Under God Pledge Not a Religious Test?
Hats off to Representative Jim McDermott for doing a rather courageous thing the other day when he led Congress in reciting the pledge and omitted saying the words "under God". Hopefully, the Supreme Court bench took notes on what ensued. The standard party line is that the "under God" pledge is not a religious test because if someone doesn't buy into mixing matters of allegiance to deity and religious ideology with those of allegiance to nation, then they can simply omit saying the two offending words. Sure, you bet. That is exactly what Jim McDermott did. The theocrats on the floor immediately threw a fit with Texas Republican Pete Sessions leading the nasty little stake burning that ensued (article). McDermott had obviously gone socially deviant, offended the theocratic holy cow, and thus straight away needed to be properly taken to task about his transgression. I wonder how many kids in our schools get exactly the same kind of bigoted guff when they attempt to exercise there so-called options about not reciting the pledge. No religious test, no coercion involved? Sure, you bet.
The Sixth Article of the Constitution mandates "No religious test will ever be required as a qualification to any public office or public trust under the United States". The Sixth Article does not say "no religious test except when no criminal penalty results from failing to pass it. The sixth article says "no religious test" period!! The flap on the congressional floor rather decisively typifies why the Constitution's Framers made the religious test clause integral to our Nation's organic law. Aside from the gross First Amendment violations involved, the "under God" pledge has stood in blatant contravention of the Sixth Article for 50 long years. The imposition of the words "under God" in 1954 made the pledge an oath of religious belief, a ceremony of government enforced supplication to a monotheistic deity.
Every representative and senator in Congress is sworn to support the Constitution and that includes the Sixth Article. Belief in God or any other deity for that matter is not a requirement of public office or common citizenship in this nation. Congress therefore has no business peddling a pledge whose wording clearly implies that belief in a deity called God is required!. Removing the offending words from the pledge would not prohibit anyone from believing in God or any other idol. It would simply mean that each person’s subscription to such things (if any at all) would have to stand on its own without having our national pledge used either as a crutch to prop it up or as a device to impose it on others. Non-majoritive religious freedom is one of the profoundest accomplishments of the law-giving of the Nation's founders, the highest ideal of our nationalism, and thus one of our most sacred entitlements as citizens. Government endorsement of the "under God" pledge, as well as other ill-conceived concessions to theocracy, are inexorably robbing us of that sacred entitlement. Government imposed idol veneration is not religious freedom, it is religious tyranny! It's time for the Supreme Court to do their sworn duty and put the insurrection created by the "under God" pledge to an end.