About the Friday Freethought Perennials (FFPs) in general: This subset of my Letters is to answer questions, nearly always already answered by me and by many others but posed again and again—over many years and in many places—on freethought, atheism, secular humanism, secularism/church-state/”This is a Christian Nation,” and similar topics. These answers are mostly not intended to be original analyses, breaths of fresh air, so much as just putting a whole series of things on the record (I’d say “forever,” except I know better). One source for many of these answers is the 2012 Prometheus Books book by me and my son (Michael E. Buckner), In Freedom We Trust: An Atheist Guide to Religious Liberty (abbreviation: IFWT). It’s available in many libraries and pretty readily in the used book after-market. I’ll cite writings of others that answer these things in more depth if I’m aware of them when I post these.
For what it’s worth, this installment of FFP even more directly tracks the language in In Freedom We Trust—in this case Chapter 18—than most have. Among other things that means that if you want to see documentation or further reading suggestions, the ten footnotes included in the chapter (but not here) may be of interest.
What in the Name of God?
Ed Buckner
Why “God” Doesn’t Belong in America’s Motto or in any Official Pledges of Allegiance
Ronald Reagan, as President, made much of the importance of “In God We Trust” on US currency and “Under God” in the pledge. According to Richard J. Ellis, Reagan “deplored the efforts to remove religion from public life,” specifically connecting this to lawsuits about the pledge and motto. Ellis quoted Reagan as saying in 1984 on the day he accepted the Republican nomination for re-election:
politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality’s foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they’re sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive. . . . Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. . . . Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we are a nation under God, we will be a nation gone under.
Reagan’s narrow understanding of tolerance and his stated conclusion that morality depends on religion are not new ideas. And neither his declarations on either matter or his heavy piety necessarily tell us a great deal beyond what audience (in this specific case to a prayer breakfast in Texas—but likely to a broader spectrum of voters) he was pandering to. The longstanding but wrongheaded connection between morality and religion is discussed in other parts of our book and in other essays of Letters… . I also analyzed the meaning and importance of tolerance and toleration in a Letter called “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Tolerance?” on 13 February.
But the pledge and motto deserve special attention in any case for American secularism.
Many anti-secularists declare that the motto, ubiquitous on all American coins and currency, on legislative and courtroom walls, and in federal legislation, as well as elsewhere constitutes necessary and sufficient evidence that this is a Christian nation, that the United States is not and should not be secular. Those same critics frequently cite the pledge for the same reasons.
In God We Trust
Most American atheists and many other secularists are offended by the religious motto printed on our money, but, whatever else it tells us, it says nothing about the intentions of the Founding Fathers, whose choice of a motto was “E Pluribus Unum” (“Out of the Many, One”). That thoroughly unchristian motto
was chosen by a committee appointed on July 4, 1776, by the Continental Congress ‘“to prepare a device for a Seal of the United States of America.” Committee member Benjamin Franklin proposed the motto “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God,” but the phrase “e pluribus unum” was chosen by the committee and officially adopted on June 20, 1782. The phrase—which was well known, having appeared for many years on the cover of the Gentleman’s Magazine—is from “Moretum,” attributed to Virgil.
It is interesting that our allegedly oh-so-pious-and-Christian Founding Fathers had an opportunity to choose a national motto with the word “God” in it and rejected it in favor of a secular one. (And this was in the days before the secular U.S. Constitution was adopted.)
The religious (IGWT) motto was not printed on all US money until required under the McCarthy-inspired law enacting the IGWT motto as law in the 1950s. The courts have essentially held, by the way, that the motto is constitutional because it is not Christian or even really religious (just “ceremonial deism”). As Justice William Brennan summed it up in a 1984 dissenting opinion,
I would suggest that such practices as the designation of ‘In God We Trust’ as our national motto, or the references to God contained in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag can best be understood, in Dean Rostow's apt phrase, as a form of ‘ceremonial deism,’ protected from Establishment Clause scrutiny chiefly because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.
A later federal court ruling, reaffirmed this idea. I do not agree that the motto or the “Under God” phrase added to the pledge are constitutional, largely because I understand them to be religious. Some Christians, including ardent advocates of the United States as a Christian nation like John W. Whitehead, agree with me that the motto and “under God” should be seen as deeply religious:
. . . the Pledge of Allegiance . . . still contains the phrase ‘Under God’ only because a federal court said that the phrase has lost any religious significance through rote repetition and now amounts to ‘ceremonial deism’” (emphasis is Whitehead’s). But if the motto or pledge language is interpreted as Christian, the courts would then necessarily interpret it as constitutionally impermissible.
The “IGWT” motto has, to be sure, apparently achieved political security even if it should not. Fearful politicians still blithely support it, I suspect most often as an easier path—easier because more people who care very much about it want to keep it than because it makes sense—than any to change it. State legislatures frequently pass laws or resolutions regarding “IGWT,” almost certainly for mostly political reasons. For example, the Georgia General Assembly has invested time and energy in arguing over whether “In God We Trust” stickers for Georgia automobile license plates should be available for free or at a charge of $1.00 each.
When the U.S. House passed a nonbinding resolution reaffirming the motto, 396 to 9, in November 2011, President Obama correctly called that “political posturing.” But neither Obama nor any other prominent political leader from either party called then for eliminating the motto.
“E Pluribus Unum” has appeared on most U.S. coins, beginning in the late 1790s. The motto “In God We Trust” did not appear on any U.S. coin until 1864, when “Its presence on the new coin was due largely to the increased religious sentiment during the Civil War Crisis,” according to R. S. Yeoman.
Pledge of Allegiance and “Under God”
Not only Ronald Reagan but scores of leaders, political and religious, have, probably with widely varying degrees of sincerity, concluded that the Pledge of Allegiance, the short but inspiring declaration apparently agreed to by every patriotic American, is strong evidence of our non-secular status. After all, we seem to proudly include the words “Under God” as a core part of our freedom and of our united indivisibility. If that’s not a reference to Christianity, what could it possibly refer to?
Expressing fealty to any god, however vaguely, should not, we insist, be a condition of citizenship. Love of country is not, nor should it be, measured by a citizen's religious belief or lack thereof. Many atheists, freethinkers, secular humanists, and agnostics have laid down their lives for this country. Many other Americans object to false piety as a part of nationalism.
The U.S. Congress added “Under God” to the pledge—amazingly enough, actually dividing the phrase “One nation indivisible”—to insert it in 1954. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court ruled in 2002:
In the context of the Pledge, the statement that the United States is a nation “under God” is an endorsement of religion. It is a profession of a religious belief, namely, a belief in monotheism. The recitation that ours is a nation “under God” is not a mere acknowledgment that many Americans believe in a deity. Nor is it merely descriptive of the undeniable historical significance of religion in the founding of the Republic. Rather, the phrase “one nation under God” in the context of the Pledge is normative. To recite the Pledge is not to describe the United States; instead, it is to swear allegiance to the values for which the flag stands: unity, indivisibility, liberty, justice, and—since 1954—monotheism. The text of the official Pledge, codified in federal law, impermissibly takes a position with respect to the purely religious question of the existence and identity of God. A profession that we are a nation “under God” is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation “under Jesus,” a nation “under Vishnu,” a nation “under Zeus,” or a nation “under no god,” because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion. [T]he government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion (Wallace, 472 US at 60, 105 S.Ct. 2479). Furthermore, the school district's practice of teacher-led recitation of the Pledge aims to inculcate in students a respect for the ideals set forth in the Pledge, and thus amounts to state endorsement of these ideals. Although students cannot be forced to participate in recitation of the Pledge, the school district is nonetheless conveying a message of state endorsement of a religious belief when it requires public school teachers to recite, and lead the recitation of, the current form of the Pledge.
While that ruling has since been overturned on technical grounds, it accurately describes why the phrase “Under God” should never have been added by the U.S. Congress to any official pledge of allegiance to this nation.
What Jefferson said in a letter to his friend Benjamin Rush in 1803 is still true today:
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
Whoever is in the majority today, could, by next year or next century, find themselves in the minority. Minority rights therefore should matter and be preciously guarded by those now in the majority. Only by opposing a convergence between church and state, only by insisting on a religiously neutral pledge of allegiance and government, can we succeed in defending freedom of conscience for us all. For political leaders to pretend to have the power to act or speak “In the Name of God” is deeply un-American, unpatriotic at its core, and hypocritical quite directly in the sense conveyed in red-letter words in the Bible (Matthew 6:5)—
. . . do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.
Here's how I have pledged for many years. "I pledge allegiance to the republic of the United States of America and to democracy for which it stands, one nation as its goal, with liberty and justice for all." It works and others near me hear it. Let's lift it's ideals up together.