Introduction

Every constitutional scholar will tell you that "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional, and each will also tell you that it won't be removed. Adding "under God" to the Pledge is America's little hypocrisy--changing our nation's official motto from E Pluribus Unum to "In God We Trust" was the big one--but let's deal with the little one here.

The Founding Fathers, through the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, created a secular federal government that would treat religion neutrally and impartially. God, religion, and sectarianism, while adopted by the majority of citizens of the United States, would be kept out of government by law. The reason was simple and well understood by every educated and informed individual: religions and sectarianism appealed to a person's passions and emotions, not to one's intellect and logical faculties, and so were inimical to and corruptive of a secular government based on reason and the rule of law.

The Founding Fathers were quite knowledgeable of European history and the many wars, persecutions, inquisitions, and cruelties visited against humans and societies in the name of God and His presumed religions. The Founders wanted to spare their new country from that conflict and misery, and instead create a tolerant society that would allow all citizens to believe or disbelieve any religion, theology, or philosophy they wanted without fear of state religious favoritism, prejudice, coercion, or retribution. Very simply, the Founding Fathers thought that freedom of conscience and expression should be allowed and protected by law, not that the law should force citizens to express belief in some specific religion, theology, philosophy, or ideology.

The Two God Phrases

The magnificent vision of the Founding Fathers was reversed by a craven and monstrous vindictiveness in the 1950's when our Congress, wishing to demonstrate its opposition to communism and illogically equating communism with atheism, added "under God" to the Pledge and changed our noble and unifying national motto ("From Many, One") to the sectarian and divisive "In God We Trust." Congress thus established that it was willing to emulate--rather than oppose or refute--the authoritarian and coercive Communists, because it imposed a single belief in God that must be publicly expressed as mandated by state legal power. The imposition of monotheism is obviously as authoritarian and coercive as anything a communist government has imposed on its citizens. Fortunately for millions of American citizens, failure to express this belief hasn't resulted in the next step--being arrested, exiled, imprisoned, or purged--which communist states--such as the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Iran, or the former Soviet Union--have not hesitated to take. Instead, in the United States, failure to express coerced belief only results in criticism, insults, intimidation, marginalization, and ostracism. Living under state authoritarianism in the United States is thus somewhat better than in a communist country. Communist and fascist states admittedly persecute religious believers who beliefs oppose the states' ideologies, but this is no different than the persecution that religious nonbelievers face in the United States whenever the Pledge is recited.

Requiring an expression of "under God" or a belief of "In God We Trust" imposes a conformity of religious belief upon American citizens and is unquestionably unconstitutional with regard to the spirit, history, and letter of the Constitution. The majority of US citizens who are Christian certainly know that a minority of Americans don't believe in a god, but the majority arrogantly believe that their imposition of religious conformity upon the minority is acceptable because the minority is small and lacks political power. Approximately ten percent of Americans would describe themselves as humanists, atheists, agnostics, secularists, rationalists, freethinkers, nonbelievers, or nonreligious. That is certainly a minority, but the God phrases affect more than this small group.

Hindus and Pagans believe in more than one god, and many other religionists don't believe humans live "under" God. Pantheists identify God with the universe, so we would be "within" God. Deists believe we are "after" God, who after creating the universe, no longer personally guides or interferes in its natural and mechanical operations. Deism was in fact the religious belief of our foremost Founding Fathers, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and--late in life--John Adams. They acknowledged that God created the universe (Creator), and designed it to allow institutions such as the United States to appear (Providence), but they did not think that God actively and personally guided the political affairs of humans. (This is why humans have to actively control their own affairs, irrespective of the claimed divine right of kings, as explicitly stated in the Declaration of Independence.) Pagans such as Wiccans, Native American religionists, and other Earth-centered religionists believe God is immanent in all natural entities, including animals, plants, and rocks, so God is "around" us. Wiccans further believe that there are two primary gods, one male and one female. Finally, Pagans, many Buddhists, and other New Age religionists believe God is immanent in humans, so God is "within" us. It should be obvious that a significant minority of Americans believe that God is within us, around us, or before us in time, not above us, contrary to the Pledge. Thus, the Pledge impugns the personal beliefs of many religious Americans as much as it impugns the beliefs of the nonreligious.

So "In God We Trust" and especially "under God" is demonstrably offensive to many persons of religion, not just to secular humanists and atheists. In fact, the phrases are an affront to the freedom of conscience of all Americans except Christians, Jews, and Moslems. Admittedly, this latter group contains the majority of Americans, but majoritarianism has never been sanctioned by any interpretation of the Constitution in the context of freedom of conscience and belief.

Equally troubling about the phrase "under God" in the Pledge is the irony and hypocrisy that accompanies it. The Pledge claims that the flag represents a country that is "indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Did the legislators who added "under God" to the Pledge adjacent to that phrase experience even the slightest twinge of irony or hypocrisy when they inserted it? Our country is supposedly "indivisible," but by establishing a pledge to God, Congress immediately and shamefully divided the country, forcing nonbelievers to forgo the patriotic act of saying the pledge because it contained a phrase they could not conscientiously utter. Next, where is the "liberty" in being forced to recite the Pledge, or more accurately--since federal courts ultimately and properly ruled that no citizen can be forced to recite the pledge--being coerced to recite the Pledge by peer pressure and intimidation by authority figures, or being denied the liberty to recite a patriotic pledge in accord with one's own conscience. And finally, "justice"? Are the federally-mandated coercions and restrictions just described above . . . just? Are they fair, righteous, neutral, correct? Of course not. Contaminating the Pledge with "under God" forces an unneeded and unwanted intrusion of religion into a pledge that ordinary patriotic citizens are expected to recite, 10% of whom don't believe in a god and a significant percentage of other citizens don't believe in one god. Rather than supporting indivisibility, liberty, and justice, "under God" creates division, government coercion, and injustice--yes, irony is indeed dead, and hypocrisy ignored.

People in authority rarely exhibit any empathy with the people over whom they have authority. Even with the slightest anticipation of the consequences of their act to amend the Pledge to promote a sectarian agenda, the legislators should have empathized with those 25 million patriotic American citizens who would be disenfranchised forever. What if a higher authority than Congress forced the congressmen to recite a pledge that contained the phrase "under no god," or "under many Gods," or "by God within us"? They probably would think such an autocratic imposition was illiberal, unjust, and divisive, something, for example, that a communist or fascist government might do to its people. They would be right.

The Pledge isn't perfect: it has deficiencies. For example, most individuals with an intellect don't want to pledge their allegiance to a flag--they would rather pledge their "allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, which the flag represents." The Pledge claims that the Republic has "liberty and justice for all," when it is obvious to any citizen with a brain that this isn't true--in this Republic, liberty and justice are proportional to wealth and celebrity. The Pledge should state, "with the promise of liberty and justice for all." But these are minor deficiencies compared to the intrusion of religious sectarianism of "under God," since inserting that divisive, ignoble phrase is not just authoritarian, it is unconstitutional, i.e., it is un-American. American humanists and atheists could recite the pledge--while holding their nose over the deficiencies--if the God phrase had never been added. But with "under God" in there, the Pledge is an anathema, since it forces patriotic Americans to appear unpatriotic because they must remain mute.

The Reason for the God Phrases

Obviously, the addition of the God phrase to the Pledge and changing the national motto to a God phrase in the 1950's were injustices: the imposition of the majority religious belief upon a significant minority of US citizens who hold differing religious beliefs. The motive behind the historical imposition of religious conformity is well understood by informed scholars. Contrary to the ostensible reason usually put forward--that the phrases were created to demonstrate US opposition to communist values by public propagation of our own contrary and superior values--the true motivation was quite different. It is ludicrous to think that the essence of communism is atheism, and that the simple public expression of our country's belief in God would prove our opposition to that ideology (as if tens of billions of dollars in military spending, a foreign policy of massive interference in the politics of foreign countries, the production and distribution of enormous numbers of weapons of mass destruction to favored allies, and the blighted lives of countless millions of human beings were not sufficient to demonstrate that opposition). The true motivation behind the God phrase acts was to proselytize and indoctrinate our country's children and young adults in favor of monotheism, specifically in favor of Christianity.

This is demonstrated by the simple recognition that the major difference between a communist government (such as the former Soviet Union) and a Western democracy (such as the United States) is not the economic system or form of government, although these are certainly dissimilar in significant ways, and certainly not the difference in religious beliefs, since such differences are either insignificant or irrelevant, or in most cases, similar. Rather, something much more basic is the issue. The major difference between the two systems is possession of an ideology that allows and even encourages repression and autocratic control of the people. The communist system has the propensity to teach and mandate beliefs and doctrines favorable to the state; these beliefs and doctrines are propagated in the school system, the state-controlled media, and advertised throughout the country in an attempt to indoctrinate the citizenry. The communist state is further willing to compel acceptance of these doctrines and beliefs using state power, including the use of physical force against the citizens during the program of pervasive indoctrination and propaganda. In contrast to the totalitarian communist system, the Western liberal democratic system is much less coercive. In the US, there is a very weak system of state propaganda: the government co-opts, influences, and intimidates the independent media, rather than directly controls it, and public schools are the primary means of youth indoctrination through state-mandated curriculum guidelines (such guidelines in many states mandate that the benefits of the free enterprise system and the "American way of life" be emphasized in all classroom textbooks).

In short, the major difference between a communist (or fascist) country and the United States is the former's overt and physical attempts to coerce beliefs and expression of beliefs favorable to the state and its ideology. And such an overt and physical attempt at coercion was precisely what the US Congress did when it adopted the two God phrases: It attempted to impose expression of belief in God, thereby exhibiting contempt for freedom of conscience and American Constitutional values, and shamefully emulate rather than oppose the Communist example. The current Congress is no better, continuing to shamefully perpetuate illiberal communist/fascist (authoritarian and totalitarian) practice by voting overwhelmingly to support the continued presence of the God phrase in the Pledge.

Conflict Between Civil Religions

Sometimes the belief in a monotheistic God that, at a minimum, watches and protects this country is termed the American Civil Religion, but that does not thereby make its official practices and rituals universally constitutional. Traditional expressions of belief in God by public officials in official settings are tolerated as slight accommodations to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Personal and sincere expressions of belief in such a God by political leaders may be a legitimate expression of their religion, and thereby permitted as accomodations, but unwanted, coerced, and imposed expression of such belief forced upon innocent citizens by the state is not. That's the difference, and it should be obvious to any person whose critical faculties have not been deluded by childhood religious brainwashing. Unfortunately, that group of people includes few Americans and fewer Congressmen.

The two God phrases are illegitimate and unconstitutional, but they are also expressions of bigotry, because they were deliberately passed to promote traditional monotheism, especially Christianity, and thereby marginalize and suppress competing Asian, Earth-centered, and liberal religions and non-religious philosophies. The "under God" pledge supporters apparently believe that their religion would fail without constant compelled public support. Is coercion really necessary for Christian monotheism to prevail? Apparently, since the 2000-year history of Christianity is replete with attempts by the state to suppress competing religions by whatever means necessary. I can assure the reader that many non-Christians consider the two God phrases to be unlawful, unethical, state-sponsored bigotry, but they are prevented from doing anything about it because of enormous majority approval of the traditional phrases. This is so typical of Christians: they condemn bigotry and injustice except when it benefits them and has a veneer of legality.

The two God phrases were forced on Americans as an offensive salvo in the war between two competing quasi-religions, the American Civil Religion (ACR) and the Communist Civil Religion (CCR). The ACR is well publicized and understood: it comprises belief in a deistic or providential God that watches over and protects the United States, our country being the presumed Divine expression of justice and freedom on the planet, made manifest by political deists who believed their endeavor was inspired and planned by such a God. Also well known is the CCR, the belief in the supremacy of the state as the historically necessary emancipator of the proletariat from the capitalist bourgeoisie. It is not as well understood, however, that the latter is a religion, but the CCR is a true religion by any functional definition, and it therefore has equal status to the ACR. Other political ideologies with strong emotional content, such as Naziism and Zionism--and in political fiction, Big Brotherism--also are functional civil religions, so I am not limiting the analogy to just two. The American and Communist civil religions are competing religions, and whenever religion becomes involved in any conflict, reason is checked at the door and emotions are used to deal with issues and solve problems. The overwhelming emotional content of such religions allows followers to perform all sorts of outrages, misdemeanors, felonies, and atrocities and feel perfectly justified in performing them. The imposition of God into our country's most important secular traditions is an example of one such outrage committed by our country's civil religion against its own citizens. Surely there can be no greater irony.

Federal Court Religious Accomodation

The usual rationale that federal courts have used in the past to justify religious encroachments into public secular life is that the accommodation to religion has become so deeply embedded in the public consciousness that it no longer has a sectarian purpose or religious meaning, but now can be considered a secular tradition and thus constitutionally permissible. This has been done, for example, with invocations to God at the opening of court and legislative sessions ("God save this honorable court" indeed), prayers to God and/or Jesus prior to legislative sessions, graduation ceremonies, and football games, state-observed religious holidays such as Christmas and Good Friday that don't fall on a Sunday (Easter has never been a problem), the "In God We Trust" motto on public coinage and currency, displays of the Ten Commandments inside government buildings and on government grounds, displays of giant and human-sized crosses in public parks and monuments, prayer and Bible readings in public school classrooms, creches on public property, and many other examples.

As readers know, the more sectarian and coercive examples of these practices have been whittled away by the courts as jurists have become more Constitutionally enlightened, historically aware, and multiculturally empathetic. Prayers specifically to Jesus and prayers that require or expect the participation of students--a captive audience--are no longer allowed. Displays of sectarian symbols--crosses, creches, and the Ten Commandments--are gradually (slowly and not fast enough) being removed by the courts. Christmas has been accomodated with little objection, since many religions and philosophies celebrate something at the winter solstice, but other religious holidays have not been so favored.

The great exception to Establishment Clause injunction have been invocations to or acknowledgements of a generic, deistic "God." Courts have permitted these before official government bodies and on currency and coinage as expressions of our nation's civil religion. Justification for this includes (1) references to the Creator and Providence in the Declaration of Independence and the acknowledged deistic beliefs of our major Founding Fathers; (2) the claimed "historically-accepted" nature of these beliefs to such an extent that they have entered into the "secular realm" of public policy; and (3) a secular purpose for the religious accomodation is claimed, such as "quieting" the legislators or courtroom prior to deliberations, or simply "tradition." Needless to say, these justifications are spurious. The Founders wrote a Constitution that specifically avoids the mention of God or religion except in the injunction against a religious test for office. Their public, official intent was clear, and their personal religious beliefs are irrelevant for subsequent official modification of that Constitutional intent. The two further justifications are nothing more than clumsy and cynical excuses to maintain the status quo and force a majoritarian Christian monotheistic culture upon the minority.

There is no conceivable way that religious concepts can enter a secular realm or provide a secular purpose; the concept is a chimera, although one hypocritically accepted by the federal courts. The entire history of state accomodation to religious impulse in violation of the Establishment Clause is the history of the camel pushing its nose under the tent: it is the history of the constant and repeated pressure of religious adherents to institutionalize their beliefs within the public square and thus gain official acceptance and unearned legitimacy. As I said before, supernaturalistic religions are fundamentally based on emotion, not reason, so they prosper best in the presence of reason and education by utilizing subterfuge, deception, indoctrination, and coercion. Religions can survive but not prosper without subversion and dissimulation, but the emotional tendencies and schismatic nature of religion prevents any single sect from gaining and maintaining power without state support, and that is the key to Christianity's survival and power. Christian believers with political power have used that power to prop up their religion and maintain its position of primacy within the American culture for two hundred years. Indeed, this has been the pattern of Christianity for two thousand years. The emotional draw of competing religions is frankly too powerful to allow Christianity to maintain its ascendancy without official state sanction and support. For this reason, Americans are afflicted with "God" phrases on our currency, in our Pledge of Allegiance, and as our national motto.

The federal courts have ruled that tradition, history, and repeated instances of a sectarian intrusion now permit its continuance as a religious accomodation with secular legitimacy. The degree of imposition on nonbelievers and their disgust with these rulings depends on the specific examples. Most secularists and humanists do not object to observing Christmas as a national holiday (as I do not), but many object to invocations to God in courtrooms and legislatures as official preludes to deliberations, most oppose the appearance of creches, crosses, and the Decalogue on public monuments, and essentially all object to the appearance of supplications to God as our national motto and on our currency (which we are forced to handle to participate in society). Including "under God" in the Pledge falls squarely in the last category. The current Pledge is an illegitimate and authoritarian government imposition on individual conscience and thus a generator of disgust and ill will. Our society would be much happier and more congenial without it.

My revised version of the Pledge of Allegiance--one I could recite without hesitation--is as follows:

I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the Republic by which it stands; one Nation, indivisible, with the promise of liberty and justice for all.