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Critics of atheist lawsuit scoff at its chance of altering inauguration
By: Leah Fabel
Examiner Staff Writer
December 31, 2008
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| Atheist Michael Newdow wants to bring to an end the opening and closing prayers at the presidential inauguration. (AP file) |
The suit, filed by notable atheist Michael Newdow along with lawyers from the D.C.-based American Humanist Association, argues that government neutrality ought to be the bottom line — not only among people of different faiths, but between people who believe in God and people who don’t.
The attempt is not Newdow’s first. In 2001 and 2005, he lost similar cases, and he’s fought numerous legal battles over the use of “so help me God” in the nation’s Pledge of Allegiance.
This year, however, instead of going after the president-elect’s use of religious language as they have in the past, the plaintiffs are attempting to stop Chief Justice John Roberts from using it in the ceremony, and to bring to an end the opening and closing prayers. The prayers started in 1937 at the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and will be offered this year by Pastors Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery. Every president since Abraham Lincoln has added the phrase “so help me God” to the end of the oath of office, and some argue that the practice dates back to George Washington.
“We’re not asking for any of them to say there is no God, and we’re not asking for an invocation or a benediction to be anti-religion,” said Robert Ritter, a lawyer on behalf of the American Humanist Association. “We’re saying that religion, by the Constitution, is not a part of government.”
Scott Walter, executive director of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said a broad definition of religion has long been respected as a part of public functions and that Newdow’s most recent suit was little more than a “publicity stunt.”
The lawsuit seems “oblivious to the fact that a Catholic Supreme Court justice and a Protestant president-elect are both going to say ‘so help me God,’ and that shows exactly how religious liberty should work,” Walter said. “Together, they can invoke a religious authority” despite differing theological views.
A problem would arise, he said, if the president-elect or the chief justice were forced to use specific religious language against their will.
But Ritter said that regardless of Roberts’ and Obama’s individual beliefs, that attitude leaves out Americans who believe in no religion at all.
“This is Obama’s grand moment, but this is America’s grand moment as well,” Ritter said. “And the inauguration doesn’t serve all of us when it recognizes one religion and not others.”
Regardless of the eventual outcome, the suit will likely not affect the festivities to take place on Jan. 20, as the defendants have 30 days to prepare a response.
