According to the Associated Press, "the court said atheist Michael Newdow could not sue to ban the pledge from his daughter's school and others because he did not have legal authority to speak for her." (Newdow is in a custody battle for his daughter right now.) So the court really didn't answer the question that is being asked.
Justice John Paul Stevens said, "When hard questions of domestic relations are sure to affect the outcome, the prudent course is for the federal court to stay its hand rather than reach out to resolve a weighty question of federal constitutional law." He avoided making any sort of official statement about the issue.
Newdow will continue to fight, and the question will be answered at some point.
Is this issue not clear?
Let us all please, please remember that Congress did in fact make such a law. "Under God" was not added to the Pledge until 1954. It was on this day, Flag Day, that the act was passed. "In God We Trust" was added to paper money in 1955. We were in a religious revival back then, mainly fueled by... yep, an effort to declare ourselves morally superior to communists, particularly the atheist Soviets.
And now we seem to be going through some other strange religious revival... partly because of the Christian right's amazing political momentum over the past couple of decades. But also because we want to declare ourselves morally superior over... yep. Pretty much anyone who doesn't have democracy. Islam. Middle Eastern and Asian countries. (Apparently nobody cares about Africa.) Terrorists. Heck, they're all the same, aren't they? Yeah, right.
So, because Christianity is an official, majority affiliation, it gets the spotlight. And the Christians say that this is okay because this country was built upon Christianity.
There is a great deal of debate over the true religious spirit of those who built this country. True, the Founding Fathers, those who were part of the Constitutional Convention, were mostly some form of Christian. Many were even Calvanists, which is pretty hard core. However it has been argued that many who have had influence, including some of our first Presidents, were Deists. Deists are all about reason, and they reject the sanctity of the Bible. Non-Christian, indeed.
Even so, are these people the only ones who matter? Yes, they did amazingly important things. But what were they building from? Who really built this country?
Can we discount the African paganism of slaves? Strains of religion that, while often acknowledging a supreme being, also believed strongly in the sanctity of nature/the earth and magical spirits. Can we discount other pagans and atheists who no doubt helped to build this country as well?
Even if those who created the Constitution were mainly Christian, and even if their values undoubtedly influenced what was written, can we discount the current American religious landscape, which is made up of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Unitarians, Pagans, Buddhists, Native Americans and dozens of others that are both secular and non-secular in nature? Yes, almost every member of the Supreme Court and the majority of Congress are Christian in some form. It is now as it was then: those in power by and large have Christian values. (At least theoretically.) But according to the government, the number of mosques in the United States has doubled in the last 15 years; also around ten percent of the citizenry is atheist or agnostic.
When will we start demanding that our government represent all of us, and stop this power grab? Non-Christians who are monotheistic know full well what the reference to God in the Pledge and on our money really means. It does not represent them. And it certainly does not represent those who are polytheists or atheists or agnostics.
Regardless of who was or is affiliated with what, having "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance undermines the very spirit of the Constitution.
