The Pledge of Allegiance

(This is a repeat of a column I first wrote and published in June of 2007, but it is as relevant today as it was then. In fact, I received another of those bothersome emails just this week.)

Last Tuesday was National Flag Day. I hope you displayed your flag properly and paused at some point during the day to honor our flag. Perhaps you even recited the Pledge of Allegiance. If so, did you include those two inflammatory words, “under God” in your pledge?

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!

I’ve received the email promoting “Under God” at least a hundred times. I’m sure you have too. I’m getting tired of seeing it in the subject line, and I delete the message ASAP. It’s not that I’m not patriotic, because I am, but I find the whole controversy over the words is focused on the wrong ones. The whole pledge is a sham.

Do you know that the Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist named Francis Bellamy in 1892 for a popular family magazine of the time, Youth’s Companion? The owners of the magazine used it—and the 500,000 kids who subscribed to it—to sell flags to schools, and they were successful beyond their wildest dreams; over 26,000 schools bought them. Until that time, flags were rarely seen in front of or in the schools.

The original words to the pledge were, “I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands – one nation indivisible – with liberty and justice for all.” This was the first nationalistic pledge in our history. The man who wrote it was in favor of nationalizing most of the American economy and he hated our capitalistic system. They didn’t call it communism back in those days, but that’s what it was he wanted. Reverend Bellamy also wanted to use the words “fraternity” and “equality” in the pledge, but he decided that the words were too radical and omitted them.

The first known public recitation of the Pledge Of Allegiance was at the Columbus Day ceremony commemorating the quadricentennial anniversary of his discovery of the New World. The publishers of Youth’s Companion, arranged with the National Education Association to have the national public schools observe the day with the use of the American Flag. They also got Congress and President Benjamin Harrison to announce a national proclamation making the public school flag the center of the Columbus Day celebrations for 1892. (Margarette S. Miller, Twenty-three Words Printcraft Press, Portsmouth, VA 1976 pp. 63-65)

The original pledge was recited while giving a stiff, uplifted right hand salute. That was criticized and replaced with the hand over the heart during WWII because it resembled the German salute that went along with “Heil Hitler.” The words, “my flag” also were changed to, “the flag of the United States of America” because it was feared that the children of immigrants might confuse “my flag” for the flag of their homeland. Congress and President Eisenhower added the phrase, “under God,” in 1954 at the urging of the Knights of Columbus. (Christopher J. Kaufmann, Knights of Columbus Harper and Row, NY 1982 pp 385-386)

Only two nations in the world have and use a “pledge” to a flag, the United States and the Philippines, and the latter took on a pledge when the Spain ceded the colony to the U. S. at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War in 1898. The pledge custom was retained after Philippine independence was granted in 1946.

Think for a moment about the words. Do your eyes well up and do you get a lump in your throat when you recite them, like they sometimes do when you hear or sing the National Anthem? Of course not! They are just a series of monotone words that—now admit it—cause us to reflect more on the controversial additions than the meaning itself. Some even omit those two words.

The words of the Pledge of Allegiance are recited everyday in schools and at most official public meetings. However, if most of us knew the strange and disreputable origin of these words, regardless of their import today, we might not be reciting the pledge at all, let alone the words, “under God.”

(Portions of this text were borrowed from the Internet document The Strange Origin of the Pledge of Allegiance by John W. Baer.)