Features
Dissenting Opinion
Why "Under God" Should be Removed from the Pledge of Allegiance
by Kipp Hebert
-- Publication Director
When the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2002 that recitation
of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools
was unconstitutional, it provoked a massive backlash across the nation.
The decision proved to be overwhelmingly unpopular, with polls showing
about 90% of the public in favor of keeping the phrase. For good measure,
the Senate passed a resolution condemning the Court's ruling by a vote
of 99-0. Of course, in politics it is important to pick your battles
wisely, and clearly for the forces of secularism, this one is not worth
the effort. Putting considerations of pragmatism and popularity aside,
however, the Pledge is blatantly unconstitutional.
The Pledge constitutes an improper endorsement of religion, which Justice O'Connor defined in Lynch v. Donnelly as a government action which "sends a message to non-adherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community".
It is not the phrase "under God" by itself that makes the Pledge unconstitutional, however. After all, there are numerous references to a higher power in the public arena, including federally recognized religious holidays, "In God We Trust" printed on our currency, and the phrase "so help me God" as part of the presidential oath of office. The difference is that all of these uses serve a primarily secular purpose, and most importantly, are non-coercive activities. In contrast, even though it is not compulsory for students to recite the Pledge, the influence of peer pressure on impressionable youth and the implicit message sent by an authority figure leading the class in the Pledge effectively coerces participation and undermines parental authority over a child's religious upbringing.
Proponents of the status quo argue that "under God" serves a secular purpose by establishing a foundation for our rights and values, pointing to the Declaration of Independence as evidence that the nation was founded on religious concepts. However, while the values the Founders invoked - equality, freedom, basic human rights - we take to be universal, the theology is clearly not. If the phrase "under God" were removed from the Pledge, if we no longer appealed to a higher power, would we no longer have these rights or even a moral basis for governing society? Of course not - in actuality these rights are protected by the state and grounded in law, not theology. What truly unites America is our shared values and belief in every human being's inalienable rights; appealing to a higher power as the source of these rights was merely the Founders' way of lending legitimacy to a political philosophy that was not well established at the time.
Another common argument is that the phrase promotes the secular goal of solemnizing public occasions by giving our nation a sense of higher purpose. We don't need a religious on invocation to make our flag respectable, our actions noble, or our principles virtuous. Our flag is consecrated not by a particular deity but by the blood of those who have died to protect it - Christians and Atheists alike. America is united and defined by shared values that transcend our religious divisions and, with "under God" removed, the Pledge of Allegiance can once again be a testament to this fact.