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The first amendment says
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This is usually interpreted to mean that the government of the United States is not allowed to favor one religion over any other but, starting in 1953, the Congress decided that this was One Nation Under God and in 1956 they chose In God We Trust as the national motto. Although this seemed to violate the first amendment, it was all cleared up in 1963 when the Dean of Yale Law School coined the phrase Ceremonial Deism to refer to practices that are “so conventional and uncontroversial as to be constitutional.”. Since then, each time the apparent contradiction between God's official role in government and the First Amendment's prohibition has been addressed in federal court, the courts have excused as merely ceremonial deism.
The paradox has yet to be tackled head-on in the Supreme Court but the Robed Ones have mentioned ceremonial deism on several occasions. Speaking of the phrase Under God in the Pledge of Allegiance, Justice David Souter observed that the pledge's invocation may be considered "so tepid, so diluted, so far from a compulsory prayer that it should in effect be beneath the constitutional radar."
The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on whether Under God or In God We Trust is a violation of the First Amendment or whether it is merely ceremonial deism but we have no doubt that, when they do, they will give it the court's full blessing. |
