Part I: The History of the Pledge
The Pledge of Allegiance forms part of our national identity and heritage. In that pledge we affirm that we are “one nation under God.” The pledge was composed by Baptist minister Francis Bellamy on September 7, 1892. It did not include the words “the United States of America” or “under God.” Its use grew in popularity, the words “United States of America” were inserted, and Congress officially adopted it as the national pledge on December 28, 1945.
In 1951 Knights of Columbus [a Catholic men’s fraternal organization] in New York City felt the pledge was incomplete without any reference to God. They looked to the words and historical tradition of Abraham Lincoln and his Gettysburg Address:
“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
And so they added the words “under God” to the pledge at the opening of their meetings. “Under God” soon caught on in the other Knights’ councils and the Knights attempted in 1952 to persuade the President and the Congress to adopt the change nationally but did not succeed.
The impetus that led to the adoption of the words “under God” came in 1954 when a Presbyterian minister named George MacPherson Docherty successfully persuaded President Eisenhower to support the effort after a sermon he preached on the Gettysburg address. Lincoln had attended that same church and Eisenhower was in attendance on Lincoln Sunday. Also active in this cause was Harold Dudley the founder of the Washington Pilgrimage, known later as Religious Heritage of America. “The organization actively promoted the Judeo-Christian heritage of the United States. Dudley was instrumental in lobbying Congress to add “under God” to the official text of the Pledge of Allegiance.” [Wikipedia]
A new bill was introduced into Congress and passed. President Eisenhower chose to sign the bill into law on Flag Day, June 14, 1954.
“The fact that Eisenhower clearly had Docherty’s rationale in mind as he initiated and consummated this measure is apparent in a letter he wrote in August, 1954. Paraphrasing Docherty’s sermon, Eisenhower said “These words [“under God”] will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded.” [Wikipedia]
What is the importance of those two short words, “Under God”? What would or could be our national consciousness, our national identity, without them? What is the difference between a nation that explicitly acknowledges itself to be under God and one that specifically does not?
The Declaration of Independence is the founding document of the United States. In it, the founding Fathers explicitly called upon the authority of “Nature’s God” and “their Creator” as the basis for universal human rights. After detailing the abuses of power by King George III of England the signers concluded:
Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
One of the first flags of the fledgling United States Navy [1775] from George Washington’s own schooners consisted of a white background, a green pine tree and the inscription “An Appeal to Heaven.” [Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy] By thus publicly appealing to God the Founding Fathers called upon him to enter into judgment between the oppressed colonists and the government of Great Britain. They thereby implicitly committed themselves, i.e. made a covenant, to conduct their lives and the affairs of the soon to be independent United States according to God’s moral law. For in vain would they have appealed to God for justice if they should then violate his laws in the future and find themselves under the very same just judgment of God. As Scripture says,
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. For the Lord will not leave unpunished him who takes his name in vain.” [Ex 20:7] And
“When you make a vow, delay not its fulfillment. For God has no pleasure in fools.” [Eccl 5 3]
The Divine Providence to which they appealed granted them his protection and against all odds in the natural realm they emerged victorious as “free and independent states” in the Revolutionary War. But there was unfinished business. Having declared:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
They had consciously not written a promissory note to free the slaves. But defiant intransigence set in and slavery was made into a sacred right by its proponents. The stirring lines from Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic in December 1861, pronounced God’s judgment on this intolerable situation:
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps…
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat
The Apostle James declares “Here, crying aloud, are the wages you withheld from the farmhands that harvested your fields. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.” [Jas 5:4] Or as the Jewish author Jesus ben Sirach put it “Like a man who slays his son in his father’s presence is he who offers sacrifice from the possessions of the poor. . .he sheds blood who denies the laborer his wages, “ [Sir 34:20,22] and “Should a man refuse mercy to his fellows, yet seek pardon for his own sins?” [Sir 28:4] So how could the United States ask for God’ s judgment and intervention in their struggle with the oppressive British government and continue to brutally oppress the slaves on its own soil?
The aged Thomas Jefferson wrote “This momentous question like a fire bell in the night awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once the knell of the Union.” He also noted that “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.” [As quoted in The Civil War by Geoffrey Ward with Ric and Ken Burns]
The “momentous question” was to be mainly settled militarily in a great civil war. In his 1864 Second Inaugural Address Lincoln pondered the progress of the war and the state of the country at that time:
Each [side in the war] looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. . . He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him. . .Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether’.
Thus the man who penned the phrase “under God” the previous year set forth his belief that God does indeed act in the affairs of the nation to call it to the liberty and equality it had proclaimed invoking his sacred name. Starting in 1861 numerous devout Christians asked the government to acknowledge God on U.S. coinage. Thus It was during the Civil War as brother aimed musket at brother that in 1864 the words “In God We Trust” were first added to American currency.
The abolition of slavery was only the first step in making the law of the land affirm the basic human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which the Declaration proclaimed as coming from God. Racial discrimination has taken a long time to root out and the work is not yet completely finished 212 years later. Some efforts have been made to rectify the illegal seizure of Native American lands in violation of treaties. For instance, “In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills were illegally taken and that remuneration of the initial offering price plus interest — over $100 million — be paid. The Lakota [Sioux] refused the settlement, as they wanted the return of the Black Hills instead.” [Wikipedia]
The Pledge, then summarizes the progress of American history:
“One nation, under God, indivisible” —No longer divided between North and South nor to be divided in the future. Submitted to God’s natural law.
“With liberty and justice for all” —Including minorities. [Citizenship was extended to all Native Americans in 1924, but not all issues are settled.]
As the United States continues down its path in history it continues to be a nation “under God” however diligently activist judges and organizations work to undermine its Christian foundation. Scarcely had the Civil Rights Act of 1964 been passed when the Supreme Court legalized the killing of babies in the womb for all nine months of pregnancy in Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton in 1973. As with slavery before it, Christian believers are working hard to right this wrong. Once again, just what does it means for a nation to be “under God”?


Continued Next Month. . .
tom@mcnews.org