The flag pledge was introduced after more than a century of our nation’s history had passed. The author, Francis Bellamy, grew up during the Civil War. He was acutely aware of the struggle to decide whether E pluribus unum was true, or if our states were divisible. Accordingly, he emphasized “one nation indivisible,” with no separating comma. “Liberty” and “justice,” words with religious as well as democratic associations, were selected from the preamble to the U. S. Constitution. He recognized that “for some” ought to be the concluding phrase if a description of current America was intended, but he thought that the pledge should affirm the unfulfilled “liberty-and-justice-for-all” ideal toward which America was moving.
Bellamy, like Emma Lazarus, tried to raise awareness of poor immigrants who were “yearning to breathe free.” He authored the pledge during the Gilded Age when business tycoons stressed liberty to the exclusion of justice for all, especially for African-Americans in the South and Chinese in the West. Finding that his affluent Baptist congregation in Boston did not share his passion for addressing social disparities, Bellamy left the pastorate to become an editor of The Youth’s Companion, which aimed at instilling public virtue. In 1892 he published in that popular magazine a pledge that he hoped public schools would recite on Columbus Day, a day Congress had just recognized as an occasion for expressing honor to the nation. With minor modifications in the early 20th century, the pledge became widely used, even though two generations passed before it was given official governmental endorsement.
In 1953, the Knights of Columbus lobbied to amend the pledge in their effort to galvanize Americans against national enemies. That fraternal Catholic organization urged Congress to add “under God” in order to make official what they believed to be an essential for distinguishing first-class Americans from “godless communists.” The next year, a Presbyterian minister became a catalyst for their cause by preaching “One Nation under God” at the New York Avenue church when President Eisenhower was in attendance. George Docherty had several years earlier come to that historic Washington church from the homogeneous Scottish culture, where citizens assumed “it was everybody’s belief that God was part of society.” “Without this phrase ‘under God,'” Docherty said, “the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag might have been recited with similar sincerity by Muscovite children.” He presumed that the Soviet dictator would permit his subjects to express a longing for democratic liberty and justice. Docherty unintentionally gave affront to atheistic service personnel who have fought and died for America in every war when he declared that “an atheistic American is a contradiction in terms.”
After hearing the sermon, Eisenhower became an advocate for rendering unto the government words that belonged to religious creeds. The sermon was printed in the Congressional Record and argument was given in Congress that the “under God” addition “would serve to deny the atheistic and materialistic concepts of communists.” In 1954 our government accepted words that transformed the pledge into a theocratic statement.
That was the McCarthy era, a low point in national recognition of the rights of citizens. Some who were in pursuit of equality were accused by civic leaders of being anti-American Marxists and deserving of punishment. Bigots who stressed the theological addition were able to deflect attention from the “subversive” socialist sounding words about “liberty and justice for all.”
The placement of the two-word insertion also altered the original sentiments by making “indivisible” appear to be an attribute of deity. This wording might lead Muslims, Jews or deists to presume that the pledge is denying the Christian Trinity! If an addition were needed to distinguish our democratic government from our Cold War enemies, “under the people” placed after “indivisible” would have been in accord with the “we the people” opening declaration of the Constitution. But “under God” is clearly non-constitutional; our Constitution doesn’t mention God, much less refer to Americans being under divine rule.
What had originally been intended to promote inclusive patriotism now incorporates a divisive theological affirmation. Thomas Jefferson explained that the article of religious freedom in our statutes was “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection” not only monotheists like himself but “the Hindoo and Infidel.” How can a nation pursue “justice for all” but exclude many millions of citizens who are non-theists and devotees to multiple gods? Moreover, some Christians in pietistic traditions are convinced that their ultimate loyalty to Christ is compromised by being expected to affirm a solemn and sacred state-sponsored personal confession. And some religious people who associate the divine name with personal prayer are offended by those who justify the “under God” addition by arguing that it is merely a ceremonial recognition of religious heritage.
The words inserted into the grand old pledge do violence to the convictions of many of our nation’s early settlers. Immigrants from Europe were aware that appeal to God had caused divisions, not unity, in their countries of origin, and many were relieved to find here a nation that disallows god-talk associated with the establishment of religion. England, with its government-sanctioned Anglican Church, had its conflict with the Presbyterians of Scotland and the Catholics of Ireland. On the European continent, the Christian majority had for centuries trampled on the rights of Jews and Muslims. Most of the “Founding Fathers” recognized that when a state becomes an instrument for worshiping God as defined by the majority of its citizens, patriotism becomes narrowed and prejudice is sanctioned toward those with differing religious beliefs. They had nothing to do with the “In God We Trust” propaganda that was added to currency during the Civil War to reassure the North that God should be identified with the Union cause.
Almost half a century passed after the “under God” addition before a federal court dealt with the error of Congress in inserting a blatant endorsement of monotheism into the pledge. Last year a three-judge panel of the appellate court for nine Western states recognized in the Newdow v. Congress case that the Constitution does not permit religious coercion and decided that teachers in public classrooms could not inflict a religious statement upon impressionable youth. The majority opinion was written by Presbyterian elder Alfred Goodwin, a decorated combat soldier who had been appointed judge by a Republican president. “In the context of the pledge, the statement that the United States is a nation “under God” is an endorsement of religion, Goodwin wrote. “It is a profession of religious belief, namely, a belief in monotheism … . A profession that we are a nation ‘under God’ is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation under Jesus, a nation under Vishnu, a nation under Zeus, or a nation under no god because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion … . The pledge, as currently codified, is an impermissible government endorsement of religion because it sends a message to unbelievers … that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.” Goodwin concluded his decision by quoting what Justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1943: “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.”
Use of the 1954 modification of the pledge should be banned in public schools because its intent is to advance one broad type of religion. The appellate Court ruling in 2003 recognized that helping or hindering religion violates the First Amendment, which bars the establishment of religion generally or particularly in one variety.
In affirming monotheism, which is no business of a secular government, Americans might miss the thrust of the pledge’s original moral content. My Confederate and slaveholding grandfathers willingly swore “so help me God” in court but they were not devoted to national indivisibility, liberty, justice and equality. Or, consider the chasm between belief and practice by the al-Qaeda hijackers; they affirmed universal monotheism with their last breath on 9/11, but were contemptuous of the worth and dignity of all humans.
Our Constitution was intended to protect us against those of any religion who presume that religious belief is prerequisite to patriotism. All American atheists and polytheists that I, a Christian minister, have known are devoted to our democratic government and deserve having a pledge to our flag that also represents them. The original version of the pledge, which was in use longer than the one most Americans now living have learned, passes the constitutional muster and should be revived.
Posted Feb. 10, 2004 
William E. Phipps is professor emeritus of religion and philosophy at Davis and Elkins College (W.Va.).
Send your comment on this guest viewpoint to The Outlook.
Please give your full name and hometown.
