefs on others, or that minority views may be steamrollered by the popular opinion of the day.
James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, inserted the religious clause of the First Amendment as a response to the attempt of what he saw in his State of Virginia. By the time of the Revolution, the Anglican Church, formerly the established church of Virginia, had to share space with Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and other smaller sects. It was in the interest of each group to have religious liberty for their own empowerment, especially that there be no religious tests for public office.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” When Congress does exactly that, as it did in 1954 with the sectarian bill that added “under God” to the Pledge and the national motto to money, it is nothing more than strict interpretation of the Constitution that says the courts must then declare it void. That is their job description. Nothing activist about it. No personal belief involved. On the contrary, if Congress paid more attention to the Constitution (as should the people who elect the members), judges wouldn’t have the nearly workload in rulings over unconstitutional laws and practices.
It troubles me that, for many Americans, like yourself, their religions seem to be more important than their patriotism. This, even though it is the Constitution which, in protecting religions from government intrusion in the first place, continues to enable the practice of all faiths. There should be no question in any American’s mind which must come first.
Another problem is how a loud minority of Americans believe that the majority is entitled to ride rough shod over the rights of the minority shows the failure of our educational system to teach constitutional government and to teach the history of civil rights in this country. The Founders Fathers considerable experience with religion and government previous to 1787 led them to mistrust and to separate the two. At least, to the extent that you cannot expose children in public school to a declaration of faith (using the Pledge as a bully pulpit for religion), or promote any theological concept (there is a God that our nation is under) over any others on public property.
The only error that failed and tyrannical governments have had in common is not religion or atheism – for surely over 1,000 years of brutal and undemocratic theocracies and dictatorships, throughout the world, today and in the past, stand testament to that – rather it is that these governments have not been Republics dedicated to guard and protect the personal liberties of it’s citizens against the dogma of either the state or of a repressive majority (what the Founders called “mob-ocracy”). That any American can claim to be a friend of religion and not loudly rally behind every every effort to defend the liberal, pluralistic principles upon which our republic was founded is unimaginable.
http://members.cox.net/patriotismforall/