I, for one, do not really care how the U.S. Supreme Court rules on whether the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance create a church-state entanglement. The justices can strike "under God" from the pledge, or they can leave it in. I don't even care if they take the easy way out and say the plaintiff, Michael A. Newdow, a California atheist, lacks standing to bring the challenge.
However the court rules, Americans will be free to say or not to say "under God" in pledging allegiance to the United States of America. I include those words when I recite the pledge, but others may not. So what? It's a free country, isn't it? No court can censor my choice or yours.
But what about impressionable schoolchildren in a coercive school environment? Newdow argues that even if the pledge is nominally voluntary - ever heard of peer pressure? - daily classroom recitation could label children who do not take part as different, even unpatriotic or atheistic. He has a point, and that's what this case is really about.
In a landmark decision in 1943, the Supreme Court held that schoolchildren cannot be required to recite the pledge - and that was 11 years before the words "under God" were inserted during the Eisenhower administration to contrast the USA with godless communism.
Most people had no trouble with that Cold War amendment to the pledge. Then, two years ago, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in San Francisco, ruled in favor of Newdow, who objected to having his daughter participate in a ritualized recitation of the pledge in her school, even though he does not have custody of the child (he and the mother, a Christian who opposes Newdow's challenge to the pledge, never married). After ruling that the words "under God" were unconstitutional, the court later narrowed its decision to apply only to school classrooms.
The decision provoked howls of outrage across the land. Even John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, called the ruling "silly" and nonsense. It is neither.
So now the matter is before the Supreme Court, and although I am not an authority on the Constitution, the case it presents is not as easy a call as those who have condemned or ridiculed the appeals court suggest. It's hard to dismiss the concerns of those who see some degree of religious coercion in leading schoolchildren in a pledge to "one nation, under God," although I don't see the pledge as a serious threat to religious freedom or church-state separation.
In all, 50 briefs have been filed on either side of the issue. Joining the Bush administration in supporting the pledge are the attorneys general of all 50 states, the National School Boards Association and the National Education Association, the teachers' union often vilified by Republicans. According to recent polls, 90 percent of the public wants to keep "under God" in the pledge.
Arguing the administration's position before the high court last week was Solicitor General Theodore Olsen, who told the justices that, unlike state-sponsored school prayer, which the court has held unconstitutional, the words "under God" were not a religious expression.
Rather, he argued, they are one of many "civic and ceremonial acknowledgments of the indisputable historical fact that caused the framers of our Constitution and the signers of the Declaration of Independence to say that they had the right to revolt and start a new country."
That led Justice David Souter to comment that "if you read the pledge carefully, the reference to "under God' means something more than a mere description of what somebody else once thought."
As a Washington Post editorial recently noted, "The Constitution does not require eliminating all references to God in the public sphere. The signature line of the document itself refers to "this year of our Lord"; the Declaration of Independence and the national anthem and motto all refer to divinity; Thanksgiving and Christmas are national holidays. There has always been some type of reference to the divine so minimal as to be beneath constitutional notice." If the court affirms the pledge, the Post said, "it should limit its approval to the type of nondevotional, passing references that occur in the founding documents themselves."
That sounds like a reasonable position that most Americans could live with, except maybe atheists and religious zealots. But if the court rules in Newdow's favor, Americans should be able to live with that, too. It would not be the end of religion or patriotism - two things that should always be mixed with extreme care.
Frankly, we have become too casual about invoking God's name in our civic rituals. In courtrooms across America, witnesses raise their right hand - or place it on a Bible - and repeat the words "I do solemnly swear . . . so help me God." That oath, of course, does not keep witnesses from lying. Maybe politicians should be barred from concluding their windy stump speeches with the words "God bless America," even as they sow division and ignore the needs of the poor. We ask God's blessing for our side when we go to war, even bad wars. Wouldn't it be better to seek God's guidance before going to war?
Too often we use God for our purposes and not his own. And when we do, we should leave God's name out of it.
