Hey astorian, thanks for pointing out that the First Amedment clearly prohibits a government establishment of presidential portraits. :rolleyes:
Spiritus and Polycarp: The Supreme Court has not, as far as I know, ever ruled on “IGWT.” The cite Jodi provided indicates the Court simply denied review of the Fifth Circuit case, and a denial of discretionary review has no value as precedent (although the appeals court case is still good law in the 5th Cir.). That said, I can’t imagine any way there would be five votes on the current Court for declaring IGWT on our money to be an illegal govenment establishment of religion.
The interesting thing is going to be seeing whether the Court has to rule on the IGWT motto in schools, since all these wacko legislatures are busy requiring it to be posted in classrooms, etc. I too would like to know what Jodi thinks about the motto in those circumstances. Personally, I think that the “it’s always been that way” principle that keeps IGWT on our cash doesn’t apply there, since the motto has no history at all in the schools. Not to mention that the obvious purpose of these new laws is to advance religion.
How does it advance religion? The only way I can see this argument being made is by asserting that any mention of God is a priori an advancement of religion, which frankly strikes me as absurd.
Do the contrary, the courts (plural) have held that it is not associated with any particular religion, or even religion in general, much less a specifically Christian religion. But since you feel this is “demonstrable,” plese demonstrate it.
“In the minds of many”? Again, the courts have held that the motto does not have this effect “in the minds of many.” Do you have any evidence that it does?
I would like to see a citation, please, where anyone has asserted that because IGWT is okay, therefore school prayer must be okay, too. Even if you could find such a citation (which I kind of doubt) it would not be persuasive, since the courts have specifically held that school prayer is not the sort of “ceremonial deism” reflected in IGWT and therefore is not to be considered in the same class.
I frankly don’t know. I think that placing the motto in a central location where it would be daily viewed by children might well raise problems that do not exist in the context of having it on currency and a few buildings) – namely that the assumption that it is “merely ceremonial” might run directly into the possibility that it might influence impressionable young people. I really don’t know how the Court would rule, but I do note that having IGWT in schools is obviously not the same as having it on currency or buildings.
POLYCARP –
I’m curious as to why you believe that merely disagreeing with your analysis means that judges are not exercising common sense? It is not as if the issue does not legitimately have two sides, and as if a legitimate argument in favor of the constitutionality of IGWT cannot be – and has not been – made. It can be and it has been – repeatedly, as explained below.
MINTY GREEN –
This is technically correct regarding what constitutes binding precedent, but nevertheless slightly misleading. By declining to hear a case, the U.S. Supreme Court is in effect making a decision from which certain assumptions may be made – namely, the assumption that it does not consider the question of be of such pressing constitutional importance as to merit its attention. That’s why we include “cert. denied” in citations to cases – because the mere fact that the Court refused to hear a case is itself a dispositive act that indicates that the Court’s unwillingness to entertain a given issue.
But it is important to note that this is not merely the determination of the Fifth Circuit, as if no other court has looked at it. Similar decisions have been made in the Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits as well. [und]See[/und] *Aronow v. United States, 432 F.2d 242 (9th Cir. 1970); Gaylor v. United States, 74 F.3d 214 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 517 U.S. 1211, 134 L. Ed. 2d 934, 116 S. Ct. 1830 (1996); and ACLU of Ohio v. Capital Square Review & Advisory Board, 6th Cir. (2000) (no citation to the Federal Reporter yet). (And you will note that the U.S. Supreme Court again denied cert. on the issue in the Gaylor case, in 1996.)
Interestingly, the ACLU-Ohio case goes beyond IGWT. It addresses whether the State motto “In God All Things Are Possible” is constitutional – and that, far from being a generic reference to God, is a direct quote from the New Testament. But that court still held that, regardless of the quote’s provenance, the quote itself was still general enough, and its purpose secular enough, to pass constitutional muster. The court further said:
That basically is my position. I do not advocate entangling religion and government, and I hope no one will attempt to construe my position as advocating that. But I do think that ours is a society wherein religion plays – and has always played – some small part in the ceremonial end of governance, in things like invocations and opening Congress and IGWT. I think that complaining that such things violate the constitution is a difficult argument to make, given that the constitution does not ban any governmental mention of God whatsoever and such cannot be considered to have been the framers’ intent. Far from thinking that this position defies common sense, I think it is the other position that is the more difficult one to defend, seeing as how it devolves to proving that the mere mention of God, no matter how cursory or innocuous, constitutes the establishment or advancement of religion.
And I can tell you that we are never in a million years going to agree on this. We’ve done this to death in prior threads, and agreement has never been reached. But NO COURT has EVER found IGWT to be unconstitutional, and I consider that to be pretty persuasive, so far as the legality of the matter is concerned.
I’d have a lot easier time digesting the legal and constitutional points of your well-thought-out arguments, Jodi, if you didn’t keep insisting that “God” has nothing to do with “religion.”
So, you’d have no objection if U.S. currency read “There is No God” or “Hail Satan?” What with God and religion being two entirely separate concepts?
See, now I’m in a quandry. How can I in good conscience feel gratified and pleased that you consider my arguments to be “well-thought-out” (which I do appreciate), when in the same breath you characterize those arguments as “insisting that ‘God’ has nothing to do with ‘religion’” – something I certainly never said?
I do not say that "God has nothing to do with “religion.” But the Constitution does not say “the government shall never ever in a million years do anything even remotely touching upon religion or mentioning God.” It says the government shall not advance religion, either specifically or in general. Again, it comes down to the question of how a ritualized or ceremonial mention of God (and not any particular God, just “God” generaly) can be construed as “advancing” religion. Obviously God has much to do wtih religion – or most religions at least, but that does not mean that mentioning God automatically equals advancing religion.
God and religion ARE to entirely separate concepts, as surely you must agree. That does not mean that they are not related, just like the fact that bread is made of flour doesn’t serve to make bread into flour. But if there was a historical or ceremonial basis for such mottos – or any motto – then, no, I wouldn’t object. Hope this doesn’t surprise you, but I firmly believe that the same constitutional analysis that applies to things I approve of or like must also apply to things I disapprove of or despise. I have never advocated disparate standards of analyzing the issue.
Yeah, but the so-called “historical use” of In God We Trust that the Circuit court was referring to is absolutely ludicrous.
The Circuit court’s argument was that IGWT was “historical” because the phrase “In God is our trust” appears in the fourth verse of “The Star Spangled Banner”. The fourth verse! A verse hardly anybody even knows, much less sings, in a song that didn’t become our National Anhem until 1931!
If that’s a “historical use” that overrides the Establishment Clause, I’ll be Pat Robertson’s uncle.
“The only way I can see this argument being made is by asserting that any mention of God is a priori an advancement of religion, which frankly strikes me as absurd.”
and
“I think it is the other position that is the more difficult one to defend, seeing as how it devolves to proving that the mere mention of God, no matter how cursory or innocuous, constitutes the establishment or advancement of religion.”
—Maybe I am misinterpreting what you said, but to me, the mention of God—though it may not constitute ESTABLISHING a religion, sure as hell ADVANCES it. No God; no religion. No religion; no God.
Jodi, as I’m sure you are aware, there are all kinds of reasons why the Supreme Court could decide to deny certiorari. That “it does not consider the question of be of such pressing constitutional importance as to merit its attention” is certainly one of them. So are:[ul][li] “God, this brief sucks.”[] “I don’t like taking any constitutional cases unless there’s a circuit split.”[] “Boy, these are ugly facts to work with when I really want this to go the other way.”[] “There’s no way I’m voting to grant review when I know those other justices would just vote to enshrine a principle that I disagree with. Let it ride till the court gets some real judges up here.”[] “Man, I hate the Sherman Act. Economics makes my head hurt.”[] “Oops! The law clerks in the cert pool totally missed that one until it was too late!”[] “No way am I writing another opinion this term!” “Who ****ing Cares?”[/ul]Trying to determine why the Supreme Court denies cert is a fool’s errand, and saying that the denial of review in this case was due to not finding an important enough constitutional problem could be dead wrong.[/li]
BTW, I think there’s problem with the logic in your response to Eve. Although it’s true that you can have religion without God (or god, or Zeus, etc.), you darned sure cannot have God without religion. Hence, I think there’s much to be said for the logical (not legal) argument that God = religion.
So if you can’t have one without the other, one must necessarily advance the other? You can’t make cake without eggs; does mentioning eggs advance the idea of cake? How? I am not being disingenuous. I do not see why the mere fact that religion is almost always inexorably tied to God means that any mention of God constitutes an advancement of religion. People can believe in the idea of some god or higher power and absolutely reject the idea of any religion. People may embrace the idea of religion without believing in God. They are not the same and the fact that they are very often tied together does not mean that one is the equal of the other. To me it’s like trying to argue that “Thank God It’s Friday” advanced religion.
TRACER –
Actually, the Sixth Circuit in ACLU-Ohio didn’t address the historical issue much, and certanly never mentioned the Star Spangled Banner. The historical “angle,” however, is not that actual phrase appears in the fourth verse of some song, but that phrases generally invoking God have been used by the government throughout our history, and that IGWT in particular has been on coins since the 1860s.
“I do not see why the mere fact that religion is almost always inexorably tied to God means that any mention of God constitutes an advancement of religion.”
—OK, we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this, then, because the above statement makes absoultely no sense to me at all.
I think only a theist could possibly look at this statemnt as not advancing religion. It rather clearly states that we (the people of the United States) not only believe in the existence of God but find God to be trustworthy and actively extend that trust.
Like I said, it ain’t keeping me up nights, but I imagine that finding nine atheists who would agree that it did not advance religion would be about as hard as finding nine blacks who thought that seperate-but-equal was not a descriminatory policy.
I do agree that the wording is general enough to avoid advancement of a specific religion, but unless you judge the phrase to be devoid ov the semantic content of its parts I fail to see any reasonable argument that it does not advance religion in general. No matter what the various circuit courts have ruled. Logic and law are distant cousins.
Ah, there’s where we disagree. Now I can see how you could believe in a god a higher power and reject the idea of any organized religion. But in my view, it is a spiritual belief in a god or other higher power that defines religion. Even if you’re the only one in it, you got religion the moment you take that step.
In fact, Webster’s agrees with me: “the service and worship of God or the supernatural . . . a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices”
My point. I have not said that this is the only reason that they might deny cert, just that your statement that “a denial of discretionary review has no value as precedent” is overbroad. The Supreme Court has now twice denied cert on this issue; many will therefore assume that it is not an issue the Court intends to address under the law and facts as presented to it thus far, and that trying to get them to address it without different facts (like, say, an attempt to place the motto in schools) is the thing that is a fool’s errand. I think that’s a safe assumption to make. I doubt very much that they have twice declined to hear the same issue just because the briefs sucked. You may disagree.
Oh, sure you can. My brother believes in a higher power – the idea of God, if you will. But he despises organized religion. He does not practice any religion, organized or not. He doesn’t attend church; he doesn’t pray; he doesn’t do anything that might be construed as taking part in a religion. And he is smart enough to know that he is not taking part in a religion by spending a five-dollar bill.
I don’t, because I don’t agree that “you darned sure cannot have God without religion.” Moreover, the constitutional argument is not whether God = religion, but whether the enactment ADVANCES religion – which, again, I don’t think it does. So even if I were to grant that God = religion (which I am not) I still don’t see how IGWT advances religion, any more than “Thank God It’s Friday!” does.
Good to see that I anticipated the “organized” religion proviso you mentioned with regard to your brother. As I said above, I believe that all it takes for there to be religion is a belief in god or some other higher power. By promoting belief in something supernatural, the government’s elevation of IGWT to official status does indeed promote “religion” over non-religion. Simply being neutral among the various organized religions (which, incidentally, IGWT does not do, as it excludes all kinds of non-Judeo-Christian belief systems) does not mean that a particular practice does not establish religion, at least in the broad sense of the word.
And incidentally, I do think that saying “Thank God it’s Friday” promotes religion, if only in a trivial way. Personally, I think the argument that IGWT is so trivial as to not be worth our time is a whole lot more compelling than arguing that it ain’t religious.
I’d be happy to take a crack at it. Surely what is “demonstrable” to me, in principle hostile to any entanglements between government and religion, may not be demonstrable to those who are more sympathetic to such entanglements.
I believe that “IGTW” is a direct quotation of the Nicene (or Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan) Creed, adopted in AD 325, and still crucial to the Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, Episcopal, and Eastern Orthodox Churches (with one important exception – the so-called filioque controversy.)
The following is the ELLC translation from the Greek:
Only the first line is relevant. I will also supply the first lines in the Greek and Latin versions, and translate them myself with a note or two.
and…
Both the Greek and the Latin say exactly, “I/We believe in one God, the All-Powerful Father.”
However, both the Greek and the Latin verbs, pisteuo and credo, respectively, at the same time mean to trust.
The Liddel & Scott entry for pisteuo can be found here. The Lewis & Short entry for credo can be found here.
I am not merely suggesting that to trust is an alternate meaning for the above two verbs, or even that they have the potential to be translated that way. The translators of the Creed apparently found it more convenient to render the sense of the two verbs as believe. This does not detract from their actual meanings, which encompass both belief and trust.
So I would argue that IGWT is a direct quotation, with a minor word order change, of one of the oldest and most important statements of Christian faith still used in the Latin and Greek Ordinary Masses today.
Who knows, perhaps *credo in unum deum
[/quote]
was changed to in unum deum credo to parallel e pluribus unum. Whatever the reason, to my mind, the quotation is unmistakable. The fact that many people may nor may not recognize it as such is irrelevant.
You see a “proviso” where none was intended. My brother believes in God; he does not follow any religion, organized or not. I am not saying "He is not religious (with the proviso we limit the discussion to organized religion); I am saying he is not religious, period.
This is your definition of religion; it is not mine. Nor, apparently, is it the courts’. And it is irrelevant to the question of whether IGWT advances religion, regardless of which definition we use.
[quote]
By promoting belief in something supernatural, the government’s elevation of IGWT to official status does indeed promote “religion” over non-religion.
[/quotes]
This assumes, of course, that the government “promotes” the belief and, since “promote” is merely another word for “advance,” it merely begs the argument – which is whether or not the government advances relgion. You assume that it does, and that assumption is set forth in the above quote, but you have not convinced me that it does.
And there you have it. If you see the promotion of religion in “Thank God It’s Friday!” then we are at an impasse that is not going to be overcome. And I am not surprised; as I have said, we’ve done this particular debate before and that is precisely where we end up – with people asserting that any mention of God is the promotion of religion, period. As must be clear by now, I disagree with this.
Me too; but just because the former argument is more persuasive, practically speaking, that doesn’t mean the latter argument cannot be made.
MAEGLIN – You are saying that IGWT is associated with Christianity if you go to the Nicene Creed, translate it back to the Greek, re-translate it to English using slightly different words, and assuming one realizes that “In God We Trust” is the functional equivalent of “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty”? I do not dispute your history (how could I?) but the fact is that IGWT is so far removed from the Nicene Creed that virtually no one would recognize the connection. My point is that there is nothing in the words themselves – “In God We Trust” – that are particularly Christian – or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist – and therefore it is not “demonstrable” that it is understood to be associated with any one particular religion. Part of the reason it is held not to advance religion is because it is not a sentiment limited to one religion alone.
I only had to refer to the original Greek and Latin because if I rattled off, “oh yeah, it’s just like the Nicene Creed, duh,” no one would have believed me.
I am little shocked at your second contention. The fact that no one recognizes it today does not mitigate the Creed’s promotion of religion. Does the fact that you do not see subliminal messages somehow ameliorate their immorality or harm?
No, the NC is not a subliminal message, and neither is IGWT. But IGWT is a quotation, and it does mean something.
Reverence for Abraham, Isaac, and Jaacob is not a sentiment limited to one religion alone. Yet surely you believe that any motto which included the patriarchs would somehow be advancing religion, no?
Okay, let me try again: “I do not see why the mere fact that most cakes are made with eggs means that any mention of egges constitutes an advancement of cake.” I am not being sarcastic when I ask you: Which part of this is not making sense?
MINTY –
I accept that this is your definition of religion – that a mere belief in a higher power constitutes a religion. I disagree.
Actually, Webster’s does not appear to agree with you. This defintion requires “the service and worship of God” – more than mere belief – or a “personal set or system” – set or system both implying the plural – “or attitudes, beliefs, and practices” – all in the plural. In other words, mere belief in the existence of God alone is not enough to constitute a religion.
I would also add that I did not miss your “error” in your double post – that you changed the hypothetical justice’s comment from “God, this brief sucks” to “Damn, this brief sucks.” So let me ask you: Would the phrase “God, this brief sucks,” uttered by a U.S. Supreme Court justice in the course and scope of his employment, and in a federal building, constitute the advancement of religion? Since “Thank God It’s Friday!” does, I assume that would as well.
SPIRITUS –
If you fail to see the argument, then I suggest you read the cases, which you at least should have access to; it’s set right out there, repeatedly.
I certainly would have believed you, knowing your scholarship, but I assume you would not disagree with my point, which is that this is a connection most Americans are unlikely to make.
I assume you mean IGWT; certainly most people who have cause to recite the Nicene Creed are fully aware of its self-evident promotion of religion. But regarding IGWT – yes, the fact that no one recognizes its connection with Judeo-Christianity does indicate it does not necessarily promote religion – just like the fact that most people do not know that “goodbye” originated as “God be with you” means that “goodbye” does not necessarily promote religion. In other words, the origin of the phrase does automatically mean it promotes or advances relgion. I’d don’t think this is a particularly shocking argument.
You go on the correctly note that nothing is subliminal about IGWT, so I assume I need not address this.
No. I do not believe that the mere mention of a religious figure constitutes the promotion of religion. Certainly I don’t think so when the mention is a general one to God. I do not think the sentiment “may you multiply like Abraham” constitutes advancing any particular religion, or even religion in general, and I wouldn’t care if that phrase was on our currency, either.
You got a weird definition of “religion,” Jodi. Anyone else want to weigh in on whether belief in a supernatural power, by itself, is all that it takes to qualify as religion? I’d like to think I’m not just pulling this out of thin air.
It’s totally relevant, IMHO. Because if I’m right that “establishment of religion” covers all belief in a supernatural higher power (and the courts have sometimes said exactly that), then invoking “God” on our money is, by definition, religious. If IGWT is religious, then it’s awful hard to argue that the government is not promoting/advancing/endorsing religion by taking it as an official motto.
Yeah, but I’m not sure I could convince you much of anything short of a state church or mandatory participation in prayer at public schools was an establishment problem. As for your point about begging the question, one of the various tests (Justice O’Connor’s theory, IIRC) for an establishment problem is whether the government action “endorses” religion. When the government has adopted IGWT as an official motto, how can anyone claim that it has not endorsed the contents of that motto?