"Under God" and "In God We Trust"

Thanks, C4K. It just seemed that things were being taken personally that weren't meant personally, so it just seemed that silence was the best way to keep this on a pleasant level. 'Sorry for the distraction.

Now where were we?

C4K,

Carpro said:

He raises an excellent point. Though I understand your reasoning for taking it out(i.e., the hypocrisy of leaving it there), the reason that most of its opponents want to take it out is to further secularize our society, removing all traces of God from the public square. I don't believe a sterile public square will be a clean public square given the things that are already crawling and sliding into our society to replace God and Judeo-Christian influences/references.

 

On Wednesday, September 14, 2005, a federal judge from the Eastern District of California ruled that it was unconstitutional to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.
According to David Kravets of Associated Press News:

"Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools was ruled unconstitutional Wednesday by a federal judge who granted legal standing to two families represented by an atheist who lost his previous battle before the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge's reference to one nation 'under God' violates school children's right to be 'free from a coercive requirement to affirm God.'

Karlton said he was bound by precedent of the 9th U.S. circuit Court of Appeals, which in 2002 ruled in favor of Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow that the pledge is unconstitutional when recited in public schools.

Karlton, ruling in Sacramento, said he would sign a restraining order preventing the recitation of the pledge at the Elk Grove Unified, Rio Linda and Elverta Joint Elementary school districts, where the plaintiffs' children attend.

The decision sets up another showdown over the pledge in schools.

The Becket Fund, a religious rights group that is a party to the case, said it would immediately appeal the case to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If the court does not change its precedent, the group would go to the Supreme Court."
9/14/05 Associated Press

The scope of this case was reduced on 7/18/05 to include only the legality of reciting the pledge in public schools.

http://www.undergodprocon.org/pop/Newdow2.htm

 

I think I brought this up elsewhere, but appeared to have fallen upon deaf ears. The case here in question is whether reciting the pledge as a whole is legal or not, not whether the words "under God" as a specific are legal or not. There is sufficient legal prededent to keep recitation of the pledge as it now stands as legal.

 

John posted
It doesn't matter if one is liberal, conservative, moderate, or anywhere in the spectrum. "God" isn't in the Constitution.

If I ask "but why is God absent?" would that be too far off topic?

 

To that end, it seems that all agree the answer to be "yes". The discussion seems to revolve around to what extent, if any, those phrases respect an establishment of religion, or to what extent they're phrases of faith vs phrases of patriotism.

 

Simple. Because the Constitution is not a document of patriotism. It's a document of law.

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and is complusory in its application to all.

The motto and pledge are noncompulsory, non legal, and nonbinding. That doesn't mean they have no value, just that they have no value as law.

 

I think I said someting along these lines before as to why I think it is absent. I think it is because (and I posted some quotes from George Washington about this) the founders never dreamed of this nation getting so far away from God so they did not think it necessary to include.

 

The Founders didn't ask the question "What places should God be excluded from?" They asked the question "What places should government be excluded from?"

The problem we have is that government is now allowed into just about every endeavor and area of life... God according to liberals should be limited to home and church.

If our government was even relatively close to being within its constitutional bounds... the "Pledge" in school wouldn't be an issue.... since all schools would be rightly private thus preventing government from indoctrinating children.

 

It's a matter of the heart. One can say say the pledge and have it be a vain repitition. One can say the pledge and take it to heart. Or one can refrain from saying the pledge completely.

 

Interestingly, the Constitution allows the POTUS oath to "affirm" his duties, instead of swearing an oath. At least one POTUS made use of that. The accommodation was included by the Framers to accommodate those who, like the Quakers, morally objected to the swearing of oaths.

Scripture encourages us to not have to rely on oaths, but to simply be our yes be yes, and our no be no (aka, an affirmation). But I don't see that swearing an oath, in and of itself, violates scripture. However, I think that "requiring" the swearing of an oath may be a scriptural violation. Does that make sense?

I recently was a court witness in a traffic case, and had no problem swearing an oath to tell nothing but the whole truth.

 

You can't close this thread. We haven't resorted to bickering and namecalling yet!!

 

that is kind of where my thinking goes. that it was not intended to be a secular gov. I might even go as far as the original thought of free religion was: "you can be and kind of believer in the God of the Bible you want to be."