gilly54

<a href="http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=14050" target="_blank">http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=14050</a>

Here is the 5-front plan of attack that the BP reports is is being planned regarding the Pledge.

Any thoughts?

I was told that Bill Lockyer, California's AG has offered support for this group. I hope this isn't true.

Gilly

Toto

You should not assume that the five fronts are united. Lockyer is a politician doing what politicans do.

He's probably going to argue "ceremonial Deism", or some variant of the Pledge doesn't really mean anything. The ACLJ is going to pursue its own agenda.

I am worried that the school district is arguing that
What role in history would that be?

RichardMorey

Yeah, that's strange...I don't remember reading about God, say, building planes in WW2; nor did I hear about him helping design the Taj Mahal, or the Saturn V rocket that took Apollo 11 to the moon.

Oh, maybe they mean "to acknowledge the role of [belief in] God in history." But that demolishes their argument, doesn't it?

I hope no one in the courts buys this stuff, but I know they will. *sigh*

Ron Garrett

The shows again that proponents of the Knights of Columbus version are cowards and liars. The ACLJ, never above double-talk where winning is concerned, contends that the phrase "One nation under God" does not violate the Establishment Clause, but merely recognizes the undeniable truth that America's freedoms come from God. Of course, one may deny that this is in fact true, since America is not a theocracy and never has been, and argue that in fact our freedoms come from our constitutional republican form of government.

Democratic freedoms have never been a facet of any theocratic society. Indeed Israel was never a democracy at any time until recently, and any literate person knows democracy flows from pagan Greek culture, not Jewish or Christian. In point of fact modern governments better approximating theocracies, the pattern for America apparently desired by the ACLJ, are characterized by gross abuses and inhumanities, as in the Shari'a courts of northern Nairobi. In any case, the very statement that God is the source of our freedoms, a God never mentioned at any time in our foundational legal rights document, the
Constitution (not the Declaration as Sekulow well knows), is a uniquely creedal statement of American Christian evangelicalism. Further, Mr. Sekulow knows all too well that the prupose of the addition to the pledge of "under God" was to declare our status as a Christian nation, and any other pretense is cowardly subterfuge. Which brings me to the next item from the California AG.

"The depth and breadth of the public outcry at the panel's decision should leave little doubt that the pledge, as it is recited today, serves the secular purpose of fostering patriotism and a sense of unity among Americans."

The pledge in fact had this very patriotic purpose before the addition of "under God", and that purpose was not dependent on an affirmation of Judeo-Christian monotheism. We were saying "one nation, indivisable", before, and now the phrase "under God", since all know that Sekulow and others mean under Sekulow's
personal deity, Jesus, is in fact a source of division. The very notion that only Judeo-Christian monotheists can be patriotic and unified Americans is understandably offensive to many.

To argue that this pledge addition was not at its inception, and not still today an attempt to establish Christianity as the official religion of the United States, when all and sundry fighting for the clause are Christians, is simply a reflection of certitude among its supporters that the pledge addition cannot stand
in a straight up and honest debate, but in fact must be imposed through outright lies and obsfucation, something Christians are supposed to eschew, and the kind of help an all-powerful deity ought not need.

Added to the above, the Elk Grove Unified School District's claim that "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance "to acknowledge the role of God in history" is a revision of facts worthy of the Soviet Union at its worst. It is an outright falsehood, one also used to post the Decalogue in schools in my own state. But it was not historians who suggested the pledge addition. It was the Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus. It was not the history teachers that lobbied for the posting of the decalogue in North Carolina schools. It was the Southern Baptist Convention, the Africam Methodist Episcopal, the Assemblies of God, United Pentecostals and the Church of Christ.

I believe it is a further proof of the moral bankruptcy of American Evangelicalism that its leaders follow some of the early Church Fathers in believing that lies told in the service of the faith are moral and right. Can a savior who claimed to be the living embodiment of truth really be pleased by manipulation, deception and falsehood put forth supposedly in his name? I don't see how, and I don't see how the tactics and strategy the ACLJ and others are adopting can be other than an embarassment. Any strategy that depends on double-talk simply makes the faith look weak and gutless and encourages the critics.

I have to wonder what would happen if all evangelical leaders were as forthright and transparent as John Hagee in declaring their purpose and intent to oppose non-Christian religion and promote Christianity by every means available. One may hate him, but still respect his honesty. Sekulow's tactics just scream , "Here I am, another slippery lawyer."

Questionable Intelligence

I've tried to explain this to many people, and unfortunately I have been unsuccesful. When you say 'one nation under god' you are saying without doupt there is a god. That's it. Its not complicated. What other meaning could one nation under god have? It means there is a god. It was put there to proclaim there is a god. Anyone else who says its to honor our history or any other der-doingish type argument like that is wrong. Oy vey <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Toto

Not only that, but you are endorsing a particular theology - that god is a controlling force "above" us - not within us.

Ron Garrett

Point well taken T.

Toto

It's not original with me. Check out <a href="http://www.pledgeproject.com" target="_blank">www.pledgeproject.com</a> , which is run by someone who classifies himself as a pantheist.

Wyz_sub10

I think it acknowledges the role in paranoia over the "Red Menace". The addition of those words are basically a direct response to communism.