Short History of God in America's Government

[Pah]

From a dated article in History News Service

Originally, the Pledge of Allegiance was a testament of patriotism, not religious faith. Written in 1892 by the socialist Francis Bellamy, a cousin of the radical writer Edward Bellamy, it omitted reference not only to God but also, curiously, to the United States: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Soon public schools and voluntary societies were starting their days and meetings with the oath.

Then politics intervened. In the 1920s, the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution argued that immigrants might construe the pledge as a vow of loyalty to their native lands. "My flag" became "the flag of the United States of America."

The next revision of the pledge proved far more controversial. The Red Scare of the 1950s brought with it a much-heralded "religious revival." The evangelical Rev. Billy Graham rose to celebrity denouncing communism as a "satanic religion," while Secretary of State John Foster Dulles argued that Christianity was what distinguished Americans from the Russians.

Politicians outbid one another to prove their piety. Congress created a prayer room in the Capitol. It added the words "In God We Trust" to paper money in 1955. In 1956 the same phrase replaced "E Pluribus Unum" as the nation's official motto.

The new religiosity spawned the push to add "under God" to the Pledge. In the early '50s the Catholic fraternal society the Knights of Columbus had added "under God" to the pledge that its members used in their own meetings. The Knights bombarded Congress with calls for the United States to do the same. In April 1953, a Michigan congressman introduced a bill to alter the pledge.

Then, in February 1954, the Rev. George M. Docherty, a Washington, D.C., Presbyterian pastor, gave a sermon -- with President Eisenhower in attendance -- urging the addition of "under God" to the pledge as a way to distinguish the United States from the atheistic Soviet Union. Congress took up the bill again.

The author, David Greenberg, then goes on to quote from the legislative debate ""acknowledge the dependence of our people and our Government upon . . . the Creator." Now combining what was considered neutral in the Decalration of Independence to a term used by Christianity naming it's god, God.

Greenberg, in my crux of the article, brings up that 1971 case that established the Constitutional test for Government religious law and practise - Lemon v. Kurtzman. "... the Court said laws or government practices cannot have a religious purpose, primarily advance or promote religion or excessively entangle government and religion", says Greenberg. Had the recent Suporeme Court case regarding the pledge not been dismissed on a technicallity, the absence of standing, it would have had to apply the proper prong in Lemon to the declared intent of the makers of the law and ruled "under God" does not belong in the Pledge of Allegience. Reasonable legislatures would have taken the hint and also removed "In God we Trust" from our money and motto. It's only a matter of time, folks, when the Court is faced again with a case and the precedent to make this happen.

-pah-