HE'S EITHER LYING OR JUST WOEFULLY WRONG :

The Pledge of Allegiance : Why we're not one nation "under God." (David Greenberg, June 28, 2002, Slate)

It's an old shibboleth of those who want to inject religion into public life that they're honoring the spirit of the nation's founders. In fact, the
founders opposed the institutionalization of religion. They kept the Constitution free of references to God. The document mentions religion only to guarantee that godly belief would never be used as a qualification for holding office--a departure from many existing state constitutions. That the founders made erecting a church-state wall their first priority when they added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution reveals the importance they placed on maintaining what Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore have called a "godless Constitution." When Benjamin Franklin proposed during the Constitutional Convention that the founders begin each day of their labors with a prayer to God for guidance, his suggestion was defeated.

A number of folks have pointed to this essay as somehow proving the wisdom of the recent Pledge decision. But a brief reference to just this one paragraph reveals the author to be self-contradictory and either purposefully lying or merely wrong on several points.

(1) He begins by saying that the Founders opposed the institutionalization of religion but in the next sentence acknowledges that their own state constitutions required belief in God as a qualification for holding office.

In fact, they did oppose establishment of a National religion--they were after all writing a Constitution that would form a nation--but precisely so that the Federal Government could not dictate what religion should be established in the several states. They were of course forced to make many compromises to keep the various states on board and the specter of losing their own established religions might have led certain states not to adopt the constitution. But this is nothing like a generalized opposition to "institutionalization of religion".

(2) He next says that they "made erecting a church-state wall their first priority when they added the Bill of Rights". it hardly seems necessary to cite the actual language once again, but it reads : "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Note three things : (a) Congress is covered, not any State; (2) we're back to that same rather limited concern with "establishment"; (3) what wall? Answer : there is no wall. This wall metaphor is simply not the language or the intent of the Founders or the Constitution, but instead represents mere dicta from a letter that Jefferson wrote years later.

(3) His characterization of the defeat of Franklin's prayer proposal is so misleading as to call into question the author's very honesty. The stated reason for the failure to pass Franklin's proposal was, that coming as late in the Convention as it did, it might lead people to believe that they were growing desperate. Even those who spoke against it said it would have been appropriate at the beginning of the Convention. Instead it was decided to ask that a sermon be preached on the 4th of July--several days hence--to which George Washington is reputed to have led a number of the delegates. Moreover, one of the first acts of the first Congress was to hire chaplains for the House and Senate, where they continue to be employed (though not the same ones) to this day. How bizarre to imagine that the Founders thought it okay to begin each session of the Federal legislature with prayer by clergy, but that they would frown on a pledge with a generic reference to God being said by children.

Whether this essay is as dishonest as it seems or is just the product of ignorance, it is almost entirely worthless except as an example of the lengths you have to go to pretend that the Founders favored godlessness.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 1, 2002 8:06 PM