“Under God” – Really?

I gave this talk at the Annual Claremont Independence Day Oratory Program in 2003.

Today our nation celebrates its 227th birthday, the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.  The “stars and stripes” was adopted as our national flag the following year, June 14, 1777. The United States’ Constitution was ratified in 1788, 215 years ago.

And the Pledge of Allegiance, then more commonly known as the “Salute to the Flag,” was composed in 1892, and was first publicly used on Columbus Day, 1893, just one hundred years ago.  During the ensuing forty years, it underwent several modifications, and came to be recited by schoolchildren in classrooms throughout the country; but during that time, the first half of the twentieth century, it received little attention outside the schools.

It was only in 1942, just over sixty years ago, that the Salute to the Flag, already commonplace in the schools, gained enough popularity as a result of World War II patriotic fervor that it was given official recognition by an act of the U.S. Congress, incorporating it in the United States Flag Code.

The following year, in 1943, the United States Supreme Court ruled that school children could not be forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance as a required part of their school curriculum.  This ruling, entitled “West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette,” did not address the recitation of the pledge as such, but struck down a West Virginia Law imposing punishments on students who refused to salute the flag.  That law required every student in every school – public, parochial or private –  in the state of West Virginia, to recite the pledge, with arm upraised in a gesture of salute (which the PTA, scouting organizations, the Red Cross and the Federation of Women’s Clubs had criticized as being too much like Hitler’s Nazi salute!), or else they would be expelled, and could not return to school until compliant.  Furthermore, absent from school, they were regarded as delinquents, and their parents were subject to a $50 fine and/or thirty days in jail. 

Thus in West Virginia, to be a faithful Jehovah’s Witness was also to be an outlaw.

War does funny things to people, doesn’t it?

The Supreme Court’s judgment makes an interesting and important observation.  They affirmed the right and duty of our schools and of our citizens to teach and to learn the meaning of patriotism, and even to be informed about the flag salute and what it means.  Patriotism was not the issue.  But, and I quote the text of the Court’s opinion written by Justice Robert Jackson: “The issue here is whether this slow and easily neglected route to aroused loyalties constitutionally may be short-cut by substituting a compulsory salute and slogan.”

The same opinion, goes on to make the prophetic statement that needs more than even to be heeded today:  “Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.  It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.”

Two years later, at the end of the War in 1945, the Salute to the Flag officially got the title “Pledge of Allegiance.”

In 1954, both Houses of Congress adopted the resolution to add the words “under God” to the pledge, which President Eisenhower signed into law on Flag Day of that year.  This was as a result of two years of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization of which I too am a member.  (I can’t resist a little plug here – over in the food area they are selling the world’s best Italian sausage sandwiches.) 

Beyond the work of the Knights, however, I think this addition to the Pledge was very much a product of the times—that was the height of the Cold War, and fear of the spread of “atheistic Communism” was certainly a dominant force in our country.

In a subsequent message to the Knights of Columbus, President Eisenhower put a very different emphasis on the phrase “under God”: “These words 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.”

I think now, fifty years later, it is appropriate to do a “reality check”: do these words succeed in keeping us humble.  Do they effectively focus our minds and hearts on the spiritual and moral principles of human dignity?

Having reviewed the history of the Pledge of Allegiance, which is neither deeply rooted in our national origins nor one of unchanging constancy, but which has been frequently modified in changing times, I would now like to examine very briefly each of those two words, “under God.”

For one thing, even Christians cannot really agree on our concept of God, and we have very different images and attributes in mind when we say God.  Among Christians, in the past and even today, disagreement over the concept of God, as well as the moral behavior expected by God, too often has become the occasion for us to throw stones at one another, both verbal and sometimes physical.  If Christians can’t agree about God, what happens when we add non-Christians and atheists, to the mix in a society whose pluralism we value.  Expecting a unified agreement on this term is patently ridiculous, as well as offensive to many of our fellow citizens. 

Perhaps we as Christians would do better by taking more seriously the advice of Jesus, “render to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar, and to God the things that belong to God.”  Jesus anticipated the First Amendment by over seventeen centuries! 

I personally believe that both Church and State will be better off, the more strictly we can keep each of them in its own domain, without meddling in each other’s domain.  If Christians live genuinely true to their convictions, our witness will have its own power.  We don’t have to impose our beliefs or our moral principles through civil legislation.

Even more problematic than the word “God” is the word “under.”  “Under” means submission.  Do we really live as a nation  “under” God?  Is the humility that President Eisenhower spoke of in any way valued among our national virtues?  Do we, even the Christians of our nation, truly seek to discover and follow God’s will in relation to affairs of national interest?

I’m not going to try to answer that question.  But I will unfold that question just a little bit more by asking what do we mean when we pray, “God bless America”?  Is our prayer as believers, to seek the humility and gift of discernment of higher purpose and higher power?  Or does our prayer really seek to make God the servant of our national interest?  And I will conclude simply leaving you with that question.