Being a good American without saluting the flag / Όντας καλός Αμερικανός χωρίς να χαιρετάς τη σημαία

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Cases having to do with military combat service were not the only ones that raised issues of conflict between persons of faith and the state during wartime. Others mixed free exercise concerns with subtle ways common practice seemed to promote religion and thus hint at a religious establishment. During the ear of World War II, the group known as Jehovah’s Witnesses became a symbol for this web of considerations. From their beginnings in the later nineteenth century, the Jehovah’s Witnesses had regarded all human government as a tool of Satan at worst, a necessary evil at best. Regardless, no Witness would as a matter of faith pledge loyalty to any government in a way that would seem to defy one’s absolute loyalty to God. When what became the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag first appeared in a youth magazine in 1892, it lacked both the phrase “under God” and the imprimatur of the government. As World War II loomed, however, Congress enacted legislation mandating the population to salute the flag, and school districts across the nation began requiring all children to begin the school day with patriotic exercises that included recitation of the pledge to the flag. Although many objected on religious grounds, the Jehovah’s Witnesses gained national attention in the mid-1930s when more than 100 children were expelled from schools in Pennsylvania for refusing on religious grounds to salute the flag. By 1938, lower courts generally affirmed the right of these children to refrain from saluting the flag on religious grounds, but in 1940 the US Supreme Court ruled against them, noting in the majority opinion that the flag was a symbol of national unity, a secular matter rather than a religious one, and those who failed to salute it represented a dangerous threat to the nation. Much controversy ensued since those who disagreed with the decision believed the Court transformed a matter of religious belief and practice into a political weapon and thus denied Witnesses and others the right to free exercise of their faith. Three years later, however, in a similar case, the Court affirmed the right of citizens to refrain from saluting the flag should religious convictions prohibit them from doing so. In retrospect, the earlier cases were as much about promoting a sense of national unity and common identity as the Nazi menace loomed on the horizon; by the later decision in 1943, the tide was turning in World War II, and it was clear that groups like the Witnesses and others who had religious reservations about taking political oaths of any kind were really no threat to national security at all. One could be a good American and not salute the flag if that action contradicted one’s ultimate allegiance to God alone.

* Amanda Porterfield & John Corrigan (eds.),
Religion in American history,
Wiley-Blackwell, 2010,
pp. 259, 260.

Nationalistic school force & compulsion: A way for the nation's unity? /Εθνικιστική σχολική πίεση και καταναγκασμός: Τρόπος για την ενότητα του έθνους;

Perhaps the most famous instance of incumbent justices changing their mind on a high-profile issue occurred in the 1940s. The question was whether school children with religious objections to pledging allegiance to the flag could be required to do so, on pain of expulsion from school. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for whom saluting the flag is unacceptable, challenged the requirement as a violation of the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. In 1940, the court ruled in Minersville School District v. Gobitis that the First Amendment did not prevent public school districts from expelling the Jehovah’s Witness children. The vote was 8 to 1, with only Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone dissenting.

The reaction by a country caught up in wartime patriotic fervor appalled the justices. Taking the Supreme Court’s decision as proof that Jehovah’s Witnesses were not good citizens, mobs attacked and burned the Witnesses’ places of worship. Members of the faith were fired from their jobs and some 2,000 Jehovah’s Witness children were expelled from school. When another case reached the court after only three years, three justices who had been in the earlier majority changed their votes. With the addition of two new justices to the court, the vote to affirm the religious rights of the Jehovah’s Witnesses was 6 to 3. The decision, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, with a majority opinion by the recently appointed Robert H. Jackson, remains a star in the First Amendment firmament.

Two of the three justices who changed their minds, Hugo L. Black and William O. Douglas, explained themselves in a concurring opinion. “Neither our domestic tranquility in peace nor our martial effort in war depend on compelling little children to participate in a ceremony which ends in nothing for them but a fear of spiritual condemnation,” the two wrote. The third justice to change his mind was Frank Murphy. It was in “freedom and the example of persuasion,” Justice Murphy wrote, “not in force and compulsion, that the real unity of America lies.”

* Linda Greenhouse,
"Who’s Sorry Now"
["Ποιος Λυπάται Τώρα"],
The New York Times,
May 1, 2013/1 Μαΐου 2013.

The Massachusetts Act against Blasphemy (1697 & 1782) / Ο Νόμος κατά της Βλασφημίας (Μασαχουσέτη, 1697 & 1782)

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Catlette v. United States [132 F.2d 902, No. 4992 (1943)]:Την εποχή που οι ΗΠΑ ήταν κατάφωρα μισαλλόδοξες / The time when USA were grossly intolerant

The Pittsburgh Press,
June 4th 1942 / 4 Iουνίου 1942, p./σ. 29

 "That on June 28, 1940, Charles Stanley Jones and C. A. Cecil, two young, native-born citizens and residents of Mount Lookout, West Virginia, and members of the Jehovah Witness Company in that area, went to Richwood, an incorporated town within the Southern District of West Virginia, to distribute literature of said religious sect, seek converts, and secure signatures to a petition addressed to the Governor of Ohio, protesting the action of the Ohio State Fair Association in cancelling a contract for the use of the Ohio State Fair Grounds, at Columbus, Ohio, for a national convention of said sect or organization;

"That said Jones and Cecil were asked to come to State Police Headquarters at Richwood, to answer questions and under questioning by West Virginia State Policeman Bernard McLaughlin, advised him of their business and purpose in Richwood; said Jones and Cecil were thereafter questioned in said State Police Headquarters by about six members of the Richwood American Legion Post, including Lee Reese, Louis Baber, and the defendant Catlette, who accused said Jones and Cecil of being spies and Fifth Columnists and ordered Jones and Cecil to leave town within four hours; that Jones and Cecil returned to Mount Lookout, West Virginia, on the same day.

"On June 29, 1941, said Jones and Cecil, together with Walter Stull, 31; Arthur Stull, 30; Howard Stull, 20; John Leedy, 39; Harding Legg, 21; Carlton Stull, 27; and Robert Shawver, 18; also residents of Mount Lookout, returned to Richwood about 10:30 A. M. and stopped at the Town Hall, in order to present a letter to the Mayor, requesting police protection while carrying on their work as such Jehovah's Witnesses; Carlton Stull, Cecil, and Jones, leaving the other four Jehovah's Witnesses in the car, went toward the Mayor's Office, but did not find the Mayor and met the defendant Bert Stewart, who was then Chief of Police of Richwood, and the defendant Catlette, who was a Deputy Sheriff of Nicholas County acting under and pursuant to the laws of the State of West Virginia, in which county said Town of Richwood is situate. A letter was thereupon delivered to Chief of Police Stewart requesting police protection and explaining the intended activity of the group. The three were ushered into the Mayor's Office, which was also used by Catlette in the collection of taxes as a Deputy Sheriff, and who detained the Witnesses in his said office and was wearing his official badge at the time, and the defendant Stewart acted as doorkeeper.

"Thereupon, a mob gathered estimated to contain upwards of fifteen hundred persons, and other members of the American Legion arrived; that Catlette called other members of the American Legion by phone, saying among other things, `We have three of the S[ons] O[f] B[itches]'s here and we are rounding up the others'; that one Louis Baber, also a member of the local American Legion Post, brought the other four Jehovah's Witnesses into the room; that the defendant Catlette thereupon removed his badge as Deputy Sheriff of Nicholas County, West Virginia, and stated in substance and effect, `What is done from here on will not be done in the name of the law'; three of the Jehovah's Witnesses were forced to drink eight ounces of castor oil and another, who protested and at first refused, was required to drink sixteen ounces of castor oil, after having been threatened by a doctor with a stomach pump; that said seven Jehovah's Witnesses were thereupon tied along a large rope, each being fastened thereto by his left arm and some three or four feet removed from each other on the rope; that so tied they were marched to the front of the Richwood Post Office on the top of which was flying an American flag; the defendant Catlette read the preamble to the American Legion Constitution and all persons present saluted the flag, except the Jehovah's Witnesses;

"That said Jehovah's Witnesses were thereafter marched through the streets of the Town of Richwood and out of its corporate limits, yet attached to the rope, and there, released from the rope, restored to their automobiles, which had been damaged, and their other property, which had been covered with castor oil and uncomplimentary inscriptions, and advised never to return;

"That they entered the office of said Deputy Sheriff about 9:30 in the morning and were released between 3 and 4 o'clock P. M. in the afternoon of the same day, and except for said castor oil, none of said Jehovah's Witnesses received either food or drink during said hours, nor was permitted to go to a toilet;

"That between said hours no request for protection was made of the defendant Catlette and at no time did the defendant Catlette protect the Jehovah's Witnesses from the acts administered to them, but actually participated in the infliction of the same, and the only protest made during the time of such treatment was made by the Jehovah's Witness who originally refused to drink the castor oil."



* The case of Catlette v. United States
132 F.2d 902, No. 4992 (1943). *

* Chuck Smith,
"Catlette v. United States",
West Virginia State College. *

* "The castor oil incident: Statutory protection of religious liberty",

in: Derek Davis, Barry Hankins (eds.),

New Religious Movements and Religious Liberty in America,

Baylor University Press, 2003,

pp 159-165.