The urge to add the phrase to the pledge arose out of anti-communist organizing, principally by religious groups such as the Knights of Columbus. George M. At this moment of our history the principles underlying our American Government and the American way of life are under attack by a system whose philosophy is at direct odds with our own. Our American Government is founded on the concept of the individuality and the dignity of the human being. Underlying this concept is the belief that the human person is important because he was created by God and endowed by Him with certain inalienable rights which no civil authority may usurp.
The inclusion of God in our pledge therefore would further acknowledge the dependence of our people and our Government upon the moral directions of the Creator. At the same time it would serve to deny the atheistic and materialistic concepts of communism with its attendant subservience of the individual. 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.
Yet congressmen and -women did not recite the pledge on the floor of the House of Representatives until , and the Senate only adopted the practice in While traditions often engender controversy and resistance, probably no U. Not all of this resistance has come from atheists. The problem was exacerbated when the pledge attained the force of law. A judge in ruled in her favor, but the school appealed the decision all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided in Minersville School District v.
Gobitis that mandatory flag salutes in school were constitutional and thus that the expulsion was legal. The matter was hardly settled, as more children around the country were subsequently banned from school for objecting to the pledge and flag salute. Barnette reversed the previous ruling, declaring that children could not be forced to recite the pledge.
In a stirring opinion, Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote:. There is no mysticism in the American concept of the state or of the nature or origin of its authority. We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent.
Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
Obviously, none of these complaints reacted to the reference to God in the pledge, as the reference was not there yet. Morris case, a federal court asserted that students had the right to remain seated and silent during the pledge—putting the burden of nonconformity on the individual child. Newdow v. Congress et al. Nevertheless, on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the motto in , President George W.
The Pledge of Allegiance and the motto are two particularly clear examples of the invention of traditions. The U. Constitution, ratified in , specified no pledge or motto, and the country survived for more than a century without either, just as it possessed or needed no national anthem.
Senate and House of Representatives. And hundreds of thousands of newly minted citizens pledge allegiance each year during the U. Yet the pledge continues to have its critics, with some pointing out the irony of requiring citizens to swear fealty to a nation that prizes freedom of thought and speech.
The historian Richard J. The original Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy. It was first given wide publicity through the official program of the National Public Schools Celebration of Columbus Day, which was printed in The Youth's Companion of September 8, , and at the same time sent out in leaflet form to schools throughout the country.
School children first recited the Pledge of Allegiance this way:. A year later, "of America" was added after "United States.
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