I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and Christian socialist and first published in a children’s magazine. It was not formally adopted by Congress as THE Pledge of Allegiance until 1942, in the middle of the Second World War. Then, in 1954, with President Eisenhower who had recently been baptized and joined the Presbyterian Church in the congregation,George McPherson Docherty, pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C., preached a sermon arguing that our nation’s might “lay not in arms, but in its spirit and higher purpose.” President Eisenhower responded to the sermon and his subsequent conversation with the Rev. Docherty and supported the legislation to add the words under God to the pledge.
For many in the 1950’s, those two words under God embodied the optimism and hope of the time. The major religious voices which helped to shape the moral conversation in our country were Paul Tillich and Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr and the Jewish scholars Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel. Great thinkers and theologians and respected religious leaders. And, reflecting the spirit of that era, in 1958 President Eisenhower laid the cornerstone of the Interchurch Center in upper Manhattan in the area around the Riverside Church and Columbia University and Union Seminary.
How different it is today.
Instead of bringing people together, those two words under God are pushing people apart. God has become a club to wield against others who disagree with your understanding of God. And, too often, a convenient excuse for violence against those whose ethnicity or religion or political views or gender run counter to your own. Pat Robertson and Terry Jones and Anwar al Awlaki have replaced Martin Buber and Reinhold Niebuhr as the religious voices heard in the public square. As a result, more and more of our neighbors, especially those under 40, are turning their backs on religion. Somewhere between 20-33% have even set foot inside a church for any type of service and 44% of those under 30 say they don’t even believe in God.
While I am not nostalgic for the world of the 1950’s, I do lament the change and believe that something more important that just organized religion, as you and I know it, is being lost. What is being lost is an understanding of that which we know and name as God as common ground as we seek justice and work for peace and practice compassion in an effort to make our communities and our world a better and safer place for us and for all.
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