How 'One Nation' Didn't Become 'Under God' Until The '50s Religious Revival

[octoberlib]

The words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and the phrase "In God we trust" on the back of a dollar bill haven't been there as long as most Americans might think. Those references were inserted in the 1950s during the Eisenhower administration, the same decade that the National Prayer Breakfast was launched, according to writer Kevin Kruse. His new book is One Nation Under God.

In the original Pledge of Allegiance, Francis Bellamy made no mention of God, Kruse says. Bellamy was Christian socialist, a Baptist who believed in the separation of church and state.

"As this new religious revival is sweeping the country and taking on new political tones, the phrase 'one nation under God' seizes the national imagination," Kruse tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "It starts with a proposal by the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic lay organization, to add the phrase 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance. Their initial campaign doesn't go anywhere but once Eisenhower's own pastor endorses it ... it catches fire."

Kruse's book investigates how the idea of America as a Christian nation was promoted in the 1930s and '40s when industrialists and business lobbies, chafing against the government regulations of the New Deal, recruited and funded conservative clergy to preach faith, freedom and free enterprise. He says this conflation of Christianity and capitalism moved to center stage in the '50s under Eisenhower's watch.


http://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/396365659/how-one-nation-didnt-become-under-god-until-the-50s-religious-revival?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=artslife

[lovemydog]

1. Yup, it's an amazing story.

One that every American should know.

[Suich]

2. I remember when they stuck it in the Pledge.

The nuns were very excited.

I didn't know any better.

[Art_from_Ark]

3. Faith, freedom, and free enterprise

[Cleita]

4. I still don't say "under god" because I never had to say it in school when we

did the Pledge of Allegiance and I went to parochial school. That's what the Our Father and Hail Mary was for. Of course I'm so old I went to school before they changed it. Many people of my generation still remain silent about those words when saying the Pledge of Allegiance because we still believe in separation of church and state.

[SheilaT]

5. I was in a Catholic parochial school when the insertion

of "under God" happened in the Pledge. I recall the nuns being VERY unhappy about it, as they had a very clear understanding that the Pledge of Allegiance was a secular thing, and that a religious insertion was completely wrong and inappropriate.

For a long time I'd recite the Pledge but leave out the "under God" part. About ten years ago I stopped reciting. At first I'd stand with the crowd, now I no longer do. I will admit to feeling a bit uncomfortable, but was helped a while back as a friend who was also attending events where the Pledge was being recited was wheelchair bound and of course could not stand. I don't think he completely understood why I remained seated, and we never discussed it, but he seemed to be grateful that an able-bodied person like myself remained seated next to him.

[merrily]

6. Interesting. I thought clergy really got in bed with politicians big time because

the SCOTUS struck down state laws forbidding contraception and abortion. I knew about Eisenhower and the pledge (Cold War measure, supposedly), but I had no idea that all this had started in the 1930s as one of the responses to the New Deal.

Then again, clergy were probably always in bed with politicians or we would not have had laws forbidding divorce, adultery contraception, etc. in the first place, let alone into the 1960s and the 1970s. I doubt many politicians were strangers to, or personally averse to, those things.

And now we're going backwards.

Jefferson was right about this: a wall of strict separation of church and state is essential.

It's unfortunate, imo, that Democrats decided to go in a different direction: another "great" recommendation of the DLC: Democratic politicians should stop hiding their faith (translate that however you wish).

[octoberlib]

13. I wasn't aware this had started in the 1930's either.

It makes perfect sense , though that prosperity gospel has been pushed and funded by corporations and Chamber of Commerce types. Brainwashing.

[merrily]

16. Another thing for which we can thank the 1%.

[hootinholler]

18. It started before the civil war

1840ish IIRC.

I should have a file at the house that lists particulars.

[3catwoman3]

7. The author of the pledge is an alum of...

...the University of Rochester, as am I. IIRC, he identified himself as a socialist Baptist minister. Wouldn't that frost the RWNJs? OMG, a socialist!!!!

His descendants were sure he would no have been happy about the change to his words.

Any guesses as to what percentage of Americans know that the God stuff was not on either the Pledge or on our money right from the beginning? Not too many, I'm guessing.

[A HERETIC I AM]

30. Entirely too many do not, I'm sorry to say.

They love to point at the phrase on our currency and say "See? We are a religious people. It says so right on our money", not understanding that for the vast majority of the history of our republic, "E Pluribus Unum" was our national motto.

Yup..we get to thank the Knights of Columbus for this silly nonsense.

[Downwinder]

8. I remember that in the Saturday matinee westerns,

the bankers always took a beating. They were the bad guys or the bad guys worked for them. That seemed to change with television when the advertisers took over.

[dhill926]

28. interesting observation….

makes sense...

[pansypoo53219]

9. we still live under zombie mccarthy, reagan, and the unelected grover torquiest. where is zombie FDR

cause commies hate religion.

[MADem]

10. The debate continued when Roman Catholic John Kennedy (D) was elected President.

People who were alive during that period will remember that it was, as Joe Biden might say, a "big f-ing deal" that he made it to the White House at all. It wasn't all Bing Crosby and "Going My Way" -- many people were insisting that JFK would "take orders from ROME!!!" if he were elected. Roman Catholics, of course, were thrilled. Others, not so much. JFK gave a speech in Houston, TX to a group of protestant ministers assuaging the frayed nerves of people who were freaking out about his choice of church. He broke the "religion barrier" for Roman Catholics, no one said much, if anything, to Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Wes Clark, Dennis Kucinich, etc about their religion after that, except maybe to push buttons about the choice issue. On the GOP/Wingnut side, you've got Sam Brownback, Pat Buchanan, Rudy "Bad Catholic" Giuliani, George Pataki, etc. They waved the choice thing like a bloody battle shirt and used the religious argument to back themselves up--in any event, it didn't hurt them amongst their loyal followers.

Mitt RMoney tried to do a similar thing--also in TX-- with his Mormonism--it didn't go over as well. That could very well be because Mitt Romney is an unctuous little shit who is disliked; perhaps if Jon Huntsman gave the same speech it might have gone over better.

The whole culture/religious war brouhaha had been building for some time as we entered the seventies, too. Nixon's "Silent Majority" of quiet, "average" and taciturn churchgoing "regular guys" gradually morphed into Reagan's "Moral Majority" but before Reagan took the WH, Jimmy Carter (D) kicked up plenty of ethical dust on that whole Southern Baptist religious score, too. He didn't hesitate to talk about how his religious beliefs informed his decsion-making. That era was when the evangelicals figured out that they could bully the GOP.

Looks like that orbit is finally starting to degrade, at long last. It will never disappear, entirely, but I think people are losing enthusiasm for throwing large sums of money at ministers to hand to politicians who don't seem to be doing much, if anything, to actually improve their lives (or, for that matter, stop behaviors they find objectionable).

[octoberlib]

14. I was in grade school during the late 60's, early 70's and

we used 'under god' then but I had no idea it was a fairly recent development.

[MADem]

21. The ORIGINAL oath was a quickie, they kept gilding the lily and made it terribly unwieldy.

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in August 1892 by the socialist minister Francis Bellamy (1855-1931). It was originally published in The Youth's Companion on September 8, 1892. Bellamy had hoped that the pledge would be used by citizens in any country.

In its original form it read:

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

In 1923, the words, "the Flag of the United States of America" were added. At this time it read:

"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."

In 1954, in response to the Communist threat of the times, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words "under God," creating the 31-word pledge we say today. Bellamy's daughter objected to this alteration. Today it reads:

"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."

http://www.ushistory.org/documents/pledge.htm

[SoCalDem]

11. I credit/blame "The Ten Commandments"

for the revival of hyper-religiosity..

The movie advance teams scattered across the US before the movie was released..as they went to all the small towns, they "gifted" each locale with replica tablets.. then when the movie was such a success, millions of "Easter/Christmas" christians became true-believers..

Most of the old tent-revival stuff had pretty much died down after WWII, and this movie revived that "oldtimey religious fervor...and all the clannish/cultish bigotry that came along with it..

[MisterP]

20. sort of a gap there--it was more the sort of "Jesus spoke English since He was American"

religiosity: a decade later Time still asked "Is God dead?"

the current fundie wave is from the late-70s backlash, when the SoBapts had a literal coup; even, like, pharmacists and physicists saw reactionary swings: it was very well-orchestrated and -funded (Powell Memo, anybody?)

my introduction to US religious history is "Where Darwin Meets the Bible," which is a wonderful book that explains so much about where we are today--and where we could've been if Carter had had a Truman moment and swung back left

[3catwoman3]

33. A freind of ours is the ex-wife of a Methodist minister.

She told us once of a member of the congregation who did not approve of foreign languages being taught in American schools. His rationale was, "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me."



That level of ignorance is really scary.

BTW, the ex-husband is also an ex-minister. Got caught fooling around with a parishioner.

[Lars39]

12. 'The Man Who Wrote the Pledge of Allegiance'...

Whole thing was instigated by the promotions department of a youth magazine!
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-man-who-wrote-the-pledge-of-allegiance-93907224/

[octoberlib]

15. Interesting. Thanks for the link!

[MineralMan]

17. I was in elementary school when "under God" was added.

I learned the pledge before that time, and never changed the way I said it. I still say it without that phrase. As an atheist (which I wasn't then) I simply omit it and say the pledge as I learned it in the first grade.

I actually remember the day it was introduced in my classroom. I was puzzled.

[ProfessorGAC]

19. The Whole Pledge Thing Is Completely Backwards

This is a government of the people. The government is supposed to pledge allegiance to the people. The people don't have to pledge allegiance to the country, government or flag.

It's a shame that the "pledge" ever caught on, whether "under god" was in it or not.

[Arugula Latte]

23. Yeah, the whole thing is so creepy and mindless.

Hey, kids, don't think about what the Constitution means, just parrot these words you don't understand and worship this piece of tri-colored material.

The "under god" part pisses me off to no end. It's such a violation of church/state separation. We told our kids not to say it.

[hifiguy]

22. This was the McCarthy era

and everyone had to make sure that 'murka would be sure to stand up against the Godless Commies.

For a deep history of the religulous nuts, racist and imperialist know-nothings, paranoid millionaires, frothing Red baiters and their entry into US politics in the 1940s-1960s check out Rick Perlstein's Before The Storm. A great and essential read.

[Thor_MN]

24. And now people are placing their hand over their heart for the National Anthem...

Trying to outdo each other in Patriotism...

[Blue_In_AK]

29. That's a pet peeve of my husband's, as well.

"You DON'T put your hand over your heart for the National Anthem!!" He gets all annoyed every time he sees someone do it. Interestingly, I've researched this a bit, and it seems that most references that come up in Google say, yes, put your hand on your heart for the national anthem, but I can't remember that we did when I was young (admittledly a long time ago). Maybe it's some "new" thing.

[raven mad]

25. I was raised in a Catholic school -

we didn't use "under God" until I was in about 6th grade, 1962.

It's ridiculous, but everyone seems to want to believe in a cloud in the sky that will save them from misery. They're wrong.

[Blue_In_AK]

26. I learned it without the "under God,"

and that's still how I say it.

(They could probably eliminate "indivisible," too. It's kind of a joke in this day and age.) And "liberty and justice for all"? Not so much. Maybe the pledge is irrelevant.

[Auggie]

27. Robin Williams asked, "why not just say 'One nation, under Canada?'"

[HassleCat]

32. Or...

You know they would never go for that. It would have to be "over Mexico." That would get them excited.

[HassleCat]

31. Mixed Bag

I think the phrase was officially added in 1955. I went to grade school in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and some of our teachers didn't add the new language right away. This was in Wisconsin, home of Joe McCarthy, the fiery anti-communist, but also home to Fighting Bob LaFollette, the architect of the Progressive movement. Not everybody was of a single mind about mixing religion with anti-communist fervor. There was also some confusion about whether the new language was strictly patriotic, or perhaps a sneaky move by the Pope. It would be nice if we could go back to the original wording.