Posted by MondoHebe [198.81.26.45 - cache-ntc-ab08.proxy.aol.com] on 28 March 2004 at 17.30.36 ZuluTime:

Some Believers Cringe at 'Under God' Defense
     By PETER STEINFELS
     
     Americans who take religion seriously must surely have winced this week at some of the defenses mounted of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Please don't imagine, for example, that pledging allegiance to a nation "under God" is meant to suggest that God actually exists.

Don't imagine that the phrase suggests that God watches over the nation, blessing and judging it, or that the nation is accountable to God, if that God exists. Certainly the pledge's wording doesn't imply that the nation's indivisibility and promise of liberty and justice for all is somehow tied up with that condition of being "under God."

No, nothing like that. At least, not for the phrase's defenders at Wednesday's oral arguments before the Supreme Court. For them, "under God" only means that once upon a time the nation's leaders thought things along those lines.

Challenging last year's ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that "under God" made recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance an unconstitutional religious exercise in public school classrooms, the solicitor general, Theodore B. Olson, said the phrase was not a prayer or a ritual. It was only one of the constitutionally permissible "civic and ceremonial acknowledgments" of the religious heritage on which the nation was founded.

The government's brief to the Supreme Court spells this out in its analysis of the pledge's current wording: "What it really means is, I pledge allegiance to one nation, founded by individuals whose belief in God gave rise to the governmental institutions and political order they adopted, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

During the oral argument, Justice David H. Souter brought up a similar defense, the conclusion from a lower court that the pledge's words about God were merely an example of "ceremonial deism" useful for "solemnizing public occasions."

Wince.

Were the citizens and legislators who created an uproar over the Ninth Circuit's ruling upset because students might lose out on a historical reminder or a moment of "ceremonial" deism?

And why aren't more believers distressed when language that pretty clearly affirms an existing, active, transcendental God must be defended as nothing more than language about what the nation's framers thought two centuries ago?

The explanation can only be found in the fact that everyone riled up in this dispute over two words sees it as part of larger stories about American history and culture that go way beyond the Pledge of Allegiance.

For some people, it is a story of expanding individual freedom of conscience, a principle that the First Amendment planted in American society but that has only been gradually extended to minority beliefs (and nonbeliefs) over time and with struggle. To rebuff Dr. Michael A. Newdow, the conscientious atheist who challenged the pledge as an impermissible religious exercise, would be to halt or even reverse the natural course of that story.

For others, the story is much more ambiguous and perhaps even negative. While recognizing, at least in hindsight, the value of widening religious freedom, these Americans see another story in which the nation has also been steadily cutting itself off from its own religious roots, a development posing a threat to the religious vitality of individuals, faith communities and ultimately the whole culture.

In this story, the government's defense of "under God" as a historical link makes sense, even if talk of "ceremonial acknowledgments" and "ceremonial deism" seems to wash out much of the phrase's other meaning.

These church-state battles are fought one by one in courts. But almost everyone views them in terms of bigger trends. That is why the fate of "In God We Trust" on coins and currency, or of Congressional chaplains (which Dr. Newdow has challenged), or of the invocation, "God save the United States and this honorable court" that opens Supreme Court sessions like Wednesday's, are always thrown into the debates.

Americans who locate church-state battles within the second story fear that each one of these symbolic threads of religion will be snipped out of the fabric of American life. Proponents of the first story typically minimize their objections to such instances of public religiosity - except for whatever case they are grappling with at the moment.

There are good reasons to think that the court could find the present wording of the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional without setting precedents for many other official recognitions of religion. Although the motto, "In God We Trust," has already been challenged in various courts, no one is asked to say it aloud when they count their cash.

On the other hand, Dr. Newdow, in his argument before the Supreme Court, gave an interesting answer to Justice Souter's suggestion that the religious content of the pledge had become virtually inconsequential.

"When I see the flag and I think of pledging allegiance," he said, "it's like I'm getting slapped in the face every time, bam, you know, 'this is a nation under God, your religious belief system is wrong.' "

This was forthright in the way that made Dr. Newdow's argument so effective. But it is also very elastic. A chain of thought goes from the sight of the flag to the words of the pledge and to pain and humiliation at the rejection of his religious belief system.

This has nothing to do with classroom recitation by school-age children. The slap-in-the-face principle could apply just as well to seeing "In God We Trust" on currency or in courtrooms, to hearing a president say, "God bless America," or to walking past many a public monument.

Indeed, the slap-in-the-face principle could apply to any public representations of religious beliefs or nonbeliefs other than one's own, whether by government or not. It is this elasticity that worries many believers enough to make them tolerate the comparable elasticity with which the pledge's defenders before the court have interpreted "under God."