ARTICLES

Just False Religion?

"Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance

BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER

"It's hard to keep a good atheist down" should perhaps be inscribed on Michael Newdow's escutcheon — if he has one. The Sacramento emergency room physician and lawyer has already lost three out of four battles in his war to drive the word "God" from government-sanctioned ceremonies. But he keeps on fighting.

Two years ago, Newdow convinced the ninth circuit court of appeals in San Francisco that the phrase "under God" should be expunged from the pledge of allegiance, saying it was an imposition of religion on his elementary-school-aged daughter. Last June, however, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed Newdow's case on procedural grounds; Newdow didn't have full custody of his daughter, said the court and so could not make the final decisions concerning her education.

Undaunted, Newdow hasn't given up. The January 6 San Francisco Chronicle reported that Newdow has filed a new case in U.S. district court in Sacramento against the inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. His new case avoids the procedural problems of the first, for Newdow is representing himself and four parents with four children in San Joaquin and Sacramento County schools. The suit alleges that one third grader was ostracized by classmates for refusing to say "under God" in the pledge and a tenth grader was criticized by his teacher for not reciting the pledge.

How successful Newdow will be this time with his case remains to be seen. When, the last go-around, the ninth district court of appeals upheld Newdow' s contention that "under God" in the pledge violates the separation of church and state supposedly enshrined in the First Amendment, storms of protest arose from many religious Americans. Catholic voices were not silent (as was, perhaps, fitting, since it was a Catholic group — the Knights of Columbus — who pushed the inclusion by Congress of "under God" in 1954). Both Catholics and Protestants argued that removing the phrase would be tantamount to a public denial of God.

But would it be? After all, what exactly does it mean to say that the United States is "one nation under God"? How is it "under" God? And what God is it under? The Christian God? The Deist God? The Mormon God? Or Allah? Does the word "God" mean something specific? If it doesn't mean anything specific, does it mean anything? And if it doesn't mean anything, is it worth saying?

In short, is the removal of "under God" in the pledge something Catholics should be all that concerned about?

"Anybody on the theistic side of the cultural war should be concerned" about this issue, said David Carlin, a Catholic and a former Democratic Rhode Island state senator. Though not "the most important issue in the world," the presence of "under God" in the pledge is "symbolically significant," said Carlin. "Not just Newdow, but the people who would like to eliminate that phrase are people from the secularist side of the cultural war. And their aim is to inflict a defeat on the religious believer side, which is mostly Christian, with the Catholics under that umbrella."

But isn't "under God" a meaningless phrase? "Yeah, but I don't think that is an objection," Carlin said. "In the pledge of allegiance you can't very well introduce a theological paragraph detailing your meaning, and I think the meaning does fit, from person to person and faith to faith, to some extent. Orthodox Christians have in mind a trinitarian God; orthodox Jews do not; but I don't see there's any objection there that Jews and Christians should both use the word God. That's a long American tradition, using the word God in a way that will appeal to a broad range of religious and philosophical believers."

"The pledge — with or without 'under God'— is the sort of thing it would be better not to have at all," said Father Abram Ryan (not his real name), a Southern California priest. "But once we have it," he said, "it's worse to get rid of it."

It would be better not to have the pledge at all, said Ryan, "because it is not true if its description of our country is intended to be a statement of fact, and is not morally sound if it implies that our allegiance is simply dependent on a political ideology." Allegiance to our nation, said Father Ryan, follows from "the necessity of the virtue of patriotism, which is not based on our form of government, any more than my honoring my father is due to the manner in which he governs his household."

But, Ryan continued, "it would be worse, even so, to get rid of the pledge because its suppression would scandalize the ordinary citizen by promoting the atheistic 'multi-cultural' intentions of those who currently oppose it. All in all, a prayer for upright morals for our people and faithfulness to their constitutional oaths for our rulers would be more to the point."

"If we are going to have the pledge, I think it's good that God be mentioned in it," said Thomas Storck, who has written on Catholic social teaching and political thought, including the book, Foundations of a Catholic Political Order. Though he thinks "public acknowledgements of God are good," Storck said he fears "that for most people the invocation of God in the pledge serves more as a sort of example of civil religion than as a real acknowledgement of the true God. Instead of realizing that we should be saying 'this nation under God' with fear and trembling, we tend to say it as sort of a celebratory ritual. To the extent the pledge functions as a ritual of civil religion, it really is not important. It is important only to the extent that it functions as a way of reminding Americans that we, not only as individuals but as a nation, are subject to the law of God."

What does Storck mean by "civil religion"? "There's been a tendency in American history from the very beginning to invoke God as a kind of special god of America and to have a religion that really has no dogma," Storck said. "When we Catholics talk about God, we should be realizing (implicitly at least) the whole Faith. Yet there's a kind of generalized civil religion in America in which God is mentioned; politicians for example will say 'God bless you' at the end of speeches,' and it doesn't really mean much. We can invoke God and ask His blessing, but we're not really thinking of the revelation God has made. Civil religion is mostly a kind of tame religion that is more nationalistic than truly an example of the Faith."

American civil religion, Storck said, tends to see religion as an instrument that makes for a well-run state rather than as the purpose for which all things, including the state, exist. "There's a famous statement in Washington's Farewell Address that, to my astonishment, I find Catholics and other people who tend to be dogmatic Christians repeating with approval: 'of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,' etc. That's a purely instrumental view of religion. Religion becomes something like Plato's noble lie — you need it to keep the people in line."

Part and parcel of the American civil religion, Storck said, is the view that, as Abraham Lincoln said, the United States is the "last, best hope" of man and that, with America, a new era opened in human affairs. Such "a secular messianic idea" of the country, said Storck, "has to be anathema to a Catholic. A mere political arrangement cannot essentially alter human affairs. The only new thing that ever came into the world was at the incarnation. Just rearranging political dispositions and so on can't change human nature. The Soviet Union tried — it had this idea of the new Soviet Man. The Soviets thought they could, by changing economic and political arrangements, create a new human being. I think that Americans tend to think there is a New American Man. That can't be; only grace can create the new man."

David Carlin agreed that the Pledge is an example of civil religion. Carlin said the sociologist Robert Bellah, in his 1967 article, "Civil Religion in America," spoke of civil religion "as a binding force in American society; it has helped to hold American society together." But, Carlin said, Bellah says the American civil religion "has not simply been a God bless America faith; it has also been a God judge America faith. Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, where the idea of judgement appears very strongly, is an example of this. It suggests that there are certain transcendent ideals and standards by which we can be measured and which have had a positive effect on society. And I agree with him. Now I think the civil religion has largely broken down since Bellah wrote that article, because there has been a great raising up of people like Newdow, the secularists, the anti-religious people. You could say 40 or 50 years ago that all Americans had this common faith, this civil religion; it wasn't literally true, but the people who disagreed with them would have shut up about it. The people who disagree today are far more numerous, and they don't shut up."

Carlin did not dispute the claim that the American civil religion carries a utilitarian view of religion, and that this utilitarian view could lead to religious indifference. (Carlin has developed this theme in regards to the Catholic Church in his book Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.) He said: "the phrase I remember from Washington's Farewell Address — 'whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle' — there, your are thinking of religion in purely utilitarian terms." But, said Carlin, "it is a high utilitarianism — it's not the economy or the military but moral character. But it still is a means to an end, and it might well be that, not any religion, but any number of religions might function effectively as means to this end. If you think of religion in utilitarian terms, you're undermining it to some extent — just as if you think of education in utilitarian terms, you're undermining it."

But, Carlin continued, "we do think of education mainly in utilitarian terms — it's good for getting a job and making a living; but if we didn't have 95 percent of the people thinking of it in those terms, we wouldn't have any room for the five percent of the people who value learning for its own sake. So I'm not greatly disturbed that people would see either religion or education as being useful things. They are useful things."

But what if virtue — virtue real and complete — requires not merely a "good" religion but the true religion? That it does, of course, has always been the teaching of the Catholic Church. But, then, what are we to make of the Pledge of Allegiance which embodies mere civil religion? In defending the phrase "under God" are we defending what is essentially a false religion?

Both Carlin and Storck suggested that, in saying the pledge, Catholics can bring a true content to the words "one nation under God." Indeed, there is nothing in the phrase itself that is positively false or irreconcilable with the Faith. But Storck spoke of another danger he sees in the pledge — the danger of false patriotism.

"As a Catholic I do have some questions about the pledge," said Storck, "mostly because I think that in the United States there is this notion of America, not as a place where we happen to live, where we were born and raised, for which we have affection, but of America as an idea; of America standing for something. And this has been with us from the early days of the country, at least from the Revolution, if not before. To me this is not patriotism, which is like affection for the family you grew up in — the love which we have for things we're familiar with. This affection extends out from our families to our neighborhoods, our towns, or regions, and so on. That is what real patriotism is, not an adherence to an idea.

"A lot of Americans only know how to express their patriotism by means of this notion that America stands for something, and I think it's gotten celebrated in the rhetoric of Presidents Bush and Reagan. I've seen a quotation, attributed to a number of people, that America is not a piece of land between two oceans but an idea. To the extent that the pledge represents that kind of patriotism, it is not a good thing."

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