Stoned-Campbell Disciple

One Nation Under God”

Yesterday I made a short post about the national flag in the church building. Many comments were made which I still have not read. But everyone is still asleep so I intend to answer one question.

Last Sunday in my lesson I spoke about “remembering.” Not mere remembering but remembering properly. And I wrote about it too. I noted that “remembering properly is an act of worship in scripture.” History matters. The good, the bad, and the very ugly. But we don’t like proper remembering. We like sanitized remembering, the kind that makes us look better than we actually were and are.

So someone asked on my post, so “what does One Nation Under God” mean?

In the context of “Christian nationalism” this is an interesting question indeed. The USA certainly is not the only nation that has imagined itself as uniquely related to God, with idolatrous results. Germany is a prime example. Germany believed herself to be God’s gift to the world!

The phase “one nation under God,” comes from the Pledge of Allegiance. So here are some facts to help us understand this phrase.

First, for the first 116 years of the USA, no President, Senator, Supreme Court Justice, governor, solder, sailor or school child ever said a pledge of allegiance in the United States. That’s from 1776 to 1892. This is stunning when you think about this from today’s point of view. The Founding Fathers never dreamed of, much less required, a pledge of allegiance.

Second, and this is one great irony given the rhetoric of today (i.e. bad remembering) the pledge of allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892, and Francis was a Socialist (and minister!).

Third, when the Socialist Bellamy wrote the pledge it did not include the phrase “one nation under god.” In fact it would be another 50 or so years before that was included. Indeed, the terms “liberty and justice” were “equality and fraternity,” but he changed them because those ideas were not granted to African Americans and women (so it was objected). “Equality” was not a given!

Fourth, the pledge of allegiance was adopted and modified slightly by the Daughters of the American Revolution (an organization I came to think poorly of in Grenada. They are the same group that refused Marion Anderson permission to sing the national anthem at Constitutional Hall in 1939 and so she sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial). Again we remember poorly.

Fifth, it was not until 1942 that the pledge was adopted by Congress. When it was adopted by Congress in 1942, that is 166 years after the War for Independence, it still did not include the phrase “one nation under God.” And it certainly did not project “liberty and justice” for “all” (recall these words were more tolerable than “equality and fraternity”) as I understand those terms.

Finally, the phrase “one nation under God” was added to the pledge in June 1954 (same year as Brown vs. Board of Education).

Several themes display themselves from these facts. First, for most of the history of the United States the pledge of allegiance was not used. Second, the slogan was created by a Socialist who probably had more interest in equality than many others. Third, when created the pledge neither included the phrase “one nation under God” nor was it used by soldiers, presidents, etc in any official capacity. The slogan was adopted by a racist group (Daughters of the American Revolution). Finally, “under God” was adopted in 1954 in the context of the Cold War and Jim Crow.

Just somethings to meditate upon on this Hump Day … We need to remember and when we remember we need to remember the truth.

Psalm 24.1
Revelation 7.9-10

Shalom.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 3rd, 2024 at 8:54 pm and is filed under American Empire, Bobby's World, Church, Contemporary Ethics, Culture, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.