When God Pledges Allegiance

A recent court case prompted me to rethink the relationship between God and nation. As per usual, the results surprised me. How delightful it is to surprise myself!

This past May, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that asking schoolchildren to recite the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance did not obstruct those children’s equal protection under the law, which is guaranteed by the state’s constitution. According to the court, the state was not seeking to promote or restrain religious belief. In asking students to recite the pledge, the state was conducting “a fundamentally patriotic exercise, not a religious one."

The court emphasized the voluntary nature of the pledge. No student was being forced to recite the pledge, the court pointed out. Massachusetts was thus abiding by federal law. In West Virginia v. Barnette (1943), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a student cannot be punished for refusing to recite the pledge. 

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette,_ 319 U.S. 624 (1943). 

For the plaintiffs in the Massachusetts case, the voluntary nature of the recitation was immaterial. Their point was not that their children were being coerced into reciting the pledge. Their point was that their children were being discriminated against and were in danger of becoming ostracized within the classroom. The plaintiffs argued what school prayer opponents have argued—successfully—over the past half century. The voluntary nature of the exercise, they insisted, did not diminish the emotional suffering caused by having either to abstain from the exercise (and thereby become socially marginalized) or to participate in it (and thereby violate their conscience).

The plaintiffs

expressed concern that the recitation of the pledge “marginalizes [their] children and [their] family and reinforces [a] general public prejudice against atheists and Humanists, as it necessarily classifies [them] as outsiders, defines [them] as second-class citizens, and even suggests that [they are] unpatriotic.” They claimed that “[i]t is inappropriate for [their] children to have to draw attention to themselves by not participating, possibly leading to unwanted attention, criticism and potential bullying,” and that at their children's ages, “ ‘fitting in’ is an important psychological need.”

Doe v. Acton Regional School District,_ S.J.C. 11317 (2014).

The plaintiffs were acting on principle. Their children hadn’t actually been bullied or marginalized; other children and parents had not, in fact, condemned them for exhibiting insufficient patriotism or Godliness. For the plaintiffs, the state’s error lay in unconstitutionally aligning itself with religion and, in so doing, failing to extend equal protection under the law to those students who didn’t believe in God. That is, an establishment of religion was being signified—as it was whenever God was mentioned in a recitation led by a state employee and carried out in a public institution.

Whatever the merits of the plaintiffs’ argument, I am struck by how fully and utterly they resisted any mention of God. I understand their antipathy toward organized religion. I feel a bit of it myself. But why battle against invoking the name of God? If one is a disbeliever, then why not simply remain silent when those words are read? Choose to dissent—and then, like any dissenter with the courage of her convictions, incur the costs. How deep is the animus of those who would litigate to remove from the schools any mention of the name of God!

When I first began my doctoral research over a decade ago, I empathized with these parents’ sentiments. At that time, I considered strict separation of church and state proper and necessary to ensure fairness in the classroom. Today, I feel somewhat differently. If the American people see fit to ask their children to swear allegiance to the flag, and if they wish to assert their devotion to God as part of that pledge, then the people probably are within their right to do so. For dissenters to abstain is perfectly reasonable, but I don’t know that their abstention requires special accommodation. The schoolchildren were not being asked to pray or read the Bible. They were being asked to permit their peers to acknowledge God in a brief, two-word phrase. Enduring that acknowledgement might infringe on the atheist minority, but even more would stifling it infringe on the majority.

Equally curious for me is the connection between God and country. What exactly do Americans have in mind when they swear loyalty to “one nation under God”? Are they simply asserting that Americans are loyal and obedient toward God? Or, are they suggesting that God is loyal to America and committed to its wellbeing? History would suggest the latter. Indeed, throughout human history, nations have imagined themselves specially favored in the eyes of God.

Perhaps it is inevitable for a nation to want God as a partisan of its cause, given the insecurities that any nation must endure. Still, the notion boggles my mind. Understanding God at all is difficult enough. Spiritual reality transcends human knowledge. But conceiving of God as a sports fan with team loyalty is bizarre. God the Partisan would be as small as nations themselves—a party to jealousies, injustices, and the worst sorts of violence. Of course, the God of the Torah and Old Testament was often such a party. But, for me, that is a dangerous conception of spiritual reality, one that propels believers into waging war rather than peace. Surely, God has nothing to do with national boundaries and national grievances.

If inclusion of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is a problem, the problem lies not in mentioning God’s name. The problem lies in glorifying nationhood to such a degree.

My Fascinating Topic

Yesterday, I had coffee with a colleague. I got to talking about my book project, which I haven’t done any work on for about three months. Packing up my family’s belongings, moving, and setting up shop in Seattle has taken up most of my time. Now, finally, writing is once again becoming a priority. And so I’m once again ruminating on my topic, getting up a head of steam, taking notes all the time.

Yesterday, I announced to this colleague—and to myself—that my goal is to explore how Christian conservatives of the 1980s thought about democracy in America, and especially about the role of the Supreme Court. I don’t believe that I ever before said this so plainly. I’ve known for some time that this is one of the underlying issues with which my project wrestles, but yesterday I found out that this is perhaps the issue.

This got us wondering what Americans today think about the Supreme Court, and whether they even think about it at all. Do most Americans care about the Court? Do they reflect much on judicial review (the Court’s right to declare laws unconstitutional and thereby strike them down)?

The vast majority of my friends and colleagues are liberals or lefties. To the extent that they think about the Supreme Court, they tend to consider it (at least during its recent decades) as merely a shill for the very wealthy. Generally speaking, the left today believes that the Court obstructs the will of ordinary Americans and instead services the interests of the rich and powerful. As such, the Court provokes the ire of liberals and radicals. They point to campaign-finance decisions such Citizens United and McCutcheon as proof that the Court functions primarily to stamp with approval wealthy people’s attempts to buy the political process. Others on the left seize on decisions such as Hobby Lobby as evidence that the justices care more about a particular subculture’s religious convictions than about the majority’s right to affordable health care. In these and other ways, the Court appears to those on the left largely as a roadblock to democracy, an institution that frustrates the will of the 99 percent.

Citizens United v. FEC (2010) 

McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) 

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores (2014) 

What is fascinating about this is that, for years, conservatives issued similar denunciations of the Court. Rulings on desegregation, abortion, school prayer, the voting rights of racial minorities, and the civil rights of criminal suspects, all suggested to conservatives that liberals had captured control of the entire federal court system and used it to override the will of popular majorities. Critics on the right accused the justices of “judicial activism” and “judicial overreach.” Such critics abounded in states where popular majorities expressed conservative values. They accused federal judges—unelected political elites frequently from outside the state—of callously disregarding local customs and statewide policies. So unpopular was the Court among conservatives that, during the 1950s and 1960s, billboards exclaiming “Impeach (Chief Justice) Earl Warren” could be seen along many roadsides. 

Ours is a political system where laws are passed by representatives voted into office by popular majorities. Within that system, the authority wielded by federal judges—unelected public officials—constitutes a anomaly of sorts. This was recognized in 1962 by constitutional scholar Alexander Bickel, who labeled judicial review a “counter-majoritarian difficulty” in American democracy.

Bickel's "Counter-Majoritarian Difficulty"

At various times, different parts of the American electorate have felt frustrated by the Court for exactly this reason. Those who at any time dislike the Court’s current political orientation denounce it as an obstacle to self-rule by “the people.”

To the extent that people think about the Supreme Court, they tend to think about it as a problem, something whose power and influence need to be stemmed. This may or may not be inevitable, given that nobody votes the justices into power, and so few people develop any loyalty to them. Either way, judicial review provides a permanent source of displeasure and frustration. This is not a recipe for satisfaction with our larger political system.

I suppose I have an interesting book topic.

 

Writer's Cramp

Boxes engulf me.

My family and I arrived in our new hometown of Seattle five weeks ago. Since then, our living space has been dissected and cordoned and blocked by stacks of boxes four and five high. Although the walls are gradually receding, they yet remain, constant reminders of our unfinished transition. Boxes form walls beyond walls.

Our apartment is small—smaller than our apartment back in Connecticut and much smaller than our house immediately prior in New Hampshire. Although we have purged many of our belongings, we still own a lot—a lot more than we can easily store. Squeezing into a small apartment is one of the prices we pay for locating in a happening, urban neighborhood in a happening, urban locale. I love the choice we made. But it brought living conditions that constrain us daily.

Our crampedness most affects me when I sit down to write. I suffer from writer’s cramp. I still haven’t uncovered the small table that will serve as my desk, and so I work at the half–dining room table that we’ve managed to unfold. Or, I write in coffee houses, as I have throughout my adult life. I don’t yet have a writing space in our home. I want a writing space, and I don’t yet have one.

Don’t get me wrong: merely living in this magnificent city excites me continuously. But, as of now, the environs inside my home don’t prod and support my writing the way my outer environs do. Right now, I’m not a Seattle writer—I’m a cramped writer.

Downsizing profoundly has shown me how dependent I am on comfortable writing space. I never really thought about it before, probably because I didn’t have to. Now I know. I need to spread out my books and papers; I need to stretch out my body; I sometimes need to pace back and forth like a first-time expectant father. I didn’t realize that these were my preconditions for free, fluid writing. Now I know.

In their way, boxes are wonderful. They foretell of unpacked joys of sorting through books removed from their old order on their previous shelves—books that will become new again, as if appearing for the first time. I am grateful for the content inside these boxes. But, for the moment, these boxes make my life a bit too boxy. My inner writer roars in anticipation of roaming free inside a cage free from clutter.