So "Under God" is unconstitutional after all. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
has affirmed a controversial 2002 ruling that public schools can't make students recite that two-word phrase as part of the
Pledge of Allegiance. In the nine Western states that this court covers, official recitals of the God-infused pledge are now
forbidden.
Unlike last June, when politicians savaged a three-judge panel that struck down
public-school recitals of the religious form of the pledge, the reaction to last week's news has been muted. Almost everyone,
it appears, expects the Supreme Court to overturn the judgment.
But that expectation may be misplaced. Although their shutting down of ballot-counting
in the 2000 election made it plain that the justices aren't above politics, their own precedents -- and the weight of history
-- should nonetheless force them to see that the religious intent of "Under God" makes last week's judgment the only reasonable
one.
Originally, the Pledge of Allegiance was a testament of patriotism, not religious
faith. Written in 1892 by the socialist Francis Bellamy, a cousin of the radical writer Edward Bellamy, it omitted reference
not only to God but also, curiously, to the United States: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands,
one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Soon public schools and voluntary societies were starting their
days and meetings with the oath.
Then politics intervened. In the 1920s, the American Legion and the Daughters
of the American Revolution argued that immigrants might construe the pledge as a vow of loyalty to their native lands. "My
flag" became "the flag of the United States of America."
The next revision of the pledge proved far more controversial. The Red Scare of
the 1950s brought with it a much-heralded "religious revival." The evangelical Rev. Billy Graham rose to celebrity denouncing
communism as a "satanic religion," while Secretary of State John Foster Dulles argued that Christianity was what distinguished
Americans from the Russians.
Politicians outbid one another to prove their piety. Congress created a prayer
room in the Capitol. It added the words "In God We Trust" to paper money in 1955. In 1956 the same phrase replaced "E Pluribus
Unum" as the nation's official motto.
The new religiosity spawned the push to add "under God" to the Pledge. In the
early '50s the Catholic fraternal society the Knights of Columbus had added "under God" to the pledge that its members used
in their own meetings. The Knights bombarded Congress with calls for the United States to do the same. In April 1953, a Michigan
congressman introduced a bill to alter the pledge.
Then, in February 1954, the Rev. George M. Docherty, a Washington, D.C., Presbyterian
pastor, gave a sermon -- with President Eisenhower in attendance -- urging the addition of "under God" to the pledge as a
way to distinguish the United States from the atheistic Soviet Union. Congress took up the bill again.
The one-sided speechifying that followed on Capitol Hill proved that the bill's
purpose was to promote religion. The act's legislative history stated that lawmakers wanted to "acknowledge the dependence
of our people and our Government upon . . . the Creator." On signing the bill, Eisenhower exulted: "Millions of our schoolchildren
will daily proclaim in every city and town . . . the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty."
As this history of religious intent indicates, "under God" was inserted for the
express purpose of endorsing religion. And that, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, is unconstitutional. In a 1971 case,
Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Court said laws or government practices cannot have a religious purpose, primarily advance or
promote religion or excessively entangle government and religion. Lemon rankles conservatives, who claim that it's all too
aptly named, but it remains the law of the land.
Although this Court has permitted greater government support for religion than
did its predecessors, it has also upheld Lemon in key rulings. To do so again would be unpopular. But in honoring the Constitution,
it would also express the highest form of patriotism.
Note: Reprinted with permission of "The History News Service"
