“Jehovah Will Provide”: Lillian Gobitas and Freedom of Religion
2004; Wiley; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/sch.2004.0006
ISSN1540-5818
Autores Tópico(s)Religion and Society Interactions
Resumo“Jehovah Will Provide”: Lillian Gobitas and Freedom of Religion JAMES F. VAN ORDEN* In 1935, twelve-year-old Lillian Gobitas and her siblings heard the words of Joseph Rutherford, the head of the Jehovah’s Witness group the Watchtower Society, on the radio in their kitchen. He implored Witnesses to refuse to salute the American flag since it amounted to the worship ofa false idol, which violated the law ofGod as set forth in the Bible.1 Rutherford made reference to the courage ofWitnesses in Germany who refused to salute Hitler in the face ofthe unbelievable oppressions ofthe Nazi regime and similarly called for American Witnesses to refuse to salute the flag. It was a message that struck a chord with Lillian Gobitas. Drawing on Rutherford’s speech, along with her exposure to Witness theology through her family and her own reading of the Bible, Lillian Gobitas and her ten-year-old brother, William, refused to salute the flag at their public school in Minersville, Pennsylvania be cause they believed their religion forbade such a demonstration. Their refusal led to their quick expulsions by the Minersville school board.2 Theywere not the first Witnessesto refuse to salute the flag and be effectively excused from public education. Irving Dillard writes, “The first flag-salute regulation appeared in Kansas in 1907, and three decades later it had been taken up in only 18 states. One hundred and twenty children were known to have re fused for religious reasons to comply.”3 The Gobitas children were different from those ob jectors that had come before them, however, because they fought their expulsions all the way to the High Court. At a very young age, Lillian Gobitas was drawnto the Jehovah’s Witness teachings.4 She later recollected: “Oh, that just really, really appealed to me even though I was eight years old... I really did go along with that in my heart, inmyown heart.”5 One ofthe Witnesses’ strongly held beliefs was that saluting the flag would lead to eternal damnation. In refusing, Lillian would be going against the grain ofall ofher classmates as they saluted the flag each morning. One can only imagine the immense peerpressure on atwelve-year-oldchildto con form. In fact, at first the Gobitas children did feel pressured into saluting: LILLIAN GOBITAS AND FREEDOM OF RELIGION 137 JvntsHsriJh-jSa~ ">1^ jy I 1 J s jbH-' . JtX -kssiV-M' ~n - ■ ■ e -£- X&Lt'txs -d^xr/'^/JeL/h.^r>nA'■ tQ- Aat^a &- //-&JL, ^'-CcJ-4-J^rV^- smsy .^^t-czA^st^0^*1^$- 'Grv^^rJ- /bC/ASbi/ t> " * / J tycyj, l3S ^/va/ We really felt strongly that the flag was an emblem and that performing a ritual before an emblem would be a direct violation of the Second Com mandment. But that doesn’t mean that I went to school and stopped salut ing. Oh, no! I was a real chicken. I would stop saluting and then when This handwritten note (above) by William Gobitas ex pressed the ten-year-old Jehovah’s Witness’s convic tions to the school board. The reasons Lillian Gobitas, his twelve-year-old sister, refused to salute the flag are in the handwritten note at left. the teacher would look my way, oh, up went my hand and my lips moved, you know...6 However difficult, Lillian and her brother eventually found the courage to take the stand that they believed their faith required. William categorically refused to salute the flag on October 22, 1935. Lillian was in spired to follow her brother’s lead the next day when she decided to remain seated during the pledge. This drew the unwanted attention of her peers: “Well everybody in class turned and looked. That part was the worst moment of all... [T]hen they kind of ignored me after that... But once I took my stand, I felt great.”7 There were immediate ramifications extending from the classroom to the schoolyard. Both she and her brother were promptly picked on. She recalled, “When I got to school each morning, a few boys would shout, ‘Here comes Jeho vah!’ and shower me with pebbles.”8 The Minersville school board held a hear ing on the Witness’s flag salute refusal two 138 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Charles E. Roudabush (left), the superintendent of the Minersville School Board, expelled the Gobitas children for their refusal to participate in the flag salute ceremony at their school (below). LILLIAN GOBITAS AND FREEDOM OF RELIGION 139 weeks afterthe Gobitas children’s initial stand. William wrote a letter to the school board, stating: I do not salute the flag because I have promised to do the will ofGod. That means I must not worship anything out of harmony with God’s law. In the twentieth chapter of Exodus, it is stated “Thou shaftnot make unto thee any graven images nor bow down to them nor serve them.” I do not salute the flag not because I do not love my country but I love my country and I love God more and must obey his commandments.9 But the superintendent of the school board, Charles Roudabush, was not at all sympa thetic to the concerns ofthe Gobitas children, who he later stated in court proceedings had been “indoctrinated.” Despite a plea by their father, Walter Gobitas, Lillian and William were expelled from school at the close of the hearing, Walter decided to sue on behalf of his children and found legal aid in the Jehovah’s Witness Watchtower Society. Rutherford, the group’s president, secured initial victories for the Gobitas family in the district court and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Both courts concluded that the flag-salute rule infringed on the family’s First Amendment right to free exercise of religion, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Judge Maris, who sat on both courts and whom Lillian recalls as “sweet,” initially seemed to be their champion. He rejected Superintendent Roudabush’s notion that the Gobitas children were indoctrinated by theirparents. “He said,” Lillian remembers, “from what I see of these children,... this is their perception... I really do think that we were not indoctrinated.”10 He also rejected the school board’s argument that the salute was not a religious act and that the compulsory salute was necessaryto protectna tional freedom. But the school board was un willing to accept the ruling, and the Gobitas children were told they were still not welcome back in school pending an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. That the Court would review the Gobitas casewasnota foregone conclusion. Lillianrec ollects that, “One time I asked in the legal de partment, I said, ‘I would like to know why our case was chosen.’ They said, ‘We don’t know.’ It was just a fluke that they happened to pick our case as a test case.”11 Moreover, Justice Felix Frankfurter would refer in his opinion to the fact that in previous flag salute cases the Court had denied certiorari because the lower courts had upheld the flag salute.12 At least four Justices feltthere was sufficient need now to consider the case since the rights of the in dividual had prevailed in the lower court. In effect, the lower court decisions pushed the Supreme Court to weigh in fully on the issue. Lillian Gobitas traveled to hear the oral argument of her case (in which the family name was misspelled as “Gobitis”) on April 25, 1940. She still remembers vividly: Mr. Joseph Rutherford, who was the president of the Watchtower Soci ety... argued the case atthe Supreme Court... It was packed first of all. Mostly Witnesses, I’m sure. And the ninejudges heard another case before us. Some kind of corporate case and oh, there were interruptions, drop ping pencils and paper and this and that and [the Justices were] inter rupting the lawyers... Then, along came Joseph Rutherford and he ar gued [our case] from the Bible stand point. And instead of all that shuf fling and interruptions, there was not a sound. It was so awesome... [H]e compared the Witness children to the three Hebrews that bowed down before Nebuchadnezzar’s image and were ready to be thrown into the fiery furnace. Biblical examples like that... Everyone just paid rapt at tention and that surely included 140 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY me... And so we thought after that because we had won in both courts, well, it’s a shoo-in.13 This was not to be the case. Justice Frankfurter wrote for the nearly unanimous Court framing the question as one of national cohesion versus the religious rights of the Gobitas children. He ultimately sided with the school board, based on his belief that regu lating the flag salute was within the purview of permissible state action. He argued that “the courtroom is not the arena for debat ing issues of educational policy... So to hold would in effect make us the school board for the country.”14 Frankfurter reasoned that Jehovah’s Witnesses shouldnottake their com plaints to court, but instead should have turned to their elected officials. The decision came as quite a shock to the Gobitas family, as Lillian recalled: One day mother and I were working inthe kitchen-we livedupstairs above the grocery store. Bill wasdown help ing Dad downstairs and the news came on and they said, “In Wash ington today, it was decided by the Supreme Court that the compulsory flag salute was correct.” And it was 8-1 against us. We couldn’t believe it. We were not prepared for that. We just stood there in disbelief... ,15 The motives behind Justice Frankfurter’s opinion canbe gleaned from a letterhe wrote to Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, the lone dissenter, trying to persuade him to join the majority. The letter is dated May 27, 1940, around the time the German armies were moving west ward in Europe, and American involvement was becoming increasingly likely. Frankfurter seemed to have these things in his mind as he wrote to his colleague on the Bench: For time and circumstances are surely not irrelevant considerations in resolving the conflicts that we have to resolve in this particular case... [Cjertainly it is relevant to make the adjustment that we have to make within the framework of present circumstances and those that are clearly ahead of us... After all, despite some of the jurisprudential “realists,” a decision decides not merely the particular case...16 Lillian Gobitas did have sympathy for what the flag stood for, especially in a time of war: “This is a very sensitive thing, the flag salute, because when you think about how many people gave their lives for flag and coun try and here we were not saluting.”17 Lillian was not blind to the ultimate sacrifices that were made in the name of flag and country, but she still felt that she should be granted a faith-based exemption from saluting, since her religion required no less. Justice Harlan seemed to agree. He alone refused to join Frankfurter’s majority, instead taking the view that the Court must protect the rights of “insular and discrete” minorities against the actions of majorities as set forth in his Footnote Four in the 1938 Carolene Products decision.18 “The Constitution,” he wrote, “expresses more than the conviction of the people that democratic processes must be preserved at all costs. It is also an expression of faith and a command that freedom ofmind and spirit must be preserved, which government must obey, if it is to adhere to that justice and moderation without which no free government can exist.”19 Stone believed that it was the role of the Court to protect the Lillian Gobitases of the nation against majority-enacted laws that impinged upon their rights. Constitutional democracy demanded that they not simply be sent to the polls.20 Stone recognized that leg islative protection ofgroups like the Witnesses did not offer them much recourse. In fact, the Witnesses were now more ex posed than ever. Lillian Gobitas described the time following her case as “open season on Jehovah’s Witnesses.”21 Newspapers carried numerous accounts offire bombings, beatings, and other acts of brutality against Witnesses LILLIAN GOBITAS AND FREEDOM OF RELIGION 141 across the country. There were even threats of violence against the Gobitas family gro cery store in Minersville, although they never materialized. Three years later, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the Court reversed its decision against the Witnesses. Lillian Gobitas was again in attendance for the oral argument. This time, against the dis sent of Justice Frankfurter, the Court found for the Witnesses by protecting their right not to salute the flag on free speech rather than religious freedom grounds. This remarkable about-face happened because Justices Hugo L. Black, William O. Douglas, and Frank Murphy now viewed their positions in the first case to have been wrong and because newly arrived Justices Robert H. Jackson and Wiley Rutledge also agreed that the Gobitases should have pre vailed. In one of the most oft-cited statements ever made by a member of the Court, Justice Jackson wrote that “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”22 Lillian Gobitas recalled a deep sense of joy when the Witnesses finally were victo rious: “Oh, we both won in the end. It was our case either way... We were thrilled. Ab solutely thrilled. And you know, things began to wind down. Believe it or not, everything cooled down. The mobbings stopped ... Itjust wound down and everything got calm again. Kids went back to school.”23 Minersville v. Gobitis: A Personal Legacy Lillian Gobitas’s legal struggle profoundly changed the course of her life. One might expect that the negative effects on the Gob itas family of losing their Supreme Court case would lasta lifetime—a sad legacy ofthe faulty logic ofthe time. But a review of Lillian’s life indicates the contrary. After being homeschooled for a short time, the Gobitas children received a phone call from Paul Jones, who had read in the paper This store, which was operated by the Gobitas family in Minersville at the time of the case, was avoided by some of their customers after a local church organized a boycott. “Business fell off quite a bit for several weeks and some of the customers never did come back,” recalls Lillian Gobitas Klose. 142 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY about their expulsions and had decided to open a school on his farm about 30 miles away from Minersville for those Witness children who had taken a stand against the flag salute and were expelled. Lillian recalls fondly her time there: We were very welcome ... About a hundred acres they had.... Upstairs had no electricity. Justthe kitchen had electricity. They were so clean and so loving and so hard working. It was in credible ... It was like “Little House on the Prairie,” you know. It was all eight grades in one room. It was very pleasant.24 But there were differences between the educa tion Lillian received at the Witness school on the Jones Farm and her public school: It was pretty much the same. It was standard. But I did miss the challeng ing class discussions ... and more detailed class discussions. It didn’t matter. The quality was alright. A lot was left to one’s own self, which was a good thing for years to come. I learned to be self-taught in many things.25 After the Barnette reversal, the Gobitas children received a letter from the Minersville School Board in effect reinstating them, but to Lillian, it was too little, too late. By then she was twenty and had attended a local business college. She felt, “Let it be. We didn’t think anything about the morality ofit or the fairness ofit. It didn’t occur to us. We were too busy.”26 In short, she and her brother William had gone on with their lives. Lillian’s role in the case created other im portant opportunities. She wanted very much to work at the headquarters ofthe Watchtower Society in Brooklyn ata time when they “didn’t take girls much at all.”27 Having been the plain tiff in the case made it possible for her to go and work there, at a place where she was sur rounded by “giants offaith.”28 Lillian felt sure Lillian Gobitas went on to work at the World Head quarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Brooklyn. She met her husband, Erwin Klose, while attending a religious conference in Germany. Klose had refused to serve in the German army because of his religious beliefs and had been imprisoned in a concentration camp. that her role in the case played a pivotal role in her hiring. She recalls, “[T]he president ofthe Watchtower at the time often said that that did lead him to consider me because so few girls were chosen.”29 Lillian’s stay in New York led her to do missionary work in Europe, where she met the man she would later marry. She was first attracted to Erwin Klose because of his fine singing voice. He spoke no English and she spoke no German, but they formed an imme diate bond. Erwin came to the United States and attended missionary school in Ithaca, LILLIAN GOBITAS AND FREEDOM OF RELIGION 143 New York, where he learned English. He later crossed paths with Lillian again in Brooklyn. She attended missionary school as well, and studied German. As newlyweds they traveled to Vienna where Erwin was assigned to do missionary work. “We had a marvelous time,” Lillian later recalled.30 The Historic World War II Context for the Gobitas-Klose Union31 Lillian Gobitas’s refusal to salute the flag took on particular significance because of the time period during which it occurred. America was on the cusp of World War II, and patriotism was high. It was not the time to show dis unity. As Lillian was embroiled in the flagsalute controversy, German Witnesses were taking a stand against the Nazi regime on the other side ofthe Atlantic Ocean. They rejected any worldly government, refused to serve in the German armed forces, and declined to gesture towards Hitler (the one-armed “Heil Hitler” salute), as doing so would be an act of worship of a false God. Those who took such a stand against the German state, in cluding Lillian’s future husband Erwin Klose, were persecuted, imprisoned, and forced into concentration camps. As Lillian recalled, “Er win was in the concentration camp at the very same time that I was being expelled.”32 Like his wife, Klose remained true to his faith throughout his ordeal, although the hardship he suffered at the hands of the Nazis was far more severe than the inconvenience his wife endured. Lillian tells her husband’s story: His mother told me that when he was led offto the concentration camp, she said that she and her sisterwas watch ing from behind the curtain as they led him away and my husband said that he was silently crying actually. It was very frightening to be taken on a train.33 She remembers her husband saying about this ordeal, “Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared.”34 Lillian enjoyed“a wonderful life” withher husband and their two children, who also had the courage to take a stand against the flag salute. Unlike their mother, they suffered no reprisals and were able to finish their pub lic school educations—a direct legacy of her struggle before them. Sixty years after the Supreme Court ruled on her case, Lillian was asked if she still had hard feelings for school Superintendent Charles Roudabush, who had held an unre lenting grudge against the Gobitas children so many years before. She replied: We always thought, “Who knows?” Because sometimes guards in the concentration camp would become Witnesses. They would see all that and it would move them to take a stand. So, you know, we thought... maybe some day, he will see the light, so to speak. We didn’t have any per sonal vendetta against him.35 In short, in the face of oppression, Lillian Gobitas retained an unwavering commitment to Witness theology. Whether the oppression came at the hand of a school board or a prison guard, both wife and husband prayed for their oppressors’ ultimate transformation to Witness ways. On balance, Lillian Gobitas Klose’s chance inclusion inthe compulsory-flag-salute drama affected her life for the better. Were it not for the case, she would not have gone to work atthe Headquarters, would nothave gone to Europe, and would not have met her hus band, another champion of the Witness faith. “Those things would not have happened oth erwise,” she believes. “It changed the course of our lives. I call it the storybook life.”36 Where the Minersville School Board, with the stamp of approval of the Supreme Court, had closed doors based on Lillian’s religiously 144 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY based refusal to salute the flag, her faith and persistence led many new ones to open. *The author’s thanks go to Donald Grier Stephenson, Jr., who read a draft of this essay and made helpful comments. ENDNOTES 1 Specifically, Exodus 20: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images nor bow down to them nor serve them.” 2For a biographical discussion of the circumstances sur roundingthe case duringthe 1940s, see David Manwaring, Render Unto Caesar: The Flag Salute Controversy (1962) (hereafter cited as Manwaring). 3 Irving Dillard, “The Flag Salute Cases,” in John Garraty, ed., Quarrels That Have Shaped the Constitution (1987) at 226. See also Manwaring foradditional informa tion related to the history of the flag salute and religious refusals to participate, including Witnesses and other reli gious sects. 4For a detailed discussion ofLillian Gobitas’s life, includ ing her case, see Peter Irons, “We Live by Symbols” and “Here Comes Jehovah,” in The Courage of Their Con victions (1988) at 15. Games Van Orden, phone interview with Lillian Gobitas Klose, March 12,2003 (hereafter cited as Van Orden). 6W. Ud. 8Lillian Gobitas Klose, “The Courage to Put God First,” Awake!, July 22, 1993, at 14. ’Papers of William Gobitas, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 10Van Orden. nId. 12310U.S. 586, 592(1940). l3Van Orden. 14MinersvilleSchool District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586,598 (1940). 15Van Orden. 16Reprinted in Alpheus Mason and Donald Grier Stephenson, American Constitutional Law: Introduc tory Essays and Selected Cases (2002) at 562. 17Van Orden. 18 United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152, n.4(1938). 19310 U.S. 586, 606-07 (1940) (dissenting opinion). 20It almost seems as ifStone prophetically sensed the en suing backlash against Witnesses followed the announce ment of the decision. 21 Van Orden. 22 West Virginia State Board ofEducation v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943). 23Van Orden. 24W. 25Id. 26Id. 22Id. 2iId. 29Id. 30ld. 31 For a discussion of the persecution of Witnesses in America and Germany, see generally Shawn Francis Peters, Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses: Religious Perse cution and the Dawn ofthe Rights Revolution (2000). 32Van Orden. 33Id. 34ld. 3sId. 36Id. ...
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