A Thinking Reed

Warning: pious posturing ahead

Written by

Lee M.

in

That wacky atheist Michael Newdow is at it again, this time getting a federal judge to declare the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional again, possibly setting the stage for another go round at the Supreme Court. (The court, you’ll recall, dodged a bullet last time around by ruling that Newdow didn’t have standing to bring the suit since he doesn’t have custody of his daughter. This time, though, he’s brought the suit on behalf of other parents (Newdow is a lawyer and an M.D.).)

I predict much voluble outrage from bloggers, cable news pundits, radio talk-show hosts, etc. etc. at this godless attack on our great country. Despite this, the Supreme Court has pretty consistently ruled that the reference to God is nothing more than “ceremonial deism” intended to recall our history and/or shore up respect for the state.

It’s funny that those same conservatives who so strenuously object to removing “God” from the Pledge hardly ever point out that the Pledge itself was written by socialist Baptist minister Francis Bellamy, in part to express the ideas of his brother Edward, author of the (in)famous socialist utopian novel Looking Backward, whose bright, shining future is an authoritarian collectivist nightmare that ought to make any true conservative’s skin crawl.

Comments

10 responses to “Warning: pious posturing ahead”

  1. Joshie

    But if I recall correctly, “under God” was not a part of the orginal pledge. It wasn’t added to the pledge until the 1950’s, so taking it out of the pledge would be just removing something that was added to it in the first place, just stick it to the Ruskies if I recall correctly.

    I also find it disturbing that so many people seem to feel so strongly that pressuring children into reciting what is essentially a loyalty oath to a every morning before school is somehow ok.

    I only like four things about the Jehovah’s Witness/Watchtower group. Michael Jackson’s first two albums, Prince, and the fact that they recognize pledging alliegence to a the flag and the republic for which it stands is something that should give Christians pause.

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  2. Lee

    Yeah, I think that’s right about the “under God” bit – in your face, Commies!

    Oh, and I agree that pledges and other loyalty oaths are suspect. Also, what’s up with having U.S. flags in church sanctuaries? That’s always bothered me too – it’s like sending a message that we will do nothing to upset the powers that be…

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  3. Marvin

    And I agree about Prince. Purple Rain was the best album of the 1980s. Even better than anything REM did.

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  4. Eric Lee

    Outrage! Posturing! Grandstanding! “That’s so telling!” “Chilling!” Wingnuts! Moonbats! Commies, oh my!

    Okay, you were right… I just couldn’t help myself.

    Yeah, Joshie is right about it being added in the 50’s… ’53, I think, to differentiate America from the “godless commies.”

    It would probably come to no surprise that I will never say the pledge of allegiance to America ever again. I had to refrain on July 4th of 2004 at my parent’s “patriotic Sunday” ‘production’. It made my mom pretty mad, but I think that says more about her than it does me. Well, the both of us.

    I think that wacky atheist has a good point. I also think Dan (poserorprophet) has some good points here.

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  5. Lee

    I’m curious how many schools actually mandate the saying of the Pledge. When I was in school you could opt out of saying it if you wanted (I think you still had to stand up out of respect). My knucklehead friends and I would refrain and then proceed to make snide remarks about the war propaganda being fed to us on “Channel 1” during homeroom (this was during the first Gulf War).

    Oh, and a hearty third on Prince. The man’s a genius.

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  6. Camassia

    One of the more strange and disturbing things I discovered in my church-hunting last fall was that the Yorba Linda Friends Church — whose founding members included Richard Nixon’s parents, interestingly enough — has the Pledge up on its site. This from a denomination that isn’t supposed to take oaths! (Plus the page belongs to a small group for mothers of military service members, which isn’t inherently bad, except that the group seems totally oblivious to the fact that Friends are supposed to be pacifists.)

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  7. Joshie

    A crypto-baptist who was in a number of classes with me in seminary once told me that American flags were put in churches during the civil war so that persons attending the church would know which side that congregation was on. Which is odd, since I would think that would only be an issue in border states like KY, TN or MO, instead of in every church. I had another guy at our former church tell me that flags were in churches “to honor our veterans”, which makes even less sense than the explaination above. I’d be curious to know what the real explanation of this is and whether churches in other countries have national flags in their sanctuaries.

    When I was in elementary school back in the day, we weren’t forced to say the pledge, but we weren’t told we had the option not to say it. All the Jw’s just sat down, and the rest of us said it together. We didn’t say it at all in HS though.

    That Quaker thing with the pledge is funny, because I had an ex-gf who was Quaker but her brother was in the navy and I learned a while back that she had married a guy who is in the army, over in Iraq right now I think. She lived just a few miles from Earlham College too. Go figure.

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  8. Eric Lee

    I can’t actually remember if we recited it in high school. All the before-school marching band practices must have shot my memory.

    We did in grade school and in junior high, though. Even more, in jr. high, for three years, every day, we also had to listen to a horrible recording of the American national anthem before reciting the pledge.

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  9. Lee

    Josh – why “crypto-baptist”? Are baptists looked down on at ole AU Div?

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  10. Joshie

    He was a crypto-baptist because he claimed to be a C of G guy but everything that came out of his mouth sounded like he came right out of the SBC. Maybe crypto- was the wrong prefix. I liked the guy a lot and we were pretty good friends but he was a Baptist at heart, not a person of the Wesleyan persusion.

    Baptist jokes have always been popular among Wesleyans and our ilk; the students and faculty at ole AUSOT were no exception, although our theology prof and associate dean Gil Stafford would reprimand people on occasion for beating up on Baptists (or anybody else) in his classes. He would say, if you don’t think we can learn anything from baptists, you’re saying the Holy Spirit isn’t there and that they aren’t really christians.

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