A shortened version of this essay was submitted to the Wisconsin State
Journal as a guest editorial on 10/25/2001.
There are among among us groups of citizens, sometimes supported by the judiciary and sometimes not, who believe that public invocations or acknowledgments of the Deity by public institutions or officials somehow breaches the metaphorical wall separating Church and State which is implied in our state and federal constitutions.
The term "separation of church and state" is something of a "feel-good" expression which almost everybody I know, at least, thinks is a good idea. What the concept is construed to mean varies greatly from person to person and from country to country. This is a subject for another essay, however.
For now, let it suffice for me to say that these groups are, to my mind, wrong in almost every case. This matter of the Pledge, however, does not even encroach upon legal territory occupied by issues such as prayer in public schools.
The Pledge is by no means a prayer, as it is not particularly addressed to God, but to ourselves and those who may be around us at the time. It is not, per se, a religious statement either, in that it is not attempting to assert anything about God nor about a belief in Him. The Pledge does, as does many a civil statement of note, simply presume a corporate belief (which is not meant to imply a unanimous belief) in God.
This presumption of a corporate belief and even a corporate faith in God is present in many ways in our law and our American political tradition, some subtle, some not. There is also a presumption that the religious landscape of the country is dominantly Protestant Christian. This is a consequence of the colonization of most of the eastern seaboard of North America (north of Florida) by Europeans (principally but not entirely British) who sought a place to practice their particular brands of Christianity freely. They came from lands where the law had been transformed by many centuries of at least nominally Christian kings and judges, and this legal tradition coupled with the religious fervor of so many of the colonizers' leaders formed the basis of society and government in the original British colonies. There is a reason that the treaty making peace between the newly independent United States of America and Great Britain opens with the words "in the Name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity." There is a reason why Sunday (not Friday, not Saturday, not any other day) is presumed to be a day of rest in our current federal constitution (Article I, section 7). There is a reason why section 18 of the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin (as amended) opens with "The right of every person to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of conscience shall never be infringed;..." There is a reason why the writers of the Declaration of Independence, despite having a variety of religious opinions, were able to make the bold declaration that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;..."
The assertion made by the Pledge is a re-assertion of this principal American political dogma: the State is not omnipotent; it does not have the capacity to define right and wrong, for the State's claims regarding the morality of its actions are circumscribed by Divine law. The State may not do as it pleases with human persons because the dignity and the natural rights of men come from God, and no king, dictator, junta, governor, or president; no parliament, assembly, or congress; no panel of judges no matter by whom appointed; no band of theocratic clerics; no political party; in short, no-one who finds himself wielding, by whatever means, the power of Government, may, without due cause, act in a manner contrary to that dignity or to those rights without forfeiting his or its legitimacy and perhaps his or its right to exist.
This brings us to the question of the Pledge allegiance.
To digress for a moment, the Pledge of Allegiance was composed privately circa 1892, in part to respond to the crises of the day. The Pledge was already a bold statement in that it stated an allegiance not to a king, but to a flag, not to a human person, but to a symbol, representing an idea. It was also a declaration of the unity of the country, which was, in 1892, still very much in the early stages of healing after a bloody and divisive civil war. It began, "I pledge allegiance to my flag," and went on to assert that the nation was one and indivisible, this "indivisibility" having just been established by the war. The Pledge was propagated through the nation's school systems.
In 1934 and 1935, the national flag conferences, in the context of a nation which had taken in a very large number of immigrants since the conclusion of the Civil War, amended the Pledge to begin: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America" to make it clear just which flag was the object of this pledge.
Congress made the Pledge of Allegiance "official" in 1942.
The 1920's through the 1950's saw the rise of totalitarian regimes (the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist China, and others) who dared to assert, as tyrants throughout the ages have always been wont to assert -- though perhaps now on a scale never before seen -- that the State (or the Party) was the ultimate authority in all matters, was the very definer of right and wrong, and was thus unconstrained by any external law.
Having just been through a war with three such regimes, while deeply into a cold war with another, and after a grass-roots campaign by ordinary American citizens, the Congress of the United States, in 1954, added the words "under God" to the pledge. This was to make clear to all men, that we understand that being able to do something does not mean we are free to do it, for there is an overarching moral Law which circumscribes our behavior as a nation.
As tolerance is a virtue to be exercised by minorities as well as by majorities, let us say this Pledge proudly and loudly in the public arena and in our public and private schools, while respecting the consciences of those who decline to participate in all or part of it. Let all men on Earth, including fanatic theocrats who fancy themselves religious men, come to know that this secularly governed religious society recognizes its corporate subservience to our Creator.
May God bless the United States, and may He bless all men of good will
wherever they may be.