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DAILY EXPRESS
Pledge Class
by Matthew M. Hoffman
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Only at TNR Online | Post date 07.01.02
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Mere hours after a federal appeals court held that it was unconstitutional for
a school district to force children to recite a Pledge of Allegiance that
contains the words "under God," the U.S. Senate voted 99-0 to condemn
the decision. President Bush denounced it as "ridiculous." And Jerry Falwell,
the noted legal scholar, said it was "probably the worst ruling of any federal
appellate court in history."
The press was no kinder. The front page of the New York Post pronounced
the decision "God-Awful" and promised a "Holy War," while The San
Francisco Chronicle opined that the decision was a case of "[c]ommon
sense" being "trumped by too doctrinaire thinking." Even those editorialists
who profess to believe in the separation of church and state had harsh
words for the ruling. The Washington Post fretted that it would "generate
unnecessary political battles." Meanwhile, The New York Times declared it
a trivial issue, arguing that "n the pantheon of real First Amendment
concerns, this one is off the radar screen."
But in fact, the issue is far from trivial. Indeed, the intensity of the public
reaction the to ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is
the best evidence that the court reached the right result.
The Pledge of Allegiance can be a stirring and patriotic ritual. But in a
schoolroom setting, it can also be coercive--and the reaction to the court's
decision shows why. Anyone who dares to question the orthodoxy of the
pledge, whether for reasons of conscience or religious conviction, is sure to
be ridiculed--or worse, branded as unpatriotic--by America's political,
religious and civic leaders.
There's nothing wrong with asking students to begin their day with the
pledge or similar patriotic rituals. After all, one of the purposes of the
educational system is to inculcate good civic values in our youth. But the
atmosphere changes when religion becomes part of the mix. When students
in an overwhelmingly Christian community gather together each morning to
declare their allegiance to their flag and their country "under God," many
religious minorities--including Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims, as well
as atheists and agnostics--may well feel that they are being asked to endorse
the mainstream religion. And while no one is actually compelled to recite the
pledge, the schoolroom is a unique setting: Particularly if a teacher--the adult
authority figure whom students are supposed to obey--is leading the pledge,
a child may well feel that going along is mandatory. Students who object to
the "under God" language--for whatever reason--will often find it easier to
go along with the majority than to brand themselves as outsiders.
In fact, daily recitation of the pledge in a classroom setting is significantly
more coercive--and probably more likely to cause discomfort among
religious minorities--than many practices that the Supreme Court has already
declared unconstitutional, like prayers at graduation ceremonies and school
football games.
Liberal critics of the Ninth Circuit's decision--among them The New York
Times and The Washington Post-- have followed the lead of Judge
Ferdinand Fernandez, who dissented from the Ninth Circuit's ruling. In
Judge Fernandez's view, the reference to God in the current version of the
Pledge is simply a bit of harmless fluff, a minor bit of "ceremonial deism" that
poses no real danger to anyone's religious freedom. But that argument is a
little hard to swallow, given the intensity of the public reaction to the Ninth
Circuit's decision. If the phrase "under God" is meaningless--a notion that
many religious people would vehemently disagree with--then why does it
need to be in the pledge at all? And why are so many people so angry about
its potential exclusion?
The other arguments in favor of the "under God" language are no more
persuasive. It's true, for example, that U.S. currency states, "In God we
trust." But no one is forced to trust in God--or even believe in God--before
handling money. Similarly, court sessions often begin with the invocation,
"God save this honorable court." But in court, no one is ever forced to
swear an oath to God; witnesses always have the opportunity to "affirm"
their testimony instead.
In his dissent, Judge Fernandez also resorts to the slippery slope argument,
suggesting that if schoolchildren do not refer to God in the pledge, "we will
soon find ourselves prohibited from using our album of patriotic
songs"--including "God Bless America" and "America the Beautiful"--in
many public settings. But there's no reason why that should be the case. Just
because students can't be coerced into invoking the name of God doesn't
mean the rest of us aren't free to do so as we please outside the classroom.
Students don't begin their day with a ritual singing of "God Bless America"
or "America the Beautiful." Instead, those songs typically sung at sporting
events and other festive occasions, where attendance is voluntary and there
is rarely, if ever, any compulsion to sing.
One more thing to consider: There's no reason that the pledge must include
an explicit reference to God. In fact, before 1954, it didn't. Schoolchildren
simply pledged their allegiance to "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all." Congress added the reference to God in 1954 to distinguish
the United States from the "godless" Soviet Union. This is precisely the kind
of state endorsement of religion that the First Amendment was designed to
prohibit. Critics of the decision keep talking about the religious faith of the
founders, but the fact is that this country was founded in large part by
religious dissenters. Our Bill of Rights was written against a backdrop of
centuries of efforts by the British government to control religious beliefs. To
this day, Britain has an official state-sponsored religion (the Church of
England), which is nominally headed by the Queen.
Just as the founders of this country rejected the idea of a king, so they
rejected the idea of an official state religion. Here in the United States,
religion is a personal matter, not subject to state control. And if most
Americans would stop and think about it for a moment, they would agree
that they prefer to keep things that way. Who really wants to have Congress
writing prayers and weighing in on questions of faith?
The Ninth Circuit's decision has wrongly been described as holding that the
Pledge of Allegiance itself is unconstitutional. But schools can include the
Pledge as part of their daily student routine. What they can't do is force
students to adopt particular religious beliefs. And that shouldn't be a
controversial position. After all, religious freedom is part of the "liberty" that
the pledge refers to. It's a sad commentary on American society that so
many of our leaders have lost sight of that fact.
MATTHEW M. HOFFMAN is an attorney in Washington, D.C. |
