I think so. There MUST be a seperation of church and state for the country to work properly. The pledge of allegiance contains the frase “under God”. I personally am an agnostic bordering on atheist. I feel insulted that the government is assuming that people won’t care. I know it’s a relatively small thing to get worked up about, but I still refuse to say the pledge of allegiance. That frase is only one of a few reasons why I don’t say it, but it is the leading cause.
Welcome to the Board, Eowyn the Mercotan. We had a pretty comprehensive debate on this topic a little while ago, which you can locate using the search function.
—I know it’s a relatively small thing to get worked up about, but I still refuse to say the pledge of allegiance.—
But, you don’t have to. The issue is: does the government, in simply asking its citizens to do so in its pre-emiment symbols of allegience and unity, create an intolerable dilemna?
I agree that it’s unbelievably rude and demeaning. I agree that it corrupts religion by dragging it into illict complicity wit this act. I agree that it shits all over the spirit of everything Madison believed the first amendment was all about. But the real question is: can the courts do anything about it in this instance?
The problem is, essentially, that the courts have generally held that if the ONLY thing wrong with a law is that it’s blatantly unconstitutional, then they won’t overrule it. The law has to have an unconstitutional effect felt in some harm done to someone (that would then have standing to bring suit), not just sit around BEING unconstitutional.
Consider if the pledge of allegience went “I pledge allegience, to the flag, and to the government’s right to search and seize property from my home without consent, warrant, or compensation.” Would that be unconstitutional? (That’s not exactly the same, because establishment is explicitly referenced in the first amendment, and that has more relevance to restricting simple pronouncements, as opposed to actual laws)
IANAL, but if I read the establishment clause, and knowing the history of state sponsored (financed) religion, I don’t see having the phrase “under God” in the pledge to be unconstitutional. No public funds are being used to “establish” a particular religion. I am a non-believer and I have no issue saying the pledge.
Having said that, I’d add:
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I’d preffer that the phrase were not in the pledge.
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I wish Congress had the guts to eliminate it
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I’m realistic enough to know that #2 will never happen in my lifetime.
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I’d like to see the Supremes deliberating on more weighty issues.
Precedent for bending the law doesn’t make necessarily something constitutional. Madison, who drafted the First Amendment, thought that chaplains in Congress and the military were both disallowed by it. He argued against reflexive tax exemptions for church owned businesses and lands.
And the precendent it sets is often used to justify further encroachments. For instance, many advocates of state led prayer point out that, if we can post “In God We Trust” in courtrooms, why can’t we lead people in, at least, very vague prayers about trusting God in classrooms. They have a point: no one in either case has to actively participate, and how can the government be banned from expressing theist beliefs in one venue and not in another?
A strict SOCAS advocate, as I am, would argue that the whole POINT of the 1st is that government was never supposed to get into these sorts of debates in the first place. It was supposed to leave religion alone to be the sole province of personal conscience (which is precisely what Washington argued to those religious leaders who wanted the constitution to include references to the guidance of God, religious oaths, and a commitment to public piety).
You don’t have to recite the pledge of allegiance…
In my high school, after the pledge, there was a mandatory “moment of silence”, which was initially intended for prayer purposes. This was completely out of line - if people want to pray, they can do it on their own time, not in the 20 seconds allocated in high school.
—This was completely out of line - if people want to pray, they can do it on their own time, not in the 20 seconds allocated in high school.—
Yes, this is another thing I just don’t get. Why do religious people see it as a win that the state appropriates a moment out of their day for them to be silent? Why not take that moment back, and use it for a moment more of any sort of prayer they want, from out loud to led by someone in a group? How is it a win for religious freedom when you are essentially agreeing to let the state put special restrictions on the time you wish to use to pray?
Just to toss a data point into the discussion, but IIRC, the State of California’s policy for public schools requires a period of time be set in the school day for “displays of patriotism.” I believe non-participation is not allowed, which is what prompted the original lawsuit.
Personally, I think the easy solution is to just replace the words “under God” with a two-second pause, and let that be the official pledge. Individual folks reciting it can say whatever they want in that space, and everyone’s happy.
It is establishing religion. Saying One Nation Under God is offensive to anyone who doesn’t believe in monotheism.
A lot of people say, “oh, it’s just a little phrase, why get worked up about it?”
If one nation, under God is not establishing religion because it’s just a little phrase… why would that be different from saying One Nation Under No God, or One Nation Under gods (plural), or One Nation Under Jesus, or One Nation Under Krishna? It’s still a religious phrase, no matter how you slice it.
—Saying One Nation Under God is offensive to anyone who doesn’t believe in monotheism.—
There’s nothing unconstitutional about being offensive.
First off, in the case in California that all this hoohah is founded on, the judges specifically declined to rule on the constitutionality of the currently enacted (with “under God”) Pledge of Allegiance.
Instead, what they did was to rule that a body of government could not compel or attempt to coerce children into reciting it, because the phrase in a compulsory or quasi-compulsory setting did constitute an “establishment of religion” in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
This was founded explicitly on two Supreme Court decisions, one regarding compulsory recitation of the Pledge prior to the 1954 addition of those two words, and one based on the use of an invocation prayer at a school commencement ceremony.
So the decision before the Court is whether to agree that the California court accurately applied their own precedents, or not, not on whether the Pledge itself is unconstitutional.
If you intended this as a debate on the constitutionality of the Pledge itself, Eowyn, I will apologize for the hijack. But the case that will presumably come before SCOTUS is not one in which that is a valid question – at least as presently decided. (Nothing would stop them from ruling on the constitutionality of the Pledge itself if they so choose – but there is a big difference between a Federal Statute adopting a given statement as a patriotic utterance, and a school board regulation creating a compulsion to recite it.
Maybe I’m picking this apart too much, but I remember when this issue first came up last year thinking the following: “One nation under God” is actually a dangerous phrase. What does the UNDER in “under God” mean, anyway? Does it meant that our gov’t recognizes God’s laws to be above the country’s laws? That would surely give license to some religious fanatics to completely ignore secular laws that contradict God’s laws (as they see them). Now, I’m not sure anyone give it that much thought, but it’s one more reason I’d like to see the phrase taken out. After all, the original pledge didn’t have it and it was ADDED in the 50s. Those were crazy times in many ways, and looking back we should be able to see that the addition was a mistake. Anyway, like I said in my first post, there’s too much popular support for the phrase to have any hope of having it eliminated.
Even if you take out the words “under God,” the pledge is still offensive. Why would I pledge allegiance to an inanimate jingoistic symbol like a flag? Now that the USA is an empire, not a republic, isn’t the pledge obsolete? Don’t all you Christian fascists know that the pledge of allegiance was written by a socialist, and that the words “under god” were added as a bulwark against communism? Does that mean that God is a capitalist? “With liberty and justice for all…who can afford it?” I thought liberty was a dirty word now.
I think we should scrap the whole pledge of allegiance and replace it with Jello Biafra’s version:
I pledge defiance to the flag of the united snakes of captivity.
to the republic for which it stands I dip it in kerosine and stick
it up the ass of you know who. one nation under god or else!
one nation under psychopathic pentagon gangsters whose idea
of democracy is concentration camps for the people who go and use the drugs that the government supplies themselves. One nation under wall street.
Unless it’s the Government officially endorsing a religious belief.
Roger: Thanks for your brilliantly reasoned post. You really added a lot to this debate.
I don’t believe the government schools should be requiring kids to pledge allegiance to the flag, especially since politicians wipe their asses with the flag everyday.