Sounding this very theme, the Philadelphia Daily News back-handed the nation's politicians for their fixation on the Pledge ruling as if it were more significant than "the fraudulent business dealings of WorldCom" or "the possible collapse of Amtrak" or the war on terrorism, and lamented that the country was being "consumed by this latest non-problem." In the view of the Daily News, "There are good, calm, even conservative reasons we should all applaud the brave decision of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals."
Never shy when it comes to controversy, the American Civil Liberties Union also praised the ruling, calling it "consistent" with recent Supreme Court decisions that have prohibited prayer at public school events. In a statement on its web site, the ACLU reminds us that "the United States, with more than 1,500 different religious bodies and 360,000 churches, mosques and synagogues, is the most religiously diverse nation in the world because of, not in spite of, the fact that we do not allow government to become entangled with religion."
Critics of the court's decision, and there are quite a few, warn that this line of thinking will inevitably lead to the removal of "In God We Trust" from our currency and the banning of songs like "God Bless America" from public events. This was the very theme of Ninth Circuit Court Judge Ferdinand F. Fernandez's dissenting opinion.
The Philadelphia Daily News didn't do anything to allay such fears. Its editorial pulled no punches: "Let's be honest about this issue - finally - after decades of mouth-frothing. The word God doesn't belong in the Pledge, on our money, in anything with the government's seal of approval." Whether one agrees or disagrees with that viewpoint, the Daily News should be commended for its intellectual honesty in that the reasoning used to justify the panel's decision on the Pledge of Allegiance can be reasonably construed to apply to any mention of God in any similar public act or setting.
In making such a declaration, the Daily News, however, undercuts its own argument that the Pledge ruling is not an important issue. It is of the utmost importance as it speaks to the very heart of our nation's culture and our government's official posture toward God and religious faith. It further opens a number of questions as to what the authors of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution intended when they, in the view of Thomas Jefferson, erected a "wall of separation" between church and state.
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