Hollow pledge: the problem with 'under God'

Christian Century, Nov 16, 2004 by Rodney Clapp

Olson, in the government brief, takes a similar tack. He argues that "under God" has no faith or religious content. He is explicit that it does not even affirm "monotheism" but declares only a "belief in allegiance and loyalty to the United States flag and the Republic that it represents." As such it serves--"clearly" and "solely"--a secular purpose." Citing former Supreme Court opinions, Olson declares that the reference to the deity "may merely recognize the historical fact [that the U.S.] was believed to have been founded 'under God.'"

In short, the God-phrase in the pledge is not a matter of theology but of historical sociology. It makes no reference to the tree or any actual God, but only to the deity (or deities?) Americans once believed in.

Furthermore, the brief makes it clear that the God-phrase does not intend or attempt "communication with ... the Divine.... The phrase is not addressed to God or a call for His presence, guidance, or intervention." In other words, if this "God," who is met in no monotheistic faith, who serves a "solely ... secular purpose" and is located only in the past should somehow attempt to be present, to guide or to intervene in the affairs of those reciting the pledge, that "God" (who sounds rather like the God of the Bible and Christianity) would be distinctly unwelcome.

Note that this is the case put forward by the representative of a strongly "conservative" administration, one deeply sympathetic with American evangelicalism and at least some form of Christian orthodoxy. It is not the argument of an administration indifferent or inimical to traditional faith. Yet the best case it can make for keeping "under God" in the pledge clearly empties the phrase of any substantive theological content. It makes "God" a museum object confined to the dead past and effectively (if inadvertently) posits polytheism in place of monotheism. Not only that, it makes clear that the deity cited in the pledge is appealed to instrumentally, in service of the flag, and has no presence and may offer no guidance. God is put at the service of the flag, not the flag at the service of a real, present and intervening God.

In her opinion Justice Sandra Day O'Connor underscores how the deity is emptied and instrumentalized in and for the pledge. She says the phrase is a "simple reference to a generic 'God,'" and is "inconsequential" in any religious weight or effect. Citing formerly wrought judicial language, she calls the reference "ceremonial deism" and pointedly insists that it does not intend to place the speaker or listener in "a penitent state of mind," create "spiritual communion" or invoke "divine aid." The speakers of the pledge refer to a "generic deity" without any expectation or concern that it or any other deity will actually interfere with their own purposes.

Like Rehnquist, Olson and O'Connor would retain the God-phrase in the pledge. But they can do so only by expressly denying that the God here referred to is the God of Israel, met in Jesus Christ. And they can do so only by admitting outright that for such a pledge they want an amorphous "God" who is always and only on the side of the flag and the Republic for which it stands. They frankly argue not |or a Christian (or Jewish or Islamic) monotheism, but for what H. Richard Niebuhr called henotheism, that is, loyalty to the "god of my country over all others."