On 19 July 2006, by a vote of 260-167, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2389, the Pledge Protection Act. This legislation supposedly intends to protect the right of Americans to recite the “under God” version of the Pledge of Allegiance. The bill has now gone to the Senate for consideration. However, the idea that it would protect anyone’s civil rights is simply political manure. The right to recite the “under God” version of the pledge has never been in question. People can recite it twenty or a hundred times a day if they so desire. They can recite it in their church basements, in their personal homes, and elsewhere outside the public trust. That is, just as long as they don't entangle others in the practice against their will. Rather, the question is the constitutional admissibility of government endorsement of the pledge and its mandated daily use in our public schools as a class ritual. These issues have been under dispute ever since the original pledge was altered in 1954 to include the “under God” phraseology. Notably, however, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has never officially ruled on the matter.
If passed by the Senate, the act would strip the Federal courts including SCOTUS of any and all jurisdiction over cases involving the pledge, pro or con. According to republican representative Todd Akin and the bill's other congressional supporters, the underlying intent is to stop “activist” judges from ruling against public school use of the pledge. Their paranoia stems from a 2002 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the pledge was indeed an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. The ruling was appealed to SCOTUS, which threw it out on a technicality related to litigant standing. Thus SCOTUS managed to dispose of the case without actually ruling on its merits. Other pledge cases not impeded by issues of standing will likely eventually work their way up through the legal chain. Why should Akin and company fear federal judicial review so much? Well, for starters, the “under God” pledge is about as unconstitutional as any government-endorsed ritual could possibly be and Akin and his fellow rightwing buddies know it is. Their fear stems from the possibility that other federal judges will also muster up the sand to do their constitutional duty and rule against the pledge.
Why is the pledge unconstitutional when used as a government mandated ritual? Historically, belief in the existence of gods or divine beings is the foundational basis of religion and religious practice. No one could validly suggest otherwise. Belief in and veneration of a deity called “God”, the deity of Abraham and of biblicalism, falls squarely within that category. The notion of a “nation under God” therefore amounts to a government establishment of a religious ideology. It further amounts to a monotheistic religious ideology to the discriminatory exclusion of any alternative notion, concept, or belief about matters of divinity. The phraseology “one nation under God” overtly implies that belief in and allegiance to God is a mandatory requirement of citizenship, whereas it is not. With such phraseology in the pledge, the issue of National allegiance is inexorably confused with that of religious allegiance. The wording explicitly suggests that citizenship and patriotism require fealty to the doctrinal notion of a nation under the sovereignty of God. And by association allegiance under the doctrinal authority of the religious institutions and pulpits that espouse God worship and presume to dictate what “God's" will is. The wording of the altered pledge has the effect of establishing that the United States is a theocracy, and more specifically a biblical theocracy with its historical underpinnings in Middle Eastern monotheism.
The Constitution is a secular document. It defines the Nation as a republic, not a theocracy. The Sixth Article establishes that the Constitution itself is the “supreme law of the land”. The sixth article also stipulates, "No religious test will ever be required as a qualification to any public office or public trust under the United States." The "under God" phrase altered the pledge into an oath of religious allegiance. Its mandated use in our public schools is government endorsement and imposition of religious doctrine. Couched in the form of a required classroom ritual, it also clearly amounts to a religious test. The First Amendment, which is considered the controlling factor in present litigation, unequivocally states, “Congress will make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The First Amendment makes no exception for monotheism of any kind and certainly not for God or for biblicalism in any sectarian form, singular or collective. Using congressionally enacted statute to force daily recitation of the altered pledge compels both child and teacher to be tangled up in a ritual of religious acknowledgment and supplication. Used in such a way the pledge is clearly and unequivocally a violation of constitutional law. That is an unavoidable fact regardless of whether belief in “God” is a popular religious belief or not.
The protection act is not intended to protect the Pledge of Allegiance. Rather it intends to protect a two-term phrase that was added 1954. The bill would be more honestly labeled "The under God Protection Act" or the "Unconstitutional Pledge Protection Act". A legitimate act would seek to remove "under God" from the pledge and thereby either revise or restore the pledge to constitutionally admissible form. The bottom line is that the founders of the Constitution never prescribed or advocated any oath of allegiance to God or to any other deity for that matter. Their own personal religious beliefs notwithstanding, the evidence of the Constitution itself confirms they deliberately prescribed against government endorsement of any kind of religion or imposition of any kind of religious test. As further confirmed by the preponderance of the founders writings, a person's disposition about God or any other deity for that matter, be that disposition religious or irreligious, was to be strictly between the person and their own conscience, and never between person and state. The "under God" pledge is clearly contrary to that unambiguous intent.
It should be evident that both the pledge protection act and the wording of the pledge itself raise issues about the politics of constitutional law and the ideological identity of the nation, both of which demand examination in a broader political and historical context. The expanded narrative that follows was written to that purpose.
Right-wingers like Todd Akin and House Speaker Dennis Hastert justify the pledge protection act on the well-worn propaganda that "activist judges” endanger the religious freedoms of the people. In the present case, exactly what religious freedoms do they claim are at issue? Government mandated rituals aimed at forcing supplication under a religious idol do not promote religious freedom. To the contrary, they are at the expense of religious freedom, and that violates the First Amendment's free exercise clause as well as the establishment clause. Isn’t freedom of conscience, as in freedom of choice about matters of religion and religious allegiance, one of the foundational principles of our Nation, part of our defining history and tradition of civil liberty? As the well worn saying goes, "Without freedom from religion, there is no freedom of religion". Contrary to this, the right wing concept of religious liberty amounts to unobstructed license on their part to seize government authority and force the entire population to submit to their religious preferences.
The right wing has managed to grind a huge amount of rhetorical mileage out of the notion of “activist judges” meddling with legal precedent. Although currently used to justify the pledge protection act, the claim of judicial activism has been regularly employed ever since it was first coined in protest over the Supreme Court's ruling in 1947.
"The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State." (Justice Hugo Black, Everson Versus Board of Education, 1947)
Considering the right wing's affection for their "activist judge" rhetoric, it seems worthwhile to establish a clear definition of what might validly characterize an activist judge. The Sixth Article mandates that all lawmaking must be pursuant to the overarching rules of law embodied in the Constitution. As such, all detailed lawmaking must be in harmony with and thus not contradictory to the laws that the Constitution embodies. Congress has the power to enact laws, but is nevertheless bound to legislation that is constitutionally admissible. Whereas, among other things, the federal judiciary has the job of reviewing disputed legislation and overturning that which is not constitutionally admissible. In other words, the Judiciary has the role of referee in matters of legal dispute so to ensure that the Constitution is upheld and thus not contradicted. This distinction identifies a fundamental difference of authority between Congress and the Judiciary. It is part of the system of checks and balances that comprise the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine.
In view of this, an activist judge would have to be one who contravenes the Constitution in their formal judgments so to favor factional political or ideological preferences. Such activism could take the form of either ruling in favor of unconstitutional legislation or ruling against legislation that is constitutional. The notion of judicial activism would therefore only validly apply to judiciary whose rulings contradict the mandates of the Constitution, thereby effectively remaking the law with the judgments they hand down. No judiciary has the authority to do that, not even in the name of God. On the one hand, it would violate the separation of powers doctrine as only Congress has the authority to enact law. On the other hand it would violate the Constitution in total to which both Congress and the Judiciary are bound to abide. From this definitional point of view, any valid classification of activist judges must include those who contravene the rule of law in the service of religious interests. It should be evident that this is not the definition that Akin and company had in mind, because there is no classification of judge guiltier of the latter kind of activism then the right wing crony.
The right wing notion of an activist judge is anyone whose reasoning runs counter to the social conservative agenda as did the 1947 Everson versus Board of Education ruling. Simply put, the theocratic agenda is to strip the people of their constitutionally guaranteed protections against government endorsed religion and thereby subjugate the Nation to biblical law (reference 1). The “under God” pledge is the ultimate symbol of that quest. It strikes at the very foundation of the Nation’s historical standards of religious liberty and democracy. The intent of the pledge protection act is clearly not to stop activist judges from violating the Constitution, because they are the kind most apt to rule in the pledge’s favor. Rather, the bill’s intent is to deny the federal courts the power to enforce the Constitution regarding pledge related issues. The pledge protection act is a dangerous piece of legislation. It amounts to congressional abuse of power of the most extreme kind. One that intends grave harm to the system of checks and balances that has sustained our democracy for more than two centuries (references 2, 3, and 4). Unfortunately, there is an overabundance of rudderless centrists cluttering up Congress who are perfectly willing to sell our fundamental civil rights out to legislation like the pledge protection act. If it were not the case, then the bill in question would never have surfaced for consideration nor passed with the vote it did (see congressional voting record). Of course, it must be observed that we are in a congressional election year where conformance to the religious status quo is all too often considered the proper political strategy. One should consequently also observe that a real crisis of statesmanship exists in Washington when the right wing can so easily define what the status quo is to be (see also Religion Act). At this point, the only silver lining is that the bill cannot become law without approval from the Senate (note). The Senate is unlikely to review it until sometime next year (2007). By that time, the election will have occurred and just maybe a constitutionally saner Congress will be in power in Washington.
The "under God" pledge, the pledge protection act, and the swarm of other religion based political initiatives that have gained footing in Washington over the last several decades are collectively symptomatic of Congress’s increasing disregard for constitutional law on matters of religion and state. The situation should be viewed as a critical problem because our fundamental civil rights and those of our offspring are at stake. The Democrats, who like to color themselves as the guardian defenders of the people’s rights, hardly afford religion-state issues passing mention in their party platform. Consequently, the social conservatives have enjoyed a sustained field day in the service of its theocratic causes. Tragically, the implications seem not to capture the passions of the American people very much. It does not seem enough to simply challenge the constitutionality of the pledge. What needs to be stressed is why the Constitution is worded so as to make the pledge inadmissible and thus also the historical justifications behind such wording.
In regard for this, one should wonder about the six decades that have passed since the indoctrinating influence of the “under God” pledge first went into effect. Many citizens now seem poorly informed about basic things like the rule of law, separation of powers, and the mandates of the Constitution regarding government-religion entanglement. The public's ignorance about the history, structure, and functioning of their own high body of national law creates a situation where the politicians can seriously mislead the Nation while glibly declaring it to be the “peoples will” (reference 2).
The pledge of allegiance is a central case in point. Some of its proponents might go so far as to admit that the pledge is fundamentally unconstitutional. They are nevertheless likely to argue that even though unconstitutional, popular opinion dictates that the schools aught to retain the pledge as a daily ritual anyway. “After all”, as the rhetoric goes, “we live in a democracy and therefore the will of the majority should prevail”. But if the system was designed to work that way, then the judiciary could just as well base all rulings on the results of the latest Gallop Poll and thus never employ the Constitution as a standard for deliberation. One might therefore also conclude, as Akin and company evidently have, that no relevant need exists for a federal judiciary. And if that were the case, we might also dispose of Congress and the Presidency as both the rule of law and government policy could be directly determined by what the pollsters tell us about public opinion at any given time. That of course would amount to complete anarchy where the rule of law and thus our civil rights would never have any reliable solvency.
In a pure democracy the entire populace as opposed to just a small number would go to the voting booth and directly resolve each and every issue of law and government policy. In this nation, however, the people of each State elect politicians to represent them in Washington and do the voting on what laws get made, unmade, or amended. Thus, our nation is not a pure democracy. Rather, as the Constitution itself specifies, it is a republic, but with a democratic emphasis in the sense of elected representatives. In reflecting on these basic things, one might ask what fundamental civil rights and entitlements must exist for a legitimate democracy to exist, indeed for a legitimate democratic republic to exist? More than 200 years ago, the authors of the Constitution concluded that among other things both freedom of speech and freedom of religion are essential and therefore both must be immune from the vagaries of popular opinion. If the issues of the day cannot be openly debated and the political status quo challenged without threat of reprisal either from government or religion, then any pretense to legitimate democracy is an illusion.
Take an imaginary situation where there was open criticism of the Catholic Church for its policies on birth control, immigration, and harboring pedophiles within its priesthood. Suppose that the opinion polls indicated that a majority believed that all such criticism should be silenced. Suppose also that in response to that estimate of public sentiment Congress undertook to make a law that censored under penalty of criminal prosecution any criticism of church policy or dogma. Under the Constitution, Congress has the right to make new laws or to change existing ones. Still, even with a majority public opinion behind it, would Congress have the right to make a law that was so discriminatory?
Take another imaginary situation where the Hindu faith became so dominant that the polls estimated that seven or eight in every ten Americans identified with one or another of its sects. Suppose also that under intense pressure from a then powerful Hindu lobby, Congress was motivated to pass a law that changed the pledge to read “one nation under Brahma” and further required every wage-earning citizen, regardless of religious orientation, to pay a portion of their yearly salary to the Hindu temple coffers. Even if the polls claimed that a majority of Americans stood behind the proposal, would Congress have the right to make such legislation?
The obvious answer in both cases aught to be no, Congress would not have the right. As a minimum, such law making would directly violate several clauses in the First Amendment and Congress does not have the license to violate the First Amendment or any other standing component of the Constitution. In the first case, the free speech rights guaranteed to us by the First Amendment were designed among other things to protect minority interests against any potential attempt at censure that might arise from prejudicial majority sentiment. In the second case the First Amendment protects us against involuntary conscription to any religious institution, either in the form of taxation or obligation to supplicate to its deities and pulpits. In other words, the laws contained in the Constitution are non-majoritive as they are intended to protect individual rights irrespective of majority preference. Such is the property of both the Sixth Article and the First Amendment religion clauses, designed to protect both individuals and thus also groups against having religion and religious allegiance dictated to them either by government or by any religious institution or sectarian coalition. Stated in the classic sense, these non-majoritive rules of law are designed to protect the individual and thus minorities against the tyranny of any faction, majoritive or otherwise.
Back in 1954 Congress did indeed violate the law when they enacted statute that officially endorsed the “under God” pledge. It does not matter that it has taken fifty years for the daunting task of litigation against the pledge to finally achieve some success. The constitutional issues involved demand resolution. The correct solution is not to prohibit the Federal courts from ruling on the issue. The courts are the last line of defense against Congress manufacturing unconstitutional law making. To prohibit the Federal courts from performing that vital function would amount to an unthinkable usurpation of the Constitution's system of checks and balances. By the same token, neither is the solution for the courts themselves to turn a blind eye to the impropriety of the pledge by indulging in hairsplitting about what "an establishment of religion” is or is not. If the monotheistic doctrine of a “nation under God” does not qualify, then it is difficult to imagine anything that does (note). Nor is the solution for the courts to hide behind the pretense that so called “religious history and traditions” trump the establishment clause as the determining factor, because that epitomizes judicial activism or judicial revisionism, take your pick. Such tactics make mockery of the Constitution and damage the credibility of Congress and the Courts as well as our historical identity as a nation of religious freedom and equality before the law. (note)
If protecting the
"under God" pledge is truly the people’s will, then at least in theory
there is a constitutionally admissible way to proceed. That is,
through the process of constitutional amendment. This process, however, requires more than a simple majority
to bring about, it requires an extraordinary majority. A new
constitutional amendment first requires two-thirds vote from both houses of
Congress to qualify. After that, no
less than three fourths of the State legislatures must ratify it and typically
all within a specified period of time. Unless
all those conditions are met in total, the new amendment does not become law.
The important point, however, is that as long as such an amendment does not exist or remains
un-ratified, the Constitution’s existing religion clauses are the standing law of the
land and the “under God” pledge is impeachable by virtue of that standing law.
As such, the Federal courts should be obligated to rule against the
pledge and Congress obliged to abide by the ruling rather than slinging
resolutions of censor against the courts for having done their constitutional
duty. Every member of Congress took a sworn oath to uphold the
Constitution and they aught to remember that fact or find an occupation
that does not damage their fragile powers of recall so badly. What
kind of representatives do we have in Washington that so many among them would
advocate that our First Amendment
rights be extinguished so that Congress can ward off litigation over the
pledge? Such advocacy is motivated by religious hypocrisy, which ultimately intends
to extinguish any right of challenge or appeal regarding this and other issues of religion
and state entanglement. It is the same underlying hypocrisy that motivates
claims that mandated usage of the "under God" pledge
does not violate the rights of many citizens, religious and irreligious
alike, or not give a damn that it does. Moreover, if the pledge protection
act were to float, what then is to prevent a whole swarm of bills designed to
protect the right wing's other legislative pets from challenge before the federal
courts?
"One of the amendments to the Constitution... expressly declares that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,' thereby guarding in the same sentence and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press; insomuch that whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others." --Thomas Jefferson, Third President of the United States, 1798 (reference 14).
Should the pledge protection act fail and should the courts actually strike down the pledge, there is no reason to believe that the right wing won't attempt to float an amendment. In the face of that hideously undesirable response, the people and their politicians will need to ask themselves, is the “under God” pledge really worth the price of mangling the First Amendment as well as our Sixth Article protections against government dictated religion? In pondering this issue, the people and the national media need to give fair and equal consideration to the case against the pledge rather then overloading things in favor of the "politically correct" sentiment supporting it . The importance of the issues demand that the public be privileged to the kind of representation of the facts that truly supports an informed opinion (Religion in America). If the pledge were struck down from public school usage, what damage would be done to anyone's right to believe in God? Absolutely none. What it would do is eliminate a festering congressional error and thereby ultimately serve to strengthen an endangered collective understanding and respect for the Constitution's religion clauses and separation of powers doctrine.
Understandably, anxiety might arise from the notion that public school usage of the pledge should be discontinued. Its discontinuance would leave a vacuum of sorts with regard to some assiduously employed ritual of national allegiance. Still, if such a ritual is deemed necessary, then there are alternatives that do not carry the stigma of constitutional impropriety that the "under God" pledge does. Worthy considerations include revising or restoring the pre-1954 version of the pledge or alternatively to use the America's Creed written by William Tyler Page as quoted below.
"I believe in the United States of America as a Government of the people by the people, for the people, whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a Republic; a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.
I therefore believe it is my duty to my Country to love it; to support its Constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies." (Reference 10)
It is notable that the Creed contains the term "equality" along with freedom and justice although the current official pledge does not. This observation is relevant to the present discussion because the issue of civil equality is at the bottom of the pledge controversy. At times, the term "equality" has been subjected to considerable censure in the Nation's political culture. It could be reasonably argued that equality is implied by the pledge's ending phrase, "Liberty and Justice for All". Even so, Francis Bellamy, the author of the original pledge, neglected to include it because racial segregation was a hot-button issue in his day. During the cold war, the term came under fire again because the constitution of the Soviet Union reputedly employed "equality" in its phraseology (reference 5). Regardless of the Soviet Constitution, equality under the law is essential to a legitimate democracy and consequently one of the fundamental ideals of our Nation, even though it has proven to be a tenaciously difficult ideal to fulfill. The notion that it should be subverted in one instance because it flew in the face of a culture of racial bigotry, and then in another because it was espoused in the constitution of an arch rival government, is tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It is likewise with subverting our Constitution's fundamental principle of government-religion separation under the excuse of "distinguishing" ourselves from the Soviet Union and its anti-religious ideology. Under Soviet communism, the people were equal only in the sense that no one was permitted any religion except by the whim of the state. Whereas, under the US Constitution the people are equal in sense that each is to be free to make their own choices about religion and religious affiliation, thus leaving such matters to the recognizance of the individual rather than the State. This is a rather profound difference indeed, one that the "under God" version of the pledge could hardly be said to defend.
To this day, one of the arguments used to justify the altered pledge was to provide a "spiritual tool" to help defense against the spread of communism. However, any notion that we didn't have sufficient spiritual tools anyway, or that the altered pledge significantly contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union is whimsical. We managed to win the Second World War without such a piece of work. Further, although there were other contributing factors, the fall of the Soviet Union was ultimately irretrievably the result of an economic system that was antithetical to free enterprise. What is also certain, however, is that government endorsement of the "under God" pledge subverted the sovereignty of the Constitution and thereby strengthened the grip of theocracy (both foreign and domestic) on American national politics. The red scare witch-hunts of the 1950’s made it a virtual icon of right wing political doctrine to brand anyone who stands against the revised pledge as an atheist and a subversive. After all, as the reasoning surely goes, anyone who objects to school children being compelled to pledge allegiance to a nation under God must be an atheist, who if not communist is nevertheless an enemy to "true" American values. Ergo, the religious test is failed. The trouble is, where did our true American values go that the Constitution was so easily thrown in the trash over the existence of yet another advisory in the world? Issues of religious or irreligious persuasion notwithstanding, there is indeed a very patriotic reason for objecting to the pledge. As in being knowledgably allegiant to the Constitution's principle of government religion separation, knowing full well that government sanctioned monotheism of any suit will ultimately send the Nation down a path equally as totalitarian and oppressive as communism (reference 11).
The Continental Congress did not lightly embed the religion clauses in the Constitution and the First Amendment. The Nation's founders were acutely aware of the history of government and religion in the pre-Constitution colonies and in the old world from whence their ancestors came to escape the harsh realities of discrimination under theocracy dominated government. In our own time we have more than ample evidence of how despotic religion can be when afforded the authority of state. We need only look to the Middle East, where under the specter of Islamic law, there is virtually no freedom of speech and certainly no freedom of choice regarding matters of religion. In that part of the world one is only free to worship God (Allah in Arabic), Mohamed, and the Qur'an or else. In the new constitution of “liberated” Afghanistan, converting from Islam to another religion is a capitol offence, as is the case in other countries dominated by Islam. Any criticism of Islamic dogma or deviation from Islamic social norms is undertaken at the literal risk of one’s life. Woman can be beaten for violating dress codes, stoned to death for bearing children out of wedlock, and are frequently denied even the right to drive or have a basic education. In Iraq athletes are shot dead for wearing shorts. The Ayatollah, the supreme leader of Iran, declares a death edict against a British author for writing a fantasy novel containing some off-color connotations to the life of Mohammad. The edict extended to all who possessed the book or were involved in its manufacture or circulation. Some politically oriented cartoons depicting Mohammad are published in a European Newspaper and riots breakout in Pakistan and elsewhere taking the lives of scores of people. These are only highlights from recent news events. The list of oppressive tendencies and consequences is virtually bottomless. This is the cultural condition of the Middle East under the specter of “God’s Law” according to Islam and its clerical aristocracy, which has rode the back of civil authority and primary schooling in that region of the world for a thousand years. In its full flower, the agenda of fundamentalist Islam has not changed in the fourteen centuries since the days of Mohammad. It is hard-core monotheism whose evangelical and messianic mission is world domination via elimination of all competitors, where anyone of alternative persuasion is an infidel or heathen deserving only to be converted or killed (reference 7).
One might ask, “What does this have to do with the pledge or anything else in America? Nothing like the oppressive culture in the Middle East could ever occur here.” Unfortunately, the equivalent did occur in the pre-Constitution colonies as well as in Europe under the specter of the “Holy Roman Empire” and other biblical theocracies that later emerged out of the reformation. Persecutions and sectarian conflict were virtually the norm. In the present age, it would be very difficult to argue that the Middle East suffers from godlessness or is otherwise lacking in religion. To the contrary, it drips with an overvaluation of it, sustained at the expense of any legitimate pretense to fair and just secular law. In spite of so much religion, the Middle East is civilly one of the most retarded and oppressive regions on the planet, where bloody conflicts with those of other faiths and among the various Islamic sects themselves abound. It is a glaring contemporary example of the price so commonly paid when government and religion are fused into theocracy. In contrast, the two hundred years or so since the founding of the Constitution, the US has enjoyed an era where religious conflicts and persecutions have been light to nonexistent in comparison. That privileged condition, however, is not the result of some inherent benevolence on the part of biblicalism. Rather, it was because of a sovereign body of secular law that separated government from religion and thus made both religious belief and religious allegiance a matter of personal choice upon which the government has no right to intrude.
"Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest luster; those of every sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civil policy. Propose a restoration of this primitive State in which its Teachers depended on the voluntary rewards of their flocks, many of them predict its downfall. On which Side ought their testimony to have greatest weight, when for or when against their interest?
Because the establishment in question is not necessary for the support of Civil Government. If it be urged as necessary for the support of Civil Government only as it is a means of supporting Religion, and it be not necessary for the latter purpose, it cannot be necessary for the former. If Religion be not within the cognizance of Civil Government how can its legal establishment be necessary to Civil Government? What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not. Such a Government will be best supported by protecting every Citizen in the enjoyment of his Religion with the same equal hand which protects his person and his property; by neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of another." (James Madison, Fourth President of the United States, reference 8)
When the Constitution’s authors instituted the religion clauses, it was not Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc that was of immediate concern, although the clauses were deliberately worded to apply universally. Rather, it was biblicalism and its various sectarian offspring that weighed most directly upon the issue. Like Islam, biblicalism is fundamentally motivated by an agenda of world domination via the elimination of all religious and by default secular competitors. That fact is indelibly evident in the first Law of Moses’, “no other gods before me.” It is no coincidence that the right-wingers conspire so relentlessly to have the Ten Commandments displayed on government ground and in our courts. It is also particularly notable that the Ten Commandments are considered core doctrine in Islam. "Of all the figures before Muhammad, Moses is referred to most frequently in the Qur'an. " As a matter of fact, with the exception of Muhammad, there is hardly any profit of historical note that biblicalism does not share in common with Islam (see Islamic Prophets). Monotheism is not a suitable model for civilization nor is theocracy of any kind a suitable model for government. Considering these things, it is not so far fetched to suggest that if not for the Constitution’s safeguards against government entanglement in religion, which until now have served to curb religion’s aggressions, the Nation would long ago have evolved into a theocratic concentration camp rivaling the worst in the Middle East.
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State." --Thomas Jefferson, Second President of the United States, Letter to Samuel Kercheval, 1810 (reference 14).
With the right wing’s pervasive encroachment against the authority of the Constitution, such an eventuality clearly looms as a tangible danger. With each passing year more legislation and executive orders are enacted and more tax dollars are siphoned off to subsidize purely religious agendas, including turning administration of our social welfare system over to church run organizations. Each passing year sees this Nation moving closer to completely retrogressing into a theocracy. Over the years as the retrogression deepens, discrimination toward religious and non-religious minorities and conflict among the biblical sects themselves will intensify, because ultimately under a theocracy one doctrinal authority must rule the roost of State at the expense of the others. In that hour, all pretense to peace and fundamental civil rights will be lost, thus laying the ground for civil war and the potential downfall of the Nation. If such a scenario seems inconceivable, it is only because two centuries of insulation have created a dangerous condition of complacency. It makes it profoundly difficult to impart to the Nation’s present generations what the authors of the Constitution knew so well about matters of religion and state. That just and fair governance and civil liberty are inextricably dependent on religious liberty. Legitimate religious liberty is the right of the people as individuals to make their own choices regarding religion and religious allegiance. That kind of liberty is ultimately only protected by not allowing government to be used as a vehicle to dictate deity, religious doctrine, or religious ideology.
"We are centuries away from the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and the treatment of heretics in early Massachusetts, but the divisiveness of religion in current public life is inescapable. This is no time to deny the prudence of understanding the Establishment Clause to require the Government to stay neutral on religious belief, which is reserved for the conscience of the individual." Supreme Court Justice David Sauter, June 2005 (reference)
As other writings on this website identify, most of the developments leading toward the destruction of the religion clauses and thus the constitutional wall between religion and state, all occurred in the aftermath of 1954 inclusion of “under God” in the pledge. Each was an elaboration of that single decisive event. For fifty years the ‘under God” pledge has stood in blatant antithesis to the Constitution’s religion clauses, having the effect of indoctrinating the Nation’s children against the Constitution and their sacred civil rights under it. The historical identity and posterity of the Nation is now slowly but inexorably paying the price. The prime example of the insidious creeping destructiveness of the pledge is the fact that the House of Representatives only first started reciting it in 1988 with the Senate following suit in 1999 (note). Less than two decades later the manifest result is overt disrespect in both chambers of Congress for the Constitution's defining principle of religion-state separation. The right wing is now openly declaring that principle to be a myth (article) (church state metaphor) (reference 9). Setting aside issues concerning the constitutional admissibility of the pledge protection act itself (references 6 and 13), the fact that it was proposed at all shows how dangerous the influence of the theocrats has become. Aside from doing great damage to the separation of powers doctrine, the pledge protection act would be the first step in effectively robbing everyone of their First Amendment right of petition before the Federal Courts, thereby also nullifying the Fifth Amendment due process and the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clauses. Such law making is both incompetent and tyrannical. It amounts to insurrection against the fundamental rights and entitlements of every citizen irrespective of minority or majority standing (reference 12)
The Constitution is the social contract that defines our fundamental right of free choice and self-determination as individuals and as groups. It is the sacred shrine of our national heritage of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. With little doubt it is the finest testament to fair and impartial civil law and government that the ages of the species has ever produced. It was based on a profound wisdom of a historical insight about culture and culture's institutions, including the larger part of the last 2000 years, not just some narrow and inaccurate biblical rendition of what proceeded before. With regard to the latter, the ugly historical truth is that when it comes to desecrating the sacred shrines of other faiths and understandings, and visiting persecution and tyranny on their peoples, biblicalism has a centuries long rap-sheet. Indiscriminate and obsessive imposition of religion on the workings of state is destroying this nation's politics, destroying its collective mentality, and killing its worth to its own people and to the world.
The classical theocratic argument is that if not for the "under God" terminology the pledge would favor atheism, as if the mere presence of atheists in the world was somehow justification to subtend the Constitution. Atheism is not against the law, whereas using government authority to dictate religion is against the law. The theocratic argument rests on a foundation of perverted reasoning. It totally denies the principle of neutrality. Only if the pledge's wording had been "under atheism" or "under no god" would the theocratic argument have any validity. To the contrary, the "under God" phraseology overloads the pledge in favor of religion and particularly biblical and thus middle eastern monotheism to the exclusion not only of atheism, but agnosticism, polytheism, pantheism, and all other orientations regarding matters of theism and deity. The "under God" terminology consequently promotes inequality rather than equality about choice in matters of religion and thus is antithetical not only to the First Amendment's religious establishment clause but to its free exercise clause as well.
The politic represented by both the "under God" pledge and the pledge protection act is laced with anti-pluralistic hypocrisy. We do not need such a thing ruling the roost in Congress or any other sphere of government. What legitimate worth is any politician who lacks the sand to stand up in defense of the Constitution's essential mandate of government religion separation? Indeed, secular enough in their sense of patriotic and congressional obligation not to give in to the wiles of a corrupt, power hungry, and casually regressive coalition of rightwing factions and do so in the service of defending religious liberty and equality? They are not worth a jot, not worth a vote. Invoking allegiance to God is what people are at liberty to do in their houses of worship, or personal homes, or otherwise external to the official ceremonies of citizenship and public office, if they so choose (note). In any case, such license as is their constitutionally entitlement does not include using government authority to impose deity and doctrine on the common ground of our nationalism. Using government authority to force a choice between taking a pledge that amounts to an act of religious supplication versus dissenting against it, is the worst kind of insurrection of Constitutional law imaginable. The American people dearly need to wake up to that fact. The three letter term "God" may evoke cherished sentiments concerning divinity and personal faith. The profound historical difficulty is that it has all to frequently been used to justify coercion, exploitation, tyranny, and bloodshed; particularly when welded as an instrument of State. Washington has an obligation to return to a constitutionally agreeable pledge or cease and desist altogether from invoking and peddling any pledge at all.
"We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions ... shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power ... we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society." (John Adams, Third President of the United States, 1785, reference 15)
"It is now no more that tolerance is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgenced of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens. . ." (George Washington, First President of the United States, reference 16)
E Pluribus Unum
References
1. Religious Right in Republican Party
2. Pledge Protection Act is Lunacy
3. Congress Attempts to Strip Federal Court's Power
4. Americans United for Separation of Church and State
6. On the Constitutionality of the Pledge Protection Act
8. James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance
9. Myths About Church State Separation
10. America's Creed
11. Czarist Origins of Communism
12. Letter to the House of Representatives
‘‘What has
happened once in six thousand years may never happen again.
Hold
on to your Constitution, for if the American Constitution
shall fail
there will be anarchy throughout the world.’’
Daniel Webster 1782-1852