Faith can’t be used to justify war efforts

Arellano is a graduate student in Latin American studies.

By Gustavo Arellano

Any progressive worth their weight in Chomsky books knows that
the Pledge of Allegiance originally did not have the phrase
“under God” in it, despite the fact that it was written
by a Baptist minister named Francis Bellamy.

Then-President Eisenhower said upon its inclusion in 1954 that
by adding a spiritual aspect to what had once been a purely secular
recitation, ” … we are reaffirming the transcendence of
religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way
we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which
forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace
and war.”

It’s fitting that the president ““ the
commander-in-chief of the armed forces and a career Army man
himself ““ would allow such an explicit combination of church
and state to be recited by millions of schoolchildren every day
since. Whether it be songs, slogans or popular thought, the
United States has constantly employed religious overtones,
specifically of a Christian nature, to rally its citizens in
solidarity during times of war. This must be kept in mind as
to not delude ourselves with false pretensions of a secular War on
Terrorism.

Although employing religious overtones during war is nothing
new, it wasn’t supposed to be this way for the United
States. The Founding Fathers ““ many of whom were Deists
or Unitarians ““ founded this country to be one of reason, a
country of laws and definitely not a country in which one religion
was to supersede all others. 

Nevertheless, Christian themes infiltrated the framework and
forming principles of the nation. Newspapers of the time
railed against the heathen Indians, the Catholic Mexicans and
Spaniards, the Ottoman Turks and the Hirohito-worshipping
Japanese.

Songs are another way in which to unite the country under a
vengeful God ready to kick the enemy’s ass. “The
Battle Hymn of the Republic” is little more than a thinly
veiled bloodbath written with the excuse of God’s glory to
kill the enemy. It’s not surprising, then, that
“God Bless America” has emerged as our second national
anthem since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Think of those terms: “God bless America.”Â To
bless something or someone is to give it power bestowed by a
greater being in order for a particular thing. In this case,
employment of this song hearkens back to the good old days of
Manifest Destiny, when a nascent America called on its God-ordained
power to subdue Mexicans and kill the indigenous inhabitants of the
West. In the war on terrorism, we are asking the Christian God
to give us the power to emerge triumphant over our enemy ““ in
this case, the perverted form of Islam that inspires al-Qaeda and
other terrorist organizations.

Even when there is a lack of religion in the enemy, the United
States positions itself against it using religious
overtones. “Under God” was introduced to the
Pledge at the height of the Cold War, when we were trying to
position ourselves as the world superpower. In the same year
the Pledge was altered, the Committee on the Judiciary wrote that
” … one of the greatest differences between the free world
and the Communists, (is) a belief in God.”

We are currently involved in yet another war with no specific
enemy or goal other than the eradication of groups that want to
destroy the United States. But don’t let Pretzel Boy
fool you; one of the main reasons we are pursuing the “axis
of evil” and their allies is because of religion. Each
country has a specific religious theme, from officially atheist
Iraq and North Korea to Muslim Iran and the Muslim terrorists of
the Philippines. You don’t see Bush or the United States
going after regimes that don’t have a specifically religious
or atheist bent toward it, like Nigeria or Indonesia.

The constant use of religion in war should be a warning sign to
all freedom-loving Americans. Constantly invoking religion to
fight makes us no better than the extremists we pursue.