I'm behind on my reading, as usual, and just saw 4&20 Blackbirds' discussion of a resolution requiring recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance at Missoula City Council meetings.
I have expressed my own reservations about the pledge often enough. In short: I was raised to believe that the pledge undermines religion and borders on blasphemy because it uses the name of God in a rote recitation that promotes secular purposes.
So much for that. But it did strike me the other day that quite a few allegedly religious people who are sensitive about protecting the fragile beliefs of creationists have no such sensitivity to religious qualms about the pledge. How come?
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They don't see it, in most cases, as sacrilege but as an affirmation of their belief that this is a Christian nation. The phrase you are referring to was put into the pledge during the McCarthy hearings under Eisenhower in, I believe, 1954, to reflect our differences with "godless" communism. It was silly to me then when I was a god-fearing church goer to a greater or lesser extent and it remains silly today.
When the phrase "under God" was added to the pledge I regretted it not so much because of the nod to God as the fact that it threw the whole rythmn of the thing off kilter. After all, i'd been saying the thing with true patriotic fervor for already 30 years. Jim Taylor
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