By Allie Martin, OneNewsNow.com
The president of Liberty Legal Institute says a federal judge was correct when he denied a request by an atheist couple to remove the phrase “one state under God” from the Texas pledge.
Texas lawmakers inserted the language into the pledge earlier this year. Now, public school children across the Lone Star State recite the revised state pledge every morning. According to Associated Press, the voluntary, teacher-led recitation of the Texas pledge usually follows the U.S. pledge of allegiance in classrooms. The pledge is then followed with a moment of silence.
Liberty Legal Institute president Kelly Shackelford points out that the practice of acknowledging God in the public square is not new. “That’s what makes us so unique as a country,” says the attorney. “And if we every deny our religious heritage and basis for who we are, we’ll suffer as a country.”
While Shackelford believes most Americans agree with that, the Lone Star State is home to one couple that apparently disagrees. Addition of the four-word phrase angered David and Shannon Croft, a Dallas-area couple who claimed their children were harmed by the reference to God and in early August filed a lawsuit on their behalf, claiming the revised pledge violates the First Amendment.
Shackelford says the couple’s agenda is clear. “What these people are trying to do is change who we are as a country and to essentially scrub the parts of our religious history and heritage,” he asserts. “The thing that makes this country so great is that we think our liberties come from God, not from government; and therefore, no government can take those away.”
Last week, a federal district judge denied the Crofts’ request for a preliminary injunction that would have stopped use of the pledge before the case goes to court. “I’m glad at least at this point [that] we now have a victory,” says the Liberty Legal president, “and hopefully every state will think about adding ‘under God’ to their pledge or putting ‘in God we trust’ on their senate chambers.”
The state’s solicitor general said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled for decades that patriotic references to God are constitutional.
(Source: OneNewsNow.com)
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