Letter: United States not founded on religious text

Monday, July 15, 2002 | 8:43 a.m.

I would like to thank Robin Joyce for his July 7 letter in which he defends "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. His letter is a perfect example of why it should be taken out. He spouts his religious rhetoric while quoting passages from a religious text that he agrees with -- the Bible.

Well, Mr. Joyce, not all Americans read or believe the same religious books that you believe in, not all Americans believe in a monotheistic male god and not all Americans believe that there even is a god or gods.

You've proven in your statements that you believe that this nation is made up of people with Judeo-Christian values and therefore those values should be pushed on everyone. This country is based on the Constitution, not the Bible as you would have us believe.

And nowhere in the Constitution does it say that we Americans have to believe, worship or pledge anything to your god or to anybody else's god. In fact, this kind of religious nonsense is exactly what the Constitution protects us from.

If you want to pledge anything to your god, go ahead and do it. But trying to force those beliefs on anybody, especially young schoolchildren, is a monstrous assault on all of our civil rights. Nobody is trying to take away your right to worship how you please.

What the people who disagree with you are trying to do is restore the Pledge of Allegiance to the way it was when all Americans could identify with it. It was wrong to inject a deity into the pledge in the first place, and to keep it the way it is moves us one step closer to a theocracy. It seems to me that Mr. Joyce is saying yes to God but to hell with freedom.

TERESA HARRIS