“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
This pithy passage, the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States, is very familiar to those who were instructed to stand and recite these words every morning in public elementary school. However, for the average third grader, this daily ritual of facing the flag and placing their right hand on their heart contains far more controversy than they might expect.
For years, the Supreme Court has gone back and forth on whether public school students can be legally compelled to stand for the Pledge. Although arguments about the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment have dominated many rulings, the establishment clause, which prohibits Congress from establishing religion, has recently taken the limelight. In particular, the phrase “under God,” which was added to the Pledge in 1954, has drawn controversy.
The Pledge of Allegiance is not the only American expression that contains religious references: Judicial, military, and political oaths end with “so help me God,” and the official national motto of the United States is “In God We Trust.” These references have become commonplace and ubiquitous. For instance, few people, regardless of their religion or lack thereof, will bat an eye at passing around coins inscribed with “In God We Trust” on a daily basis. However, to best adhere to America’s secular roots, these ever-present religious references in state-sanctioned public life must be carefully and consciously evaluated.
The Evolution of Diction
In 1620, the Pilgrims fled religious persecution in Europe and settled in present-day Massachusetts, creating the short-lived Plymouth colony. Despite — or perhaps, due to — the religious undertones of its settlement, the political founding of the United States was remarkably secular. There is no mention of “God” or any other religious reference in the U.S. Constitution except for one sentence in Article 6 that prohibits “religious tests” for public office. This is in line with many other constitutions around the world — for example, the word “God” appears in only five of the 27 European Union nations’ constitutions.
Kevin Kruse, a history professor at Princeton University and author of the book One Nation Under God, confirmed in an interview with the HPR that while the United States “was certainly a nation of Christians” at its founding, “that’s quite a different thing from the founders creating a Christian nation.” To Kruse’s point, the original 1892 Pledge of Allegiance did not contain the words “under God.” After its creation, the first edits to the Pledge in the 1920s were small: Some were grammatical semantics, and another appended the phrase “of the United States of America.” It was not until the religious boom of the Cold-War-era American public that “under God” was added to the Pledge.
In 1954, the Presbyterian minister George Docherty gave a powerful sermon stating that, “to omit the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance is to omit the definitive factor in the American way of life.” A few months later, President Eisenhower signed the phrase into law. From the 1950s to the 1980s, dozens more references to “God” were added to oaths, currency, and ceremonial traditions and codified in American law.
This religious revival in the 1950s was primarily motivated by corporations, which pushed ministers to preach free enterprise and “spiritual mobilization.” Peter Levine, a professor of public affairs at Tufts University, concurred that religion has historically played a large role in attracting people to civic involvement in an interview with the HPR. “There’s a lot of self-governance in religious organizations … they’re a place where people get drawn in,” Levine said. Today, the U.S. Code of Laws contains 68 references to “God,” and all 50 state constitutions also refer to “God” or a similar divinity in some context.
An assortment of Supreme Court cases and opinions regarding religion in public life followed in the mid-to-late 1900s. In 1962, the landmark case Engel v. Vitale ruled official school prayers unconstitutional on the grounds that they violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Similar cases struck down mandated bible readings and prayers before graduation ceremonies. However, the Supreme Court has also ruled in favor of limited religious references in publicly sanctioned activities. For example, the 1983 Marsh v. Chambers case upheld a prayer prior to the Nebraska state legislative session. These esoteric and somewhat contradictory rulings have left the door open for more recent legal challenges to the Pledge.
The Supreme Court has also equivocated on whether or not public school students can be legally compelled to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. After ruling in favor of the Pledge in the 1940 case Minersville School District v. Gobitis, the court quickly reversed that decision in the 1943 West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette case.
Lemons, Endorsements, and Ceremonies
After a plethora of challenges, the legal basis for government-sanctioned religious references has slowly become more well-defined. The Supreme Court has offered a few broad criteria for determining whether or not legislation violates the Constitution on religious grounds. Specifically, in the 1972 Lemon v. Kurtzman case, Chief Justice Warren Burger defined the “Lemon test,” which broadly outlines when laws regarding religion are unconstitutional. In the 1984 case Lynch v. Donnelly, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor elaborated on Burger’s words by articulating the “endorsement test,” which states that government action is unconstitutional if it creates the perception that the government is either endorsing or disapproving of religion.
While the Lemon and endorsement tests are well-formulated, a more useful metric when it comes to the Pledge is O’Connor’s opinion in Elk Grove v. Newdow, where she articulates four criteria for deciding whether or not traditional observances can make religious references constitutionally — what she calls “ceremonial deism.” First, the reference must be historically ubiquitous, a condition met when “a given practice has been in place for a significant portion of the Nation’s history, and when it is observed by enough persons that it can fairly be called ubiquitous.” Second, the reference must not take the form of worship or prayer. Third, it must not refer to a particular religion. Fourth, the reference must be “highly circumscribed” and contain minimal religious content.
Although O’Connor concludes that the Pledge of Allegiance is acceptable ceremonial deism, facets of her analysis remain contentious. In relation to the first criterion, the phrase “under God” in the Pledge has only been around since 1954 — debatably not a “significant portion” in the history of a nation that was founded in 1776. On the third criterion, O’Connor herself admits that the word “God” excludes people who adhere to polytheistic religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, not to mention a growing number of atheists. Kruse summarized the opposing viewpoint succinctly: The court calls “it ceremonial deism, or ceremony that doesn’t matter … but I think it matters for a lot of people.”
Constant Contention
Controversy over religious references has continued into the 21st century. The most notable trial dealing with the constitutionality of “under God” was the 2004 Supreme Court case Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow. Here, Michael Newdow, an atheist and a California attorney, argued that the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in his daughter’s school constituted a violation of the establishment clause. Newdow claimed that even though students were not forced to participate in the recitation, compelling students to listen to the phrase “under God” still violated their rights. Yet instead of issuing an opinion on the pith of Newdow’s complaint, the Supreme Court dismissed the case, ruling that Newdow’s status as a non-custodial parent did not give him legal standing to bring the case on behalf of his daughter.
Since then, Newdow has continued litigating against religious references in government sanctioned acts. In 2007, he failed to convince the Ninth Circuit court to remove “under God” from the pledge and “In God We Trust” from currency in Roe v. Rio Linda Union School District. He later represented Olga Paule Perrier-Bilbo in her 2017 lawsuit to remove “so help me God” from the citizenship oath, although her complaint was later dismissed by a federal judge.
Newdow is not the only person building cases against the Pledge of Allegiance. Parents, teachers, and the American Humanist Association claimed that the Pledge requirement violated the equal protection clause of the Massachusetts constitution in the 2014 case Jane Doe Vs. Acton-Boxborough Regional School District. The judge ruled in favor of the school district. A similar lawsuit in New Jersey also failed.
Legislators have also stepped into the fray. In an attempt to prohibit future complaints similar to Newdow’s, Representative Todd Akin (R-Mo.) proposed the Pledge Protection Act in 2002, which would prevent all federal courts — including the Supreme Court — from hearing constitutional challenges to the Pledge. Although the act has passed the House of Representatives twice, it has yet to be approved by the Senate.
What War on Christmas?
But while religious references are currently restricted to a few occurrences, accepting these as commonplace may set the stage for more religious influence in government in the future. Kruse told the HPR that he “kept seeing the Pledge of Allegiance being invoked for larger claims about the United States, claims for the need for religion to be put into politics across the board.” With Trump pronouncing the end of “The War on Christmas” and proudly stating that more people are saying “under God” and “Merry Christmas” since his election, Kruse seems to be correct in his observation that religious phrases are slowly creeping into the national public vernacular.
Aside from the issue of religion, the controversy over the Pledge of Allegiance also questions whether or not it wrongly or incorrectly indoctrinates patriotism. Levine wryly stated: “It’s actually an empty pledge,” because minors — who make up the majority of the people who recite the pledge daily — cannot legally pledge their allegiance to anything.
Although a final ruling has not yet been reached on the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance, school districts around the country are already taking decisions into their own hands. Some have suspended students for refusing to recite the Pledge, while others have begun skipping the Pledge altogether. In the near future, more legal challenges will likely be filed concerning religious references in public rituals, and the Supreme Court may soon be forced to issue a decision.
At its root, the debate over the Pledge is not simply about adding or omitting two words. It is an argument about patriotism, history, freedom, and American tradition. Disregarding the true implications of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance may unintentionally pave the way for a slippage in the separation of church and state that America has treasured since its founding.
Image Credit: Unsplash/Matthew T Rader