actually does a disservice to religion<\/a>.<\/p>\nThere is no greater insult to religion than to expel strictness of thought from it. Yet such an expulsion is one of the traits of contemporary American religion, as the discussion at the Supreme Court demonstrated. Religion in America is more and more relaxed and “customized,” a jolly affair of hallowed self-affirmation, a religion of a holy whatever. Speaking about God is prized over thinking about God. Say “under God” even if you don’t mean under God. And if you mean under God, don’t be tricked into giving an account of what you mean by it. Before too long you have arrived at a sacralized cynicism: In his intervention at the Court, Justice Stevens recalled a devastating point from the fascinating brief submitted in support of Newdow by 32 Christian and Jewish clergy, which asserted that “if the briefs of the school district and the United States are to be taken seriously,” that is, if the words in the Pledge do not allude to God, “then every day they ask schoolchildren to violate [the] commandment” that “Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord in vain.” Remember, those are not the Ten Suggestions. It is a very strange creed indeed that asks its votaries not to reflect too much about itself.
\nGood reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Folks who are arguing that the words “Under God” should remain in the Pledge of Allegiance try to have it both ways: “It’s religion, and thus teaches our kids to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,27,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law","category-religion","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3984,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/04\/under_god.html","url_meta":{"origin":5335,"position":0},"title":"Under God","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 4-Mar-03 11:52am","format":false,"excerpt":"Hmmmmm. If the \"under God\" clause in the Pledge of Allegience is not really a substantive assertion of state-sponsored religion, but just relatively meaningless \"ceremonial Deism,\" then why are its...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":45647,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/03\/religious-freedom-and-justice-scalia.html","url_meta":{"origin":5335,"position":1},"title":"Religious freedom and Justice Scalia","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 3-Oct-14 10:39pm","format":false,"excerpt":"While I applaud Justice Scalia for giving at least lip service to a strong divide between church and state, I find his argument that the government can clearly favor religion in general over non-religion to be quite disturbing. (How the government can favor religion in general and not have it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36678,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/03\/ceremonial-theism-and-baseball.html","url_meta":{"origin":5335,"position":2},"title":"Ceremonial Theism and Baseball","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 3-Jun-13 11:02am","format":false,"excerpt":"Mass social expressions of patriotism are sketchy enough in my opinion. Mass social expressions of patriotic \/ civil religion? That's just bad theology \u00a0and bad nationalism.Maybe if, instead of a slightly-sloshed seventh inning stretch tune, people would see it a bit more realistically if the words were being solemnly intoned\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":41960,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/11\/give-them-an-inch-and-theyll-take-a-theocracy.html","url_meta":{"origin":5335,"position":3},"title":"Give them an inch and they'll take a theocracy","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 11-May-14 11:43pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Christianists across the nation cheered the SCOTUS decision last week in Town of Greece v. Galloway about being able to open government meetings with an explicitly Christian prayer. After all, as Justice Kennedy, for the majority, optimistically pointed out, \"Our tradition assumes that adult citizens, firm in their own beliefs,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3814,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/26\/eugene_eugene_e.html","url_meta":{"origin":5335,"position":4},"title":"Eugene, Eugene, Eugene","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 26-Mar-03 8:39am","format":false,"excerpt":"Far be it from me that someone turning 87 means they may be too, ah, something or another, um, to comment cogently on current affairs, but if I were, I...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2391,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/07\/01\/monday_missiona.html","url_meta":{"origin":5335,"position":5},"title":"Monday Missionary Position","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 1-Jul-02 8:56am","format":false,"excerpt":"It's today's Monday Mission: 1. 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Do...","rel":"","context":"In "Job Jollies"","block_context":{"text":"Job Jollies","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/job-jollies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}