The Pledge of Allegiance and the Meanings and Limits of Civil Religion

Bibliographic Data

ID8201128
AuthorsGrace Y Kao (Virginia Tech), Jerome E Copulsky (Virginia Tech)
Year2007
Volume75
Issue1
Pages121-149
Publication date2007-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jaarel/lfl065
OpenAlexW2123379663
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited30

Recent court challenges to the constitutionality of teacher-led recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools have centered on the question whether the Pledge is to be understood as a religious or secular ritual, given its post-1954 addition of the phrase “under God.” After a brief discussion of Establishment Clause jurisprudence on this question, we argue that the category of civil religion usefully illuminates what is at stake in constitutional debates about the Pledge and in similar rituals. We develop four perspectives through which the Pledge of Allegiance in particular, and civil religion in general, can be understood to function: preservationist, pluralist, priestly, and prophetic. Thus the ongoing controversy surrounding the Pledge of Allegiance is best understood not as a dispute between “believers” and “atheists,” but on the contested meaning, significance, and propriety of civil religion in America itself. In the end, we suggest that even without the contested phrase, the Pledge would remain a potent ritual of civil religion, serving all four functions, and urge further serious study of the religious significance of the phenomenon of civil religion.

Allegiance · Library science · Pledge · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Computer Science · Law · Mormonism, Religion, and History · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies

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