Political Blasphemy

It lasted but a moment, but while it lasted it was political theater to be relished. The wondrously eccentric U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit-more precisely, two members of a three-member panel thereof-discovered that the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. The judges sided with Michael Newdow, who had complained that his daughter is injured when forced to listen in public school to the assertion that there is a God. One story said that, in fact, the daughter regularly joined in the recitation of the pledge and was embarrassed by her father making a big stink about it. Never mind, the judges know the coercive establishment of religion when they see it.

Well, within hours the entire political order, from left to right and from dogcatcher to President, exploded in outrage at the Ninth Circuit’s political blasphemy. In Washington, both houses promptly passed unanimous resolutions condemning the decision, after which our national leaders marched to the capitol steps to sing “God Bless America” and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, with voices raised to full-throated patriotic pitch at the words “under God.” It took Jerry Falwell all of thirty minutes after the announcement of the court decision to declare that he was launching a campaign for a million signatures in protest against it. That seemed an exceedingly modest goal. A moral entrepreneur of greater imagination might have set a goal of 100 million signatures, with the assurance that the millions of contributions received would be spent in reaching the 180 million patriotic laggards. Sometimes nothing short of unanimity will do, or at least virtual unanimity, recognizing that the Ninth Circuit, Mr. Newdow, and Paul Kurtz’s American Humanist Society are beyond hope.

Once our leaders had put on the record their wholehearted devotion to the proposition that ours is a nation under God-a proposition to which, judging by the public evidence, most of them had never before given a moment’s thought-they felt much better about themselves and went back to business as usual, confident that the decision of the Ninth Circuit, which has a commanding lead in the judicial silliness sweepstakes, would, one way or another, be promptly negated. Political theater aside, the Ninth Circuit’s provocation obviously struck a central nerve in the body politic, revealing the inchoate but powerful popular conviction that the phrase “under God” says something indispensable about the way Americans want to understand their country.

Above All That

Most Americans, that is. For a different take on the dust-up, representative of a certain sector of elite opinion, one goes-but of course-to the editorial board of the New York Times. Eschewing the vulgar atheism of the Newdow-Kurtz eccentrics, the Times is offended by the Ninth Circuit’s lack of good manners. People of better breeding understand that public expressions such as “under God” are simply not to be taken seriously. They are but scraps of sanctimony tossed out to appease the gullible masses, while their enlightened masters get on with the running of a thoroughly secular society. The editors sniffingly observe that the words were added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, “at the height of anti-Communist fervor.” Anything approaching fervor in opposing communism has always been in bad taste at the Times. The editors continue, “It was a petty attempt to link patriotism with religious piety, to distinguish us from the godless Soviets.” How petty can you get. If you’re reading the editorial aloud, remember that “patriotism” is said with a supercilious raising of the eyebrow, and “religious piety” with a slight but sufficiently contemptuous snarl. The editors, or at least some of them, probably know that an officially atheistic totalitarian regime murdered millions of its people because of their religious faith, but that was long ago, and even at the time was no excuse for getting fervent.

“This is a well-meaning ruling,” say the editors, “but it lacks common sense.” Read: The court has been dangerously imprudent in upsetting the natives. “A generic two-word reference to God tucked inside a rote civic exercise is not a prayer.” The grammar gets sticky here, but presumably the editors mean that the God referred to in “under God” is a generic deity. That is not quite the case, of course. Hinduism and Buddhism, for instance, do not propose a God whom one would be under in the way the pledge says we are “under God.” Religio-cultural context, plus indisputable legislative intent, indicate that “under God” is meant to refer to the God of biblical religion, meaning Judaism, Christianity, and (although it was probably not in the legislative mind at the time) its latter-day expression in Islam. As interesting is the editorial claim that the phrase is not a prayer. It is, they say, a civic exercise; to which one might respond that any prayer in the public square is a civic exercise, which does not mean it is any less a prayer. But perhaps the key to the editors’ meaning is that the Pledge of Allegiance is “rote” exercise. The word “rote” denotes something done routinely, mechanically, or unthinkingly. Maybe that is the way the editors of the Times say the Pledge of Allegiance, if they say it. They do not explain why they think less extraordinary Americans say it that way.

Under Judgment

“We wish the words had not been added back in 1954,” the editorial continues. “But just the way removing a well-lodged foreign body from an organism may sometimes be more damaging than letting it stay put, removing those words would cause more harm than leaving them in.” The phrase “under God” is a foreign body, perhaps like a cancerous tumor, but it is safely contained and does not threaten to metastasize, so let it be. It would be nice to be rid of it, but surgery is dangerous. “The practical impact of the [Ninth Circuit] ruling is inviting a political backlash for a matter that does not rise to a constitutional violation.” And even if it does, the editors want to save their powder. “Most important, the ruling trivializes the critical constitutional issue of separation of church and state. There are important battles to be fought over issues of prayer in school and use of government funds to support religious activities.” The very next day, of course, the Supreme Court handed down the historic Zelman decision, declaring vouchers for religious schools to be constitutional. Now that, in the view of the Times, is a battle worth fighting, and the following day’s editorial opposing Zelman was forceful; one might even say fervent. Fervor in the defense of secularism is no vice; aloofness in the battle for keeping the public square naked is no virtue.

I am glad that the words “under God” were added to the Pledge of Allegiance, and that they will almost certainly stay there. It is true that civic piety, like every other expression of piety, can be rote and empty. It can also be hypocritical. As I have said before, it used to be that hypocrisy was the tribute that vice paid to virtue, whereas now it is the charge that vice hurls at virtue. To say that ours is a nation under God is both a statement of theological fact and of moral aspiration. As a theological fact, it is true of all nations. As a moral aspiration, it is markedly-although perhaps not singularly-true of the United States of America. To say that we are a nation under God means, first of all, that we are under Divine judgment. It is also a prayer that we may be under Providential care. It is not a statement of patriotic pride, although many may think it is, but of patriotic humility. The reaction to the Ninth Circuit’s decision was a salutary moment of public witness to the irrepressible popular intuition that, in the words of Lincoln, America is “an almost chosen nation.” I do not expect the editors of the Times to understand any of this. To those of a certain mindset, the intolerable idea, the truly insufferable notion, is that they are under anything or anyone, even if that anything or anyone is no more than “a generic two-word reference.”