Who Put Under God In The Pledge

I offset struggled with "under God" in my fourth-form form in Westport, Connecticut. Information technology was the spring of 1954, and Congress had voted, afterwards some controversy, to insert the phrase into the Pledge of Allegiance, partly every bit a cold state of war rejoinder to "godless" communism. We kept stumbling on the words—it'southward not like shooting fish in a barrel to united nationslearn something as ingrained and metrical every bit the Pledge of Fidelity—while we rehearsed for Flag Twenty-four hours, June 14, when the revision would take effect.

Now, most 5 decades afterwards, "nether God" is at the center of a legal wrangle that has stirred passions and landed at the door of the U.S. Supreme Court. The case follows a U.South. appeals courtroom ruling in June 2002 that "under God" turns the pledge into an unconstitutional regime endorsement of organized religion when recited in public schools. Outraged by the ruling, Washington, D.C. lawmakers of both parties recited the pledge on the Capitol steps.

Amid the furor, the judge who wrote the ruling by the 9th Circuit Court, based in San Francisco, stayed information technology from beingness put into event. In April 2003, afterwards the Ninth Circuit declined to review its decision, the federal government petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn it. (Editor's Notation: In June 2004, the Court ruled unanimously to keep "nether God" in the Pledge.) At the core of the issue, scholars say, is a contend over the separation of church and state.

I wonder what the man who composed the original pledge 111 years ago would make of the hubbub.

Francis Bellamy was a Baptist government minister'due south son from upstate New York. Educated in public schools, he distinguished himself in oratory at the Academy of Rochester earlier following his father to the pulpit, preaching at churches in New York and Boston. Simply he was restive in the ministry and, in 1891, accepted a job from i of his Boston congregants, Daniel Due south. Ford, primary owner and editor of the Youth's Companion, a family magazine with one-half a 1000000 subscribers.

Assigned to the magazine'south promotions department, the 37-year-erstwhile Bellamy ready to work arranging a patriotic program for schools around the country to coincide with opening ceremonies for the Columbian Exposition in October 1892, the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the New World. Bellamy successfully lobbied Congress for a resolution endorsing the school ceremony, and he helped convince President Benjamin Harrison to issue a announcement declaring a Columbus Day vacation.

A key chemical element of the commemorative programme was to be a new salute to the flag for schoolchildren to recite in unison. But as the deadline for writing the salute approached, information technology remained undone. "Yous write it," Bellamy recalled his dominate saying. "Yous take a knack at words." In Bellamy'south later accounts of the sultry August evening he composed the pledge, he said that he believed all along it should invoke allegiance. The idea was in part a response to the Ceremonious State of war, a crisis of loyalty still fresh in the national memory. As Bellamy sat downward at his desk, the opening words—"I pledge allegiance to my flag"—tumbled onto paper. Then, subsequently two hours of "arduous mental labor," as he described information technology, he produced a succinct and rhythmic tribute very close to the one we know today: I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Democracy for which it stands—ane Nation indivisible—with freedom and justice for all. (Bellamy later added the "to" before "the Commonwealth" for better cadence.)

Millions of schoolchildren nationwide took function in the 1892 Columbus Day ceremony, according to the Youth's Companion. Bellamy said he heard the pledge for the showtime time that day, October 21, when "iv,000 high schoolhouse boys in Boston roared it out together."

Only no sooner had the pledge taken root in schools than the fiddling with information technology began. In 1923, a National Flag Conference, presided over by the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution, ordained that "my flag" should be changed to "the flag of the The states," lest immigrant children exist unclear just which flag they were saluting. The post-obit year, the Flag Conference refined the phrase further, adding "of America."

In 1942, the pledge's 50th anniversary, Congress adopted information technology as part of a national flag lawmaking. By so, the salute had already acquired a powerful institutional role, with some land legislatures obligating public school students to recite it each school day. Merely individuals and groups challenged the laws. Notably, Jehovah's Witnesses maintained that reciting the pledge violated their prohibition against venerating a graven epitome. In 1943, the Supreme Court ruled in the Witnesses' favor, undergirding the costless-spoken language principle that no schoolchild should be compelled to recite the pledge.

A decade later, post-obit a lobbying campaign by the Knights of Columbus—a Cosmic fraternal organisation—and others, Congress approved the improver of the words "nether God" within the phrase "one nation indivisible." On June 14, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the bill into law.

The neb'south sponsors, anticipating that the reference to God would be challenged as a breach of the Constitutionally mandated separation of church and state, had argued that the new linguistic communication wasn't really religious. "A distinction must be fabricated between the being of a religion equally an institution and a belief in the sovereignty of God," they wrote. "The phrase 'under God' recognizes only the guidance of God in our national affairs." The disclaimer did non deter a succession of litigants in several state courts from battling the new diction over the years, but complainants never got very far—until last year's ruling past the Ninth Circuit.

The instance originated when Michael Newdow, an atheist, claimed that his daughter (a pocket-size whose name has not been released) was harmed past reciting the pledge at her public school in Elk Grove, California. If she refused to join in considering of the "under God" phrase, the adapt argued, she was liable to be branded an outsider and thereby harmed. The appellate court agreed. Complicating the motion-picture show, the girl's mother, who has custody of the kid, has said she does not oppose her girl's reciting the pledge; the youngster does so every school day along with her classmates, according to the superintendent of the school commune where the kid is enrolled.

Proponents of the idea that the pledge's mention of God reflects historical tradition and not religious doctrine include Supreme Court justices past and present. "They see that kind of language—'under God' and 'in God nosotros trust'—with no special religious significance," says political scientist Gary Jacobsohn, who teaches Constitutional law at WilliamsCollege.

Atheists are not the just ones to accept event with that line of idea. Advocates of religious tolerance point out that the reference to a single deity might not sit well with followers of some established religions. Later on all, Buddhists don't conceive of God as a single discrete entity, Zoroastrians believe in 2 deities and Hindus believe in many. Both the Ninth Circuit ruling and a number of Supreme Court decisions admit this. Merely Jacobsohn predicts that a majority of the justices will hold that government may support religion in general as long equally public policy does not pursue an obviously sectarian, specific religious purpose.

Bellamy, who went on to become an advertising executive, wrote extensively about the pledge in later years. I haven't establish any evidence in the historical record—including Bellamy's papers at the University of Rochester—to indicate whether he ever considered adding a divine reference to the pledge. So we can't know where he would stand up in today's dispute. Just it'southward ironic that the debate centers on a reference to God that an ordained minister left out. And we tin be sure that Bellamy, if he was like virtually writers, would have aghast at anyone tinkering with his prose.