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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
The 9th Circuit's official sponsorship of atheism is as repugnant to our tradition of tolerance as official sponsorship of religion.
Jun 27, 2002 | In 1954, Congress, with the approval of President Eisenhower, put the words "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance. In 2002, the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals took them out.
Enacted at the height of the Cold War, the "under God" provision was meant to contrast American values with Communist ones; they were atheists, we were not. Yet the 1950s was also the period in which America came to experience significant religious diversity. Catholics, for one thing, had become an important political force; the next president after Eisenhower would be one. And Jews, the targets of our Nazi enemies during World War II, had finally won acceptance into American life. Such diversity made it impossible to describe America by using terms like Protestant or Christian. God was the best available alternative, broad enough to be inclusive of just about everyone in 1950s America who believed in something.
In declaring the term "under God" unconstitutional, the Court of Appeals held that it was exclusive rather than inclusive; not only were atheists not covered by it, but neither were adherents to all nonmonotheist religions. Should the decision therefore be celebrated as recognizing that we are no longer a Protestant, nor even a Christian, nor even a Judeo-Christian society, but one that has come to offer a place at the public table for all believers, and even for those who do not believe at all?
Alas, matters are not that straightforward. Decisions involving religion have no easy constitutional solutions, which is why courts have disagreed about them so much. Despite the First Amendment ban on an established religion, the United States did have, throughout much of its history, an unofficial establishment; Protestantism governed our culture even if it did not rule our state. Throughout the 19th century, Protestants had no problem insisting that the King James version of the Bible belonged in the public schools even if the pope did not. Lincoln's great speeches designed to heal the nation, and issues as important as Westward expansion, the creation of an American empire, even, to some degree, the welfare state were discussed in Protestant terms. Because so many Americans were excluded by language rooted in Protestantism, the U. S. Supreme Court was right to stop defining America as a "Christian nation" and to seek ways of protecting the rights of minority religions.
Yet if society goes to the other extreme and bans from the public square any form of religious language, it violates the beliefs of all those who insist that religion is more than a matter of personal conviction, that faith is essential to how we Americans define ourselves collectively. In so doing, it may extend rights to nonbelievers or to those who believe in doctrines not widely accepted, but it does so at the cost of imposing a view of what America is about that others, in this case the majority of believers, do not share.
One way around this dilemma is to find language that invokes religion rather than religions. Such a language would seek broadly defined terms that bring as many individuals as possible under their scope rather than sectarian language meant to divide one faith from another. "Under God" serves those purposes admirably. It clearly includes Muslims and not just Christians and Jews. True, nonmonotheistic religions believe in Gods rather than God, but, contrary to the appellate court's interpretation, they are not excluded from the Pledge's formulation, since those who believe in more than one God still believe in at least one. (They could, moreover, add their own personal "s" to the pledge without anyone noticing - or caring.) The only people excluded by the term are atheists. But since atheists define themselves against the religious beliefs of others, they should work to see the Pledge preserved, for without it, their very reason for taking public stands on these issues would be taken away from them.
