In June 2002, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance on the grounds that it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and thus the principle of the Separation of Church and State.

About a year later, the Supreme Court overturned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the grounds that the claimant, Michael Newdow, did not have the grounds to file suit on behalf of his daughter since he did not have custody.

Although the Supreme Court discarded the case, they did not dispose of the issue. This article reviews the history of the Separation of Church and State idea in America.

The First Amendment

When critics of the Separation of Church and State insist that the phrase never appears in the Constitution, they are correct. The First Amendment to the Constitution states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Legal scholars refer to this wording as the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, and since they often conflict it is the job of America's judges to reconcile differences.

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was our third United States president and the author of the Declaration of Independence. He is remembered well because he wrote frequently and eloquently about a number of topics related to the American ideal.

Jefferson was not present at the writing of the United States Constitution, but was instead in Paris on a diplomatic mission. Still, a strong case can be made that his thought process was present because his protégé, James Madison, was instrumental in bringing the Constitution to fruition.

Debates over the Separation of Church and State often turn on whether or not the Founding Fathers were Christian, as we now understand it, but it is impossible to classify them as a group as they had a variety of deeply held religious beliefs. Patrick Henry and John Adams certainly were men of faith. Thomas Jefferson most certainly was not.

Jefferson's father, Peter Jefferson, died when Thomas was 14 and the future President of the United States was sent to study under an arrogant clergyman named James Maury. We do not know much about Jefferson's relationship with Maury, but we do know that by the time he reached college Jefferson wanted nothing more to do with faith.

Instead, Jefferson began subscribing to enlightenment thinking, which is based on the idea that all problems can be solved by relying on the best and brightest among us. Jefferson certainly considered Jesus to be among the best and the brightest, but he did not accept His divinity. Eventually, Jefferson republished his own New Testament, known as the Jefferson Bible, which removed any references to the divinity of Jesus.

Election of 1800

Jefferson first ran for President of the United States in 1796, and he came in second place after John Adams. Under the electoral rules of the time, he became vice president.

Historians say it was a tumultuous four years. According to some accounts, Jefferson and Adams never communicated during the entire administration.

In 1800, Jefferson ran against Adams again for the presidency, and Jefferson's lack of faith was a central issue. The Adams campaign displayed posters declaring, "John Adams and God or Jefferson and no God!"

When the votes were cast, Jefferson dominated the Southern region of the country while Adams dominated the North. The vote in the Electoral College tied, and it was thrown into the House of Representatives where the chamber voted 29 times before making Jefferson president.

Danbury Baptists

Politics has changed little since the founding of the country, and those who had voted for Adams considered Jefferson to be an illegitimate president. One group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, sought to catch Jefferson in a politically embarrassing situation.

Although presidents write them perfunctorily now, Thanksgiving Day proclamations were highly controversial at the time, so the Danbury Baptists wrote Jefferson asking him to declare one.

Jefferson, a shrewd politician, wrote back saying that it was out of his purview to do such things because the Constitution had created a "wall of separation between church and state." Rather than take the issue head on, Jefferson ducked.

Everson vs. Board of Education

The phrase "separation of church and state" would not become part of the national jurisprudence until the Supreme Court decided Everson vs. Board of Education in 1947. Claimants asked the court to decide whether tax revenues could be used to transport students to private Catholic schools.

Although the court sided with the students since schooling had a distinctly secular purpose, Justice Hugo Black wrote the following in his majority opinion. "The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable."

Since then the court has been asked to decide many other matters related to the wall of separation.

Key cases

In West Virginia Board of Education vs. Barnette, decided in 1943, the Supreme Court decided that no one could be compelled to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

In Engle vs. Vitale, decided in 1962, the court decided that teachers and school administrators, as agents of the state, could not lead students in prayer.

In Lee vs. Weisman, decided in 1991, the court expanded its doctrine in Engle and declared that outside clergy could not be brought in to say prayers at official school events. In doing so, the court created the doctrine of coercion, which stated that the rights of nonreligious students were violated if religious activity took place in a public realm, even if they were not compelled to participate.

Finally, in Santa Fe Independence School District vs. Doe, the court expanded the coercion doctrine declaring that students could not lead prayers at official school events.

If the Supreme Court had decided that saying the Pledge of Allegiance was a religious event, then the doctrine of coercion would require them to strike out the words "under God."

Although they dismissed the case in 2003 on procedural grounds, the issue will likely surface again.