John Whitehead's Commentary
'Under God' in the Pledge Is Consistent with the Beliefs of the Founders
Michael Newdow, a self-avowed atheist, thought it was illegal for his daughter to recite the words "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thus, he sued her school. And a federal appeals court ruled the pledge unlawful, stating that the inclusion of the words "under God" in the Pledge are an unconstitutional establishment of religion.
Newdow's daughter, however, has no problem with the Pledge. Neither does her mother. The conflict in Newdow's family reflects the confusion many Americans feel about the issue. Now it's up to the U.S. Supreme Court to clear up the matter.
One thing, however, is very clear. Those who drafted the U.S. Constitution would have had little, if any, problem with the issue. Indeed, from the earliest days of colonization to the inception and expansion of the American Republic, our nation's government has never been symbolically neutral with regard to the existence and providence of God.
Sen. Homer Ferguson understood this when, in 1954, he proposed to amend the Pledge of Allegiance to include the words "under God." In an official statement to the Senate Committee on Appropriations, he disclaimed any First Amendment problem with the new wording of the Pledge by proffering a distinction between establishing a sectarian religion and publicly proclaiming the providence of God. In his words, "The phrase 'under God' recognizes only the guidance of God in our national affairs, it does nothing to establish a religion."
It would be one thing if Sen. Ferguson's view of the First Amendment were motivated by only a few isolated and peripheral references to the Deity in America's founding documents. It is quite another when, in the words of Justice William O. Douglas in a 1952 decision, "a volume of unofficial declarations [add to] the mass of organic utterances" that "our institutions presuppose a Supreme Being." In his addendum to the Senate Committee Report, Sen. Ferguson quoted a handful of these "unofficial declarations" and "organic utterances" that imbue the amended Pledge with the imprimatur of history. Among those he cited were the Mayflower Compact and the Gettysburg Address, both of which invoked the Divine as America's preeminent source of guidance and protection at pivotal junctures in our national life.
Over the years, the Supreme Court has recognized in various decisions Sen. Ferguson's vision of a constitutional distinction between the establishment of religion and public recognition of the providence of God. This has been done in the context of the uniquely American notion of government institutions and the conception of divinely bestowed universal human rights, which are embodied in the Declaration of Independence and incorporated into the Constitution.
Indeed, before the Constitution was drafted, the 56 members of the First Continental Congress, "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence," pledged their "fortunes" and "sacred honor" to declare America's independence from Britain. The Declaration of Independence, to which they signed their names in 1776, is America's philosophical charter. In the Declaration's opening lines, Congress articulated the fundamental and immutable connection between God and American government:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The vision of rights contained in the Declaration of Independence departed clearly from the secularistic conception of rights prominently advanced by contemporaneous European philosophers such as François Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and manifested in the French Revolution. And in casting the cornerstone of liberty within a transcendent Creator-based framework, Thomas Jefferson incorporated the views of a number of influential thinkers into the Declaration. These included such prominent figures in the history of American political thought as Sir William Blackstone and John Locke, both of whom supported the Creator-based framework. Blackstone, for example, wrote in 1765:
The absolute rights of man, considered as a free agent, are usually summed up in one general appellation, and denominated the natural liberty of mankind. This natural liberty...[is] inherent in us by birth, and one of the gifts of God to man at his creation.
To the Framers, the Declaration was foundational in drafting and amending the Constitution. As John Quincy Adams, the fifth President of the United States, explained in his famous oration, "The Jubilee of the Constitution":
The virtue which had been infused into the Constitution of the United States was no other than the concretion of those abstract principles which had been first proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence--namely, the self-evident truths of the natural and unalienable rights of man always subordinate to the rule of right and wrong, and always responsible to the Supreme Ruler of the universe for the rightful exercise of that power. This was the platform upon which the Constitution of the United States had been erected.
For the Founders who signed the Declaration and the Framers of the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the basic foundation of governmental institutions and the notion of human rights were no ordinary political ideas conceived by men. Instead, rights were expressions of absolute human equality, which resulted from divine creation in the image of a benevolent Creator.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, therefore, are of one piece. The former articulates the philosophical foundation of rights; the latter protects those rights from invasion by government.
Without the Declaration, the Constitution is mere flesh without life-giving soul. There can be no equivocating on this point.
Thus, if history is to be our guide, the Constitution cannot be read to deny our governmental institutions (including our public schools) the right to recognize and symbolically commemorate the central principle embodied in the Declaration--that is, namely, that our nation offers "liberty and justice for all" precisely because of our historical and abiding national faith in the Creator.
Newdow's daughter, however, has no problem with the Pledge. Neither does her mother. The conflict in Newdow's family reflects the confusion many Americans feel about the issue. Now it's up to the U.S. Supreme Court to clear up the matter.
One thing, however, is very clear. Those who drafted the U.S. Constitution would have had little, if any, problem with the issue. Indeed, from the earliest days of colonization to the inception and expansion of the American Republic, our nation's government has never been symbolically neutral with regard to the existence and providence of God.
Sen. Homer Ferguson understood this when, in 1954, he proposed to amend the Pledge of Allegiance to include the words "under God." In an official statement to the Senate Committee on Appropriations, he disclaimed any First Amendment problem with the new wording of the Pledge by proffering a distinction between establishing a sectarian religion and publicly proclaiming the providence of God. In his words, "The phrase 'under God' recognizes only the guidance of God in our national affairs, it does nothing to establish a religion."
It would be one thing if Sen. Ferguson's view of the First Amendment were motivated by only a few isolated and peripheral references to the Deity in America's founding documents. It is quite another when, in the words of Justice William O. Douglas in a 1952 decision, "a volume of unofficial declarations [add to] the mass of organic utterances" that "our institutions presuppose a Supreme Being." In his addendum to the Senate Committee Report, Sen. Ferguson quoted a handful of these "unofficial declarations" and "organic utterances" that imbue the amended Pledge with the imprimatur of history. Among those he cited were the Mayflower Compact and the Gettysburg Address, both of which invoked the Divine as America's preeminent source of guidance and protection at pivotal junctures in our national life.
Over the years, the Supreme Court has recognized in various decisions Sen. Ferguson's vision of a constitutional distinction between the establishment of religion and public recognition of the providence of God. This has been done in the context of the uniquely American notion of government institutions and the conception of divinely bestowed universal human rights, which are embodied in the Declaration of Independence and incorporated into the Constitution.
Indeed, before the Constitution was drafted, the 56 members of the First Continental Congress, "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence," pledged their "fortunes" and "sacred honor" to declare America's independence from Britain. The Declaration of Independence, to which they signed their names in 1776, is America's philosophical charter. In the Declaration's opening lines, Congress articulated the fundamental and immutable connection between God and American government:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The vision of rights contained in the Declaration of Independence departed clearly from the secularistic conception of rights prominently advanced by contemporaneous European philosophers such as François Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and manifested in the French Revolution. And in casting the cornerstone of liberty within a transcendent Creator-based framework, Thomas Jefferson incorporated the views of a number of influential thinkers into the Declaration. These included such prominent figures in the history of American political thought as Sir William Blackstone and John Locke, both of whom supported the Creator-based framework. Blackstone, for example, wrote in 1765:
The absolute rights of man, considered as a free agent, are usually summed up in one general appellation, and denominated the natural liberty of mankind. This natural liberty...[is] inherent in us by birth, and one of the gifts of God to man at his creation.
To the Framers, the Declaration was foundational in drafting and amending the Constitution. As John Quincy Adams, the fifth President of the United States, explained in his famous oration, "The Jubilee of the Constitution":
The virtue which had been infused into the Constitution of the United States was no other than the concretion of those abstract principles which had been first proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence--namely, the self-evident truths of the natural and unalienable rights of man always subordinate to the rule of right and wrong, and always responsible to the Supreme Ruler of the universe for the rightful exercise of that power. This was the platform upon which the Constitution of the United States had been erected.
For the Founders who signed the Declaration and the Framers of the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the basic foundation of governmental institutions and the notion of human rights were no ordinary political ideas conceived by men. Instead, rights were expressions of absolute human equality, which resulted from divine creation in the image of a benevolent Creator.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, therefore, are of one piece. The former articulates the philosophical foundation of rights; the latter protects those rights from invasion by government.
Without the Declaration, the Constitution is mere flesh without life-giving soul. There can be no equivocating on this point.
Thus, if history is to be our guide, the Constitution cannot be read to deny our governmental institutions (including our public schools) the right to recognize and symbolically commemorate the central principle embodied in the Declaration--that is, namely, that our nation offers "liberty and justice for all" precisely because of our historical and abiding national faith in the Creator.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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