After reading the arguments in the Pledge of Allegiance case before the Supreme Court, I am left with a question: If we are not “one nation under God,” what are we?
Don’t get me wrong. Life would go on without those two words in the Pledge. After all, they weren’t inserted until 1954, more than 60 years after the Pledge was written by a Baptist minister, Francis Bellamy, and published in the Youth’s Companion, the leading family magazine of the day. The addition also makes the Pledge sound a little clunky compared to the lean prose of the original.
But it’s hard to see the reference to a deity has done much damage. The plaintiff in the case, Michael Newdow, a self-professed atheist living in California, protests it amounts to religious indoctrination of his child. “Government is saying there’s a God,” he told the Supreme Court.
Well, yes, but it’s a pretty tender flower indeed that would feel indoctrinated by such a generic statement, coming as it does in the midst of a statement aimed mostly at arousing patriotic rather than religious emotions. Why isn’t Mr. Newdow complaining about that? History teaches us unchecked nationalism can turn into a fanatical religion of its own. The “under God” reference serves to remind us we are accountable to a higher ideal than “my country, right or wrong.”
It’s interesting such a case would come to the fore in the aftermath of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and while the United States is at war in Iraq. In a thoughtful essay in the latest edition of the Public Interest magazine, University of Tennessee humanities professor Wilfred M. McClay notes that following the attacks “Americans found themselves faced with an unexpected choice between radically different perspectives on the proper place of religion in Western society.”
On the one hand, many observers drew the lesson that these acts, perpetrated by Muslim extremists, showed that even the great monotheisms “constitute an ever-present meance to the peace, order and liberty” of the West. On the other, some on the right, such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, argued the attacks represented “God’s judgment upon the moral and social evils of contemporary America.”
Mr. McClay argues for a middle ground, the continuation of the “civil religion” through which Americans have long acknowledged the historical influence of religion in Western life — and American democracy in particular.
The First Continental Congress in 1774 started with a prayer, he notes, and America’s Founding documents are full of references to a Creator. At the same time, the First Amendment rightly requires “a process of constant negotiation and renegotiation” that safely minimizes religious influence in the political sphere — and, equally important, safeguards religion from contamination by secular political influence.
Total segregation of the two “would bring about unhealthy estrangement among Americans, leading in turn to extreme forms of sectarianism,” Mr. McClay points out.
“There is a genuine danger that changes such as that envisioned in the Pledge of Allegiance controversy, or radical revisions in the definition of marriage, or an unraveling of all traditional bioethical restraints, may produce a situation in which large numbers of conservative Christians will conclude that their Christian beliefs no longer permit them to be loyal and obedient American citizens,” he asserts.
That may be overstating things, though there are signs of an increasing divide in America over religion. Polls show growing percentages of Democrats consider themselves secularists, while Republicans tend to be far more churchgoing.
And while there many would greet the retreat from politics of a Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell with a “good riddance,” religion has always provided much of America’s moral energy. Just think of the abolitionist and civil rights movements.
But the Pledge, with its references to liberty, republic, community and God, well expresses the historical compromises and forces that have produced the freest society on Earth. How much can it hurt to inculcate an awareness of these values in our kids, even at a little risk of indoctrination? The rest of the First Amendment ensures they can freely debate the matter when they grow up.
I’m sorry if Mr. Newdow is offended. (His divorced wife, who has custody of their child, says she has no such qualms.) But the Supreme Court should be wary of intruding on efforts to produce the social glue that keeps America together.
Tom Bray is a Detroit News columnist.
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