Here are the opening statements in our online debate: First, Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, speaks out. Then Michael J. Perry, who teaches law at Emory University and is the author of Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy, makes a case for keeping God in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Barry Lynn:
The Constitution forbids government from meddling in the religious lives of the American people. Yet Congress did just that in 1954 by adding the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. A patriotic and civic ritual was thus transformed into a profession of faith.
As a Christian minister, I certainly have no problem with God. But I respect the right of my fellow Americans to take a different view. And I ardently oppose any effort by the government to undermine the constitutional freedoms that each of us enjoy.
When the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals barred public schools from sponsoring recitations of the Pledge with its "under God" language, the judges were not expressing hostility to religion or to patriotism. Rather, they were honoring what our patriots have always fought for, the time-tested tradition of freedom of conscience.
As one judge on the appeals court put it, if government officials are allowed to ask children to pledge allegiance to "one nation under God," they may in principle also ask children to honor "one nation under Jesus" or "one nation under Vishnu" or "one nation under no god." Once the government is permitted to intrude into the sacred precincts of conscience, where will it stop?
Pledge defenders say they are standing up for religion. Ironically, they're doing the opposite. A truly religious person should be wary of by-rote, watered-down expressions of religiosity that are performed without feeling and emotion. Does encouraging children to mumble their way through a Pledge with a passing reference to God foster real religious faith? I doubt it. Exposing our children to pseudo-religious patriotism every school day is no substitute for the meaningful religious instruction offered voluntarily by the nation's houses of worship.
Studies show that many young children have no idea what the words to the Pledge of Allegiance even mean. Rather than engage in what is for many an empty and formulaic ritual, wouldn't we be better off returning to the pre-"under God" Pledge and focusing on teaching our children about the shared civic virtues that statement promises?
The Newdow case specifically deals with recitation of the Pledge in a public school setting. The Supreme Court has always recognized a distinction between public education and other units of government. Other arms of the state may do some things that public schools are forbidden to do. For example, the Supreme Court has held that state legislatures may hire chaplains and pay them with tax funds, but a government-funded chaplain at a public school would never survive court scrutiny. Nothing in the court's jurisprudence indicates that public schools may sponsor religious activity, even generic or watered-down religiosity.
I'd say that Americans should be suspicious of those who are trying to exploit the court's decision for their own purposes. Our politicians are rushing to embrace the Pledge and its "under God" language. While I am sure some of them are sincere in their views, many are also using this issue as any easy way to curry favor with the voters.
Some members of Congress have called for a federal law denying the courts the right to rule on issues such as the Pledge. Others are pressing for a constitutional amendment that would allow not only "under God" in the Pledge, but also majority-rules prayer in public schools and majority-rules religious displays in public buildings.
The drive for this merger of religion and government is being fueled by Religious Right groups that do not respect individual freedom. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and others like them want an officially Christian nation, and they want their interpretation of the Bible to be written into law.
I recognize that the majority of Americans probably support the inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge. But we must remember that in the United States, the majority does not rule when it comes to matters of faith. Here the individual conscience reigns supreme, and no government official has the authority to mix religion and state. This is not Iran, where the government imposes religion on everyone by decree.
At a time when America is fighting terrorists who seek to impose their radical religious vision of the whole world by force and violence, we must not succumb to the temptation to merge religion and government here.
Thus there is much more at stake in this discussion than two words in the Pledge.
As Justice Robert Jackson put it in a 1943 Supreme Court decision, "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."
I say amen to that.
Michael Perry:
There is a virtual consensus in the United States that the government should not establish religion. In other words, government may not act for the purpose of favoring any church in relation to any other church on the basis of the view that the favored church is, as a church or as a community of faith, better along one or another dimension of value -- truer, for example, or more efficacious spiritually, or more authentically American.
There is no serious controversy about this central meaning of the nonestablishment norm. There is a controversy, however, about what we should understand it to forbid in one or another context. Should we understand the nonestablishment norm such that government affirmation of any religious premise, no matter what premise it is, necessarily violates the norm?
There are many different ways in which government affirms, or has affirmed, one or more religious premises. The most prominent example is the inclusion of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, as decreed by Congress in 1954. If we should understand the nonestablishment norm such that government affirmation of any religious premise necessarily violates the norm, then this clearly violates the nonestablishment norm. But is that the best understanding of what the nonestablishment norm forbids?
I am about to sketch two different understandings of what the nonestablishment norm forbids in this context. But it bears emphasis that no plausible understanding denies either of two points: First, the nonestablishment norm forbids government from affirming any religious premise whose affirmation by government would favor any particular religion. For example, government may not affirm -- explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly -- that Jesus is Lord, or that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true church. Second, even if there are one or more religious premises that government may affirm, government may not coerce anyone to affirm the premise.
Now, a more restrictive understanding of the nonestablishment norm would state that government may not affirm any religious premise whatsoever. A second, less restrictive understanding says that government may affirm any religious premise whatsoever whose affirmation by government would not violate the central meaning of the norm.
The more restrictive understanding is problematic for two reasons. The first is a matter of principle: The more restrictive understanding presupposes that there is no religious premise whose affirmation by government would be acceptable. But this is false. Since 1954, the Pledge of Allegiance has echoed Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in declaring that we are "one nation under God." In affirming, with Lincoln, that ours is a nation that stands under the judgment of a righteous God, it seems clear that government is not treating any church (or any range of theologically kindred churches) as the official church of the political community; government is not bestowing legal favor or privilege on any church in relation to any other church; government is not taking any action that assumes any church is superior to any other church along one or another dimension of value; government is not privileging membership in, or a worship practice of, any church.
Now, the second reason that the more restrictive understanding is problematic: Very few citizens of the United States would take seriously a constitutional provision according to which having "under God" in the Pledge is unconstitutional. Such a provision would be widely regarded, and widely dismissed, as extreme. One might say that this is a bad reason -- at the very least, a problematic reason -- for rejecting a proper understanding of a constitutional norm. Nevertheless, it seems to me undeniable that the second reason, which is a matter of political realism, reinforces the first reason, which is a matter of principle. My strong sense is that the vast majority of American citizens, including many who are not religious believers, would agree with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that, ";Although the Constitution says that government cannot 'establish' or promote religion, the framers did not intend for God to be stripped from public life."
In a recent essay, Cornell law professor Steve Shiffrin claimed that the United States has evolved from a country that is historically Christian into a country that is "officially monotheistic." Shiffrin then states: "Proponents of a high wall between church and state, who would remove 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance, are wishing for a country that does not exist and probably never will. Our Constitution must be interpreted in the light of our evolving traditions -- like it or not. So we make compromises and today government can say 'In God we trust' on its coins but not 'In Christ we trust.'"
Shiffrin's claim -- that the United States, though much less religiously sectarian than it used to be, is "officially monotheistic" -- is interesting, provocative, and, I think, substantially correct. We could go further and embrace an understanding of the nonestablishment norm according to which the government could not affirm any religious premise that, though nonsectarian as among the monotheistic faiths, is sectarian as between the monotheistic faiths and non-monotheistic faiths such as Hinduism and Buddhism. That conclusion, however, would be radically out of synch with any historical or traditional understanding of what the nonestablishment norm forbids, as well as with the sentiments and sensibilities of the overwhelming majority of the population -- so radically out of synch that any understanding of the nonestablishment norm that would require this conclusion is, if not unacceptable, at least deeply problematic. If the Supreme Court, in a science-fiction scenario, were to hold that having "under God" in the Pledge is unconstitutional, "We the People" would rush to amend the Constitution to overrule the Court.
Click here to read the debaters' responses.
Barry Lynn is the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Michael J. Perry teaches law at Emory University and is the author of "Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy." Jeff Dubner is an editorial intern for The American Prospect.
