The Pledge Preserved and A Note of Instruction

One way to learn more about God's good use of ritual

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld the use of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency, rejecting arguments on Thursday that the phrases violate the separation of church and state.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected two legal challenges by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, who claimed the references to God disrespect his religious beliefs.

“The Pledge is constitutional,” Judge Carlos Bea wrote for the majority in the 2-1 ruling. “The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded.”

We can joyfully express gratitude to God for this! God has displayed His gracious way of intervention and preservation regarding His own providential favor for Christians in this land. Amen and Amen.

Did you notice the words, “The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of the ideals…”

The men of the nations and peoples of citizenship have their ways of symbol and worship. It’s inescapable. Men are ritual beings; men are given to symbolic practice and ritual—in this case, it comes via public voices in recitation as a form of civil pageantry. We have it right here: unison of voices, eyes focused, bodily posture, cadence and form; and with diction of prescribed words—from memory to boot, and more.

We try to deny our rituality as humans, generally, and we try to banish it from our public corporate worship, specifically. It’s can’t be done.

Read this explanation from Ken Myers:

Ritual is thus part of human nature. It is not peculiar to religion; it is part of being human. The rejection of ritual is almost impossible, since actions and gestures have a way of becoming formalized even when we don't try to formalize them. But the effort to overturn all ritual is a wonderful way to identify with the dehumanizing tendencies of modern culture; a wonderful way to reject the assumption that there are things common to human actions and societies.

Here I must ask respectfully if the Puritans' distaste for ceremonies and rituals was really consistent with their convictions about the universality of human nature and the necessity of taking the light of nature seriously. One early twentieth-century Lutheran noted that the New England Puritans possessed a "rigid Calvinistic hostility to everything that is studied or uniform in religious ceremony, and for a century or more they seemed to glory in the distinction of maintaining church song in the barbarous condition that this art has ever suffered since the founding of Christianity." The Puritans' purge of liturgy began with the worthy goal of liberating Christian consciences from false obligations imposed by the Roman Church. But one must ask if they didn't err in condemning any effort to structure the experience of worship in ways that accord with created human nature.

Ceremony per se is not a problem. After all, the strictest Reformed churches still structure their services somehow, still have ushers walk in sync when delivering offering plates, and still allow pastors to use certain archaisms when praying. There are hidden rituals in many allegedly ritual-free churches. These hidden rituals simply lack formal names; often they came into being without any thought or care, usually being products of pastors' personalities.

From Ken Myers and his site at Mars Hill Audio commentary and cultural analysis ministry in Virginia.

Ritual and formalism are here to stay—the question regarding public worship is: are you using it for the good pleasure and honor of our gracious King?

Events like this ruling from the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals reminds of us of such things.

G. Mark Sumpter