Under Whose God?
adrien rain burke
In 2002, The California Circuit declared what turned out to be a brief respite from the ubiquitous religiosity of the Pledge of Allegiance, as it is recited daily by little children in school
It should have been celebrated as a triumph for the First Amerncment. But it
was vilified, and the man who brought suit to prevent his little
daughter from being forced to recite a loyalty oath that contains an unconstitutional
religious test, was subjected to death threats from followers of rhe
Prince of Peace and other adherents of Christianity, which, we are told, is a
force for decency in the world.
First, a few historical notes regarding the Pledge
of Allegiance: It was not born in the passion of wartime, but composed for a
public school Columbus' Day celebration (now known as Native American Day to
all who know anythiing about the life of that of that thoroughly
bloodthirsty conquistador) and neither god nor country were included in it,
although it was composed by a Baptist minister and (what a shock!)
socialist.
It is not the product of the authors of the Declaration of
Independence, the Constitutionm or its first ten amendments,The Bill of Rights, who feared state religion, but of late
Victorian sentimentality.
The guy who composed it - the Reverend Francis
Bellamy, was a peace activist who hoped it would be used by other nations as
well, so it read "my flag," not "the flag." And though it did say "the
republic for which it stands," it made no mention of The United States of
America.
The "under god" phrase was added in '54, (over the objections of
the pledge author's family, incidentally) and boy was my dad mad!
For one thing, he was an atheist - and he had good reason to be mad.
The
deity was added very specifically to contrast our "god-feariing" Christian nation with the nasty,
atheistic communists, and it was hoped that communists could be detected by
their refusal to say "under god."
All sorts of unconstitutional legal maneuvers were being
used then to purge communists - some of which have survived the so-called
"communist threat."
But my dad wasn't a communist - just a confirmed
Democrat and civil libertarian, who thought mixing religion with politics insulting to him
personally - and a very bad idea otherwise.
He told me at the time that it
isn't a very big step from identifying the nation with god, to identifying
god with the nation, and assuming that whatever we do is god's will -- a
convenient rationale (as we can see all over the world) for, well, for just
about anything.
And those two words exclude a great many points of view
besides godless communism. The word God, when capitalized, tends to mean the
deity of the Judeo-Christian bible, for instance. So if you call god Allah
or Brahma you've just been shut out of this patriotic group.
And even if you
belong to certain religious minorities within the Judeo-Christian circle, you may be
left out because you can not say the name of god. Then there is the
monotheistic conceit - the idea that there is and can be - only one god: a
being outside of ourselves and outside of his creation. For the pantheist,
this is an impoverished theology, and for the polytheist, it is a
transparent grab for power.
There is only one god, the monotheist declares - and I Know Him! All other gods are false or demonic, all other ideas are dangerous, and if you don't
want to be subject to eternal tortures at the hands of the one, true, loving god's henchman, the
Devil, you will follow my teachings - exclusively.
This is usually followed
by an appeal for money.
When this is backed by the full force of law, the
results are disastrous. The burning of heretics and witches comes to mind;
the torture instruments that silenced Galileo; the Taliban.
Which brings us
to the issue of gender. God with a small "g" may arguably be a generic
deity, but we all know that god is a male noun. Some new-agey Christians
like to pretend that the biblical deity might be female as well as male -
against all biblical evidence.
The fundamentalists of all the bible-based sects
know better, as does the Pope of Rome and the various imams and mullahs and
rabbis who spend their lives in study of the "holy book." It is instructive,
should one prefer to espouse the gender-neutral theological position, not to actually read the
bible, which could very fairly be described as a very long treatise against femininity.
The gender of our national mythology of choice may seem especially unimportant to the
nonbeliever, or agnostic, but it is crucial in my opiinion to the status of
women, and I would argue further that the cosmological underpinnings of the
Judeo-Christian-Islamic concept of god-jehovah-allah are particularly
unfair to females.
At every point in the history of women's stuggles -
against our position in English law as chattel, for
occasional life-saving medical intervention in childbirth, for the right to be educated,
to vote, and to work where our interests and skills would indicate - we have
been necessarily at war with the bible, its adherents, and its
"god-inspired" laws.
It is no accident that the deity of our traditions is a male. And it is not
incidental that so much attention in most religions is given to the control
of women - in fact, I believe that the control of women is the primary
reason for religion, and has been since the overthrow of goddess-based
faith.
So to those who claim that one may believe in a non-Christian system
of belief and still in good conscience, repeat the pledge of allegiance, I
would suggest that if young Pagans in classrooms all over America began
substituting "under the Goddess" for "under god," I'd be willing to bet real
money that the pledge itself would be dropped very quickly and without
fuss.
And why don't they? why don't the children of atheists, Pagans, and other
religious dissenters protest this daily betrayal of their own sacred
beliefs?
Well clearly it is the effect of peer pressure. It is hard to be
different, and children are generally tactless. Conventional religion teaches and enforces conventionality. Until kids grow up and learn to mask their dominance struggles under a civilized facade, they can make life very hard for the "outsider." As parents, we remember that. However well we have learned to cope with our own differences, we squirm to think what being different could mean to our kids.
Most of us have long learned to suppress our beliefs in the interests of social harmony. We hesitate to put the harsh burden of unconventionality on our children - who so
much need approval. Without the approval of their peers, they are
friendless, and without the approval of their teachers, they risk
failure.
The idea of children reciting any loyalty oath every morning is disturbing in any case to one who believes that intelligent
questions are really at the heart of an education designed to produce
thoughtful citizens of a self-governing nation, rather than subjects of a repressive state.
The
propriety of the oath itself ought to be a subject for discussion in every
classroom where it is recited. And if it is argued that, say, 5-year-olds
are not ready for such a discussion, shame on us all then, for making them
recite an oath they cannot know the implications of.
Obviously, we start
this oath business before children are ready to question the world around
them, in order to override such questions in advance of their dawning.
Peer
pressure is tremendously effective - consider our presumably adult senate, which voted
against the court's decision 99-0.
Is it possible that not one of these
college-educated (and for the most part, lawyers) has never questioned
religion, or its imposition by the state upon the minds of young children?
No it is not - and we'll never know whether they really believe in god, or
the Constitution or anything else they say they hold dear. Because peer
pressure dictates that they say the self-righteous thing, usually under the
pretense of great courage.
As if it took courage to utter the platitudes
we've all memorized since babyhood.
And it's a cheap call on the surface.
A senator who might be willing to stand up for or against capital punishment or
abortion, or some issue with consequences for human life in the real world,
can afford to go along with this convention.
One senator opined that
children should be "allowed" to call the blessings of God upon their
studies. But they are not "allowed" at all. They are FORCED.
That near-miss
for VP, Senator Lieberman, made the breathtaking assertion that if the
"under God" phrase is unconstitutional, then we'll just have to change the
Constitution! What - change it to eliminate the Establishment Clause?
Would Lieberman - a practicing Jew - be so eager, I wonder, if the phrase were
"under Jesus?"
It could've happened. If this obvious "religious test" had
been added to the pledge in the early decades of the 20th century, under the
influence of, say, William Jennings Bryan, we might have ended up with an
oath that excluded Jews and Muslims, as well as just Pagans and atheists.
And
think of the
consequences! To a nation of citizens grown in a prochristian, rather than a
secular, state, would German nationalism have had more appeal in America? I
think it would.
Many of Hitler's ideas (eugenics, for instance) were born
in the USA, and many young Americans were attracted to fascism prior to WW2
- it amounts to a hidden history in a nation where the crudest racism was
long accepted as science, and one in which less intellectual types marched
the street in sheets and pillowcases, openly espousiing genocide, under the
standard of a burning cross.
I have begun to see that democracy dies
quietly and in small increments. Dissent is rarely outlawed, it is withered
by social disapproval. We have replaced love of the Constitution, which is
a collection of ideas and freedoms, with absolute loyalty to a
God-identified flag, which is a design printed on cloth, and is as often
made in China as in the USA.
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