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28 June 2002 (Friday): weighing in, under god

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

- from The Declaration of Independence of the United States [emphases mine]

The main problem, as I see it, is that we don't really know what we mean by religious freedom -- whether we want to revise the original intent behind the Constitution.

We've done it with the vote, going from white land-owning males exclusively to universal adult suffrage. This battle isn't going to be any easier. Certainly the founders of this nation were of Christian faith, and certainly they believed in the existence of God. The separation of church and state was not born out of concern for atheists; it was a reaction to the corruption of European churches that held official political power. It was the political role of religious institutions that the founders rejected, not religious spirituality itself.

So I think the real debate runs much deeper than mere nitpicking on constitutional rights. The real question is, "Does America believe that God exists or not?" (More specifically, I suppose, the question is "Does America believe in a single deity whose will determines our collective fate, and whose wishes we strive to obey?") Because if it does, and we're agreed that this is a fundamental assumption upon which our entire political system is built, then there's nothing wrong with putting "In God We Trust" on our currency and "one nation under God" in our pledge of allegiance and "God save the United States and this Honorable Court" in judicial proceedings. Freedom here doesn't include the freedom to reject its basic tenets. If acknowledging the existence of a divine power is a cornerstone of what this nation is, we're stuck with it.

I don't believe in the God whose name is printed on the nickels and dimes I carry in my pocket. I don't believe in a God that saves nations, much less honorable courts that sometimes aren't. I'm not sure I believe in the right to bear arms, either, and we really should invent some new legislative body that doesn't breed such sickening partisanship. But this is the system we've got, folks. As part of a minority I can raise an outcry over violations of shared principles, and the majority is required to remedy them; but changing the shared principles themselves, that requires a lot more sympathy. The vast majority of U.S. citizens believe in God, and always have, so mention of God is not going to disappear from public life any time soon.

I'm not saying the vast majority of citizens are right, mind you. Hell, we used to think owning slaves was okay, and we still think that legalizing gay marriage is somehow an insult to heterosexual unions. It seems to me that the vast majority of the American people are either pretty dumb or aren't very involved in civic life -- probably both. I'm pretty dumb and uninvolved, myself. This democracy is a big SUV with hundreds of millions of people holding the wheel, and not a whole lot of them watching the road. Still, we do the best we can. I'm more concerned about fighting racism and sexism (in all directions) and getting our damned act together environmentally, and repairing our free, secular public education system so that parents don't demand vouchers for private religious schools, than I am about what words we utter by rote as children. I certainly hope someday we'll decide that freedom of religion also means freedom from religion, and in the meantime the state should never, ever officially endorse a particular faith. But beyond that I'll let the issue go. There are more important tasks at hand.

"I pledge my allegiance to the United States of America, one nation of multitudes, indivisible in its diversity; and may I always strive tirelessly, as a citizen of this republic, to ensure liberty and justice for all."

posted by enjelani @ 05:21 PM PST

Replies: 5 comments

amen to that. :)
I guess this subject hit home for me because my daughter has experienced quite a bit of harassment from (probably southern baptist-style) Christian classmates, and was completely unsupported by her teacher, and all this in a public school. She is, because of a whole 2nd grade year of being taunted, "You're going to hell!", quite sensitive to being forced to deal with God in any way. I am working on keeping her from becoming prejudiced against Christians, a task I shouldn't have to deal with while she is 8. If this ruling would hold, it would give her such a little victory. All she wants is a little fairness....
Ack. Posting thru personal angst. Sorry. :/ Shutting up now.

posted by Moonpuddle @ 29 06 2002 09:23 AM PST

Beautiful. That should be published in Salon, or somewhere beyond a blog. Nicely presented argument.

Can’t say I agree though. Granted, there are far more important issues for us to concentrate on. Absolutely true. But this issue is a symbolic one so we have to treat it on its symbolic merits. Americans do get far too excited about their symbols, but if we’re going to be making a daily promise to one (the flag), we have to make sure we’re getting the symbolism right.

I’m no Constitutional historian, but I think you’d find little argument that the founders of this nation were more concerned about protecting individual rights than they were about preserving their Christian beliefs. The majority of Americans today are Christians. The rest are not. The Constitution was developed to protect and respect the rights of individuals with dissenting opinions. Forcing the dissenters to follow a mythology that they don’t believe in seems more totalitarian than democratic to me. You could say no one’s forced, that you could abstain from the phrase in question, but why make that choice necessary? Why deny the minority the right to express its love for our nation with the same unity and spirit as the majority? And this is my whole point with this, because it doesn’t seem that difficult to me: It seems changing the language in question back to where it was in the first place is a way to bring some of that unity back at a time when we could really use it. We have an opportunity here to finally bring everyone in under the same umbrella.

But really, this isn’t about God, the Constitution, or individual rights. It’s about politics. Politicians, knowing that the majority of voters are Christian, are using this as an opportunity to gain leverage in an election year. When the 9th Circuit court ruling was announced, the Republicans quickly jumped all over it, hoping the more liberal Democrats would respond by standing up for the ruling, thereby burying themselves and the party. But the Democrats didn’t take the bait and that’s where we find ourselves now: watching a bunch of false public displays of bipartisanship for the cameras. What a joke. If the majority of Americans were atheists, you wouldn’t see any outcry because the politicians would know that it wouldn’t affect them at the voting booth.

posted by jim @ 29 06 2002 02:03 PM PST

One more very tangential (and maybe irrelevant) thing and then I'll shut up. :)

It's interesting how much credit Christian belief gets on the birth of this country. But if you look back at the biggest influence on the prinicples that brought it into being, it wasn't so much the Bible as it was the writings of Locke, and to a much lesser extent, Hobbes. Looking at the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, there are a lot of mentions of God, but really, both documents are almost word-for-word plagiarisms of Locke's philosophy.

There's a need in this country to deify everything in order to give us and the world some higher sense of meaning. That's why God is everywhere. But really, we should be reciting loyalty to "one nation under Locke" and printing "In Locke We Trust" on our money, more than anything.

Thanks for letting me borrow the soapbox. :)

posted by jim @ 29 06 2002 02:50 PM PST

woohoo!

i was hoping for a long counterargument to my post. i kept second-guessing myself as i was writing it, but i finally figured what the hell, i'll post it and see what people say in response.

thanks for expanding my horizons, Jim. :)

and i guess your argument reinforces Moonie's point about her daughter's religious freedom, too...

posted by enjelani @ 29 06 2002 09:46 PM PST

You guys have said it so very well. I wish only to add a personal comment.

The first amendment states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The first listing in the first amendment is about religion . . . although the entire first amendment can be seen to apply to this matter. To me, it is a sublime paradox that the guarantee of freedom of religion issues from the freedoms guaranteed to all citrizens by the constitution of a government said to be legitimized and justified by the creator, i.e. God. But then I have no problem with paradox, which I equate with such ideas as matter/energy, past/present, life/death, etc./etc. So I agree that we are endowed by the creator with certain unalienable rights, and under that collection of rights, I claim the right to define CREATOR as I wish. Freedom of, by, and for religion.

posted by theo @ 01 07 2002 09:39 AM PST