SUPREME COURT AVOIDS RULING ON GOD IN PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

June 14, 2004
For immediate release

For more information contact: Don Feder (508) 405-1337

Vision America president Rick Scarborough said he was disappointed that the United States Supreme Court avoided ruling on the constitutionality of God in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals – the most reversed appeals court in the nation -- held the invocation of God in the pledge violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause. The case was brought by Michael Newdow, an atheist, on behalf of his 8-year-old daughter.

The Supreme Court ruled today that because he doesn’t have custody of his daughter (he’s divorced from the child’s mother), Newdow lacks the legal authority to speak for her. This vacates the lower court decision, allowing school children to recite the Pledge for the time being.

“I find it unbelievable and disheartening that the Supreme Court can’t bring itself to declare that students have a right to repeat the words ‘one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,’” Scarborough declared.

“How far we have come,” the Vision America president continued, “Forty years ago, we had prayer in the public schools, invocations at graduations and Ten Commandments monuments in public places. Today, the highest court in the land doesn’t want to rule on whether saying ‘God’ in our schools is in violation of the Constitution.”

Scarborough added: “The so-called wall of separation in the First Amendment is a myth. Those words appear nowhere in the Constitution. The concept of separation of church and state is the invention of an activist judiciary.”

“The Founding Fathers – from Adams to Washington – proclaimed that America was founded on Christian principles, and that any attempt to sever this nation from those principles would prove an unmitigated disaster. And so it has,” Scarborough observed.

Vision America is committed to mobilizing America’s pastors to effect a political and a spiritual renewal. Among other activities, it conducts rallies Against Judicial Tyranny And In Support of The Ten Commandments across the United States.

For more information, visit our websites www.restorethecommandments.com and www.visionamerica.org

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