How a Christian Socialist Clergyman Gave America Its Pledge of Allegiance

This year, as Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of their nation, many enthusiastically recite the 31-word Pledge of Allegiance — while others are less convinced that the nation is living up to its ideals. In this polarized setting, Congressman Dale Strong, an Alabama Republican, with 18 GOP co-sponsors, is proposing in the House a bill requiring that all schools receiving federal funds must have students recite the Pledge every day.The bill, which allows for religious exceptions, is currently languishing in committee. It appears to seek to revitalize the custom of reciting the Pledge. In 1892, the original Pledge of Allegiance was crafted by a former Baptist minister, Francis Bellamy. Yet few citizens, or even the vast bulk of historians, seem to recall the origins of the Pledge, or when and why the “under God” phrase, unwelcome to some, was added.Bellamy declared himself to be a Christian Socialist, and he worried that the new immigrants — Jews, Poles, Italians, and others — would “corrupt” America. Bellamy wanted to unite America after the Civil War. As a Christian Socialist, he hoped that capitalism could be modified, and that “Liberty and Justice for all” would mean a more egalitarian nation. Those hopes, like his anti-immigration concerns, were behind the Pledge.The author of the pledge of allegiance, Francis Bellamy. Via Wikimedia CommonsThey were not openly expressed in the Pledge. As created by Bellamy, it quickly became: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands — one Nation indivisible — with Liberty and Justice for all.” He did not include “under God,” but such a statement undoubtedly fit his values. Celebrating America and Columbus’s discovering America on the 400th anniversary, Bellamy in 1892 published the Pledge in time for Columbus Day.The revision — the insertion of “under God” — did not occur until 1954. It was amid the general period, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when President Truman often proclaimed that America lived “under God.” President Eisenhower easily followed suit. Both brought together piety and patriotism to emphasize anti-Communism. Celebrating Lincoln’s birthday, Eisenhower supported the American Legion’s “Back to God” efforts.Eisenhower drew on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address that “only under God” could America “win a new birth of freedom.” That same Sunday, probably in coincidence, the Reverend George Docherty, giving his morning sermon at Washington, D.C., at a service attended by Ike and Mamie, had specifically called for inserting “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Supporting bills were quickly submitted in Congress.Reverend George Docherty, left, and President Eisenhower, second from left, in 1954, at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. Via Wikimedia CommonsWhat separated the United States from “Communist Russia,” Docherty emphasized, was that America rested on the “fundamental belief in God’s Providence.” Hence, “to omit the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance,” Docherty contended, “is to omit the definitive character of the ‘American Way of Life.’” Docherty maintained that there was no conflict with the First Amendment’s establishment-clause.That was because the revision was not by or for a particular church. There was, he asserted, no need to separate religion and the state. Yet despite likely doubts about the Constitutional question in the Senate’s Judiciary committee, the Congress in June 1954 passed, in overwhelming bipartisan support, the legislation inserting “under God” in the Pledge. On June 14, 1954, Flag Day, Eisenhower signed the legislation.Avoiding Constitutional issues, Ike emphasized that the revised Pledge helped dedicate “our nation and our people to the Almighty.” Ike further declared that the added words in the Pledge reaffirmed “America’s heritage and future,” and helped to “strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource.” The “under God” provision seems to be widely accepted by most Americans.Detail of Jacob Riis’s photograph of students saluting the flat at the Mott Street Industrial School, New York City. Via Wikimedia CommonsIt’s probably greatly welcomed, and earnestly recited in patriotic enthusiasm, by as many or even more Americans. Any effort to remove that phrase would undoubtedly provoke a mini-culture war, though most Democratic and Republican politicians would be on the same side, affirming the “under God” provision. If the issue even reached the Supreme Court, the “under God” provision would no doubt be endorsed as Constitutional.It is now part of what the Constitution calls the supreme law of the land, and now — 72 years after the insertion in 1954 of the words “under God” — it has become well embedded in American political culture. Few, though, know about the Pledge’s original creation in the Gilded Age by a Christian Socialist who wished to limit immigration, unite the nation, and modify what he viewed as rapacious capitalism.

How a Christian Socialist Clergyman Gave America Its Pledge of Allegiance

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