Pledge of Allegiance has under God added
The Pledge of Allegiance, originally composed in 1892, was designed to foster a sense of national unity and patriotism. The initial wording underwent several modifications until, in 1954, the phrase "under God" was added amidst the Cold War context, aiming to distinguish the United States' beliefs from the atheistic ideology of the Soviet Union. This addition transformed the pledge into a blend of patriotic oath and public prayer, reflecting the religious revival of the 1950s. Over the years, the phrase has sparked significant legal and cultural debates, particularly concerning its implications for the separation of church and state. In 2002, a court ruling declared "under God" unconstitutional, though this decision was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, which did not directly address the church-state separation issue. The phrase continues to evoke diverse perspectives among various religious and secular groups, illustrating the ongoing discourse surrounding national identity and faith in American society.
Pledge of Allegiance has under God added
The Event Insertion by the U.S. Congress of the phrase “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance
Date Flag Day, June 14, 1954
The addition of “God” to the Pledge of Allegiance blurred the First Amendment line drawn between church and state, sparking a decades’-long controversy.
The Pledge of Allegiance, written to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus Day, was first published in 1892 in a children’s magazine, The Youth’s Companion. Its original words were: “I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands: one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” In 1923, the phrase “the flag of the United States” replaced “my flag.” In 1924, “of America” was added.
By 1935, forty state legislatures had passed laws requiring mandatory recitation of the pledge by schoolchildren, which led to a court challenge on behalf of young Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused on religious grounds to salute the flag. In 1940, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the mandatory pledge, citing the overriding priorities of national unity and patriotism. However, the Court reversed its decision in 1943, in reaction to a series of more than three hundred vicious attacks on Jehovah’s Witnesses, making recitation of the pledge voluntary.
The phrase “under God” was included on Flag Day, June 14, 1954, after intense lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, a Roman Catholic men’s service organization, and various clergy, including President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Presbyterian pastor, George Docherty. The pastor echoed the views of many Americans at the height of the Cold War when he asserted that the secular American pledge could equally serve as the pledge of the atheistic Soviet Union. The pastor argued that the pledge should be changed to reflect Americans’ overwhelming belief in a supreme being, in contrast to the lack of faith of the godless communists.
Ironically, the pledge’s author, Francis Bellamy, had been a socialist clergyman who shared the egalitarian and freethinking ideals of his cousin, Edward Bellamy , author of the socialist utopian novel Looking Backward (1887). Francis Bellamy would probably not have been happy with the inclusion of “under God,” according to his granddaughter, who reported that Bellamy had been forced to leave his church in 1891 because of the negative reception to his socialist sermons. In fact, he eventually stopped going to church altogether because of the racial bigotry he encountered in the congregation he joined upon his retirement to Florida.
Impact
The 1954 change turned the pledge into a combination of patriotic oath and public prayer and became emblematic of the nation’s “religious revival” of the 1950’s. It was a time when Norman Vincent Peale , Billy Graham, and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen rose to prominence, and prayer became entrenched in Washington, D.C.: President Eisenhower inaugurated the “prayer breakfast” and Congress created a prayer room in the Capitol. Organized protest and appeals to change the wording of the pledge began in earnest during the 1960’s in conjunction with the furor ignited over prayer in schools.
Subsequent Events
Two years after inclusion of “under God” in the pledge, “In God We Trust” was declared the official motto of the United States, surviving a court challenge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1970. The court ruled that references to God in the motto and elsewhere were ceremonial and patriotic, not religious. Nonetheless, the same Ninth Circuit Court declared “under God” in the pledge unconstitutional on June 26, 2002. To quell the resulting storm of protest, the judge who wrote the ruling issued a stay to postpone its being put into effect. In April, 2003, the Ninth Circuit declined to review its decision, but the federal government subsequently petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the ruling. On Flag Day, June 14, 2004, the Supreme Court overruled the lower court’s ruling that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional, while sidestepping the issue of separation of church and state.
Bibliography
Clausen, Christopher. “Opening Exercises.” American Scholar 72, no. 1 (Winter, 2003): 35-44. History of the pledge within the context of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2002 decision that the words “under God” are unconstitutional.
Jones, Jeffrey Owen. “The Pledge’s Creator.” Smithsonian 34, no. 8 (November, 2003): 113-117. Reflections on what the author of the Pledge of Allegiance might have thought of the controversy caused by the 2002 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision.