Jess
"One nation, under God:" Religious discrimination or a nice thing to say during the pledge of allegience?
Commie Bastards, the Great Clock-Winder, and Grains of Salt.
Several months ago, before all of the “under God” controversy started, my conservative Christian, Vietnam veteran father recited the pledge of allegiance as follows: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” For a while I was puzzled about the “under God” omission. It certainly wasn’t intentional or politically motivated. Then, it dawned on me: He was just reciting the pledge the way he had originally learned it.
With the bombing of Pearl Harbor and US involvement in World War II, the pledge became a classroom staple to show support of our country in the war effort. About a decade later, with the Axis powers soundly defeated, the US had found a new evil: the commie bastards of the Soviet Union. Partly as a way to even more clearly separate our national values from those of the godless heathen in the Soviet juggernaut, “under God” was inserted into the pledge in 1953. Dad was part of that generation who went through the first couple years of school without being under God.
Beyond whether god should or should not have been inserted, and what motives were involved, the main question is, does it do any harm? Is it a violation of religious freedom? My opinion is no, since the pledge allows for a personal interpretation of what god is, reflects the views of many American’s belief in a higher power, and like, other parts of the pledge, should be taken with a grain of salt.
God is Buddha, Jesus, Allah, the Great Mother, a UFO, and/or an unknowable higher force. “Under God” no doubt referred to the god of our “Christian heritage” for the lawmakers who inserted it. But they were wrong if they thought their god was the god of our founding fathers, who based our country on the radically new principles of the French Enlightenment. To them, god was reason. The deity of god was a great impersonal clock-winder, who set the world in motion and left mankind to use its own devices, its own reason to make sense of the world. “God” is big enough to encapsulate a lot of concepts; atheists should be encouraged to express their faith by omitting the reference.
Besides the fact that “under God” reflects the typical belief in some sort of higher power or spiritual world, this, and other aspects of the pledge are usually interpreted in sentimental terms, or taken with a grain of salt. I hope that with the debate about civil religion in the pledge, other issues about the pledge will be raised. For example, the nation is not “indivisible;” it already it already has been divided, during that whole North and South thing, and lately during the last election. And speaking of that whole North and South thing, “liberty and justice for all” has not been the norm for most of our nation’s history…Patriotism is good, realizing that its not always the complete truth is better.
