Restricting The Pledge Of Allegiance

Yesterday being the Fourth of July makes this a good time to once again talk about the nation's Pledge of Allegiance. The pledge is actually pretty old, having been written by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and Socialist. He intentionally made it short so it could be easily remembered and quickly said. And even though he was a minister, there was no mention of god or religion in the original pledge. His pledge was:

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 "my Flag" were replaced by "the Flag of the United States". A year later the words "of America" were also added. The thinking behind these changes was to make it clear that a person was pledging loyalty to this country (and not to the country they or their ancestors had come from). This change was reasonable, especially in a country made up largely of immigrants and their descendants.

That made the pledge read like in the picture above (taken from the blog No Godz). At that time it was still a pledge that could apply to both religious and non-religious people, and that was the version that was made official by Congress on June 22, 1942. After passage, it was made mandatory for school children to recite the pledge. This was fought in court by the Jehovah's Witnesses. The Supreme Court originally upheld the law, but a year later overturned it saying no one could be required to recite the pledge (and later it was determined that school children could not even be made to stand for the pledge).

It was not until 1954 that the religious nuts got Congress to include the words "under God" in the pledge. To them, only those who are god-believers could be good Americans, so it made sense for them to force anyone wishing to recite the pledge to say "under God" when they did.

What these people didn't realize, or didn't care about, was the fact that the adding of those words had restricted the pledge to only god-believers. This meant that millions of Americans could no longer recite the pledge without also pledging their belief in a god -- an imaginary being they did not believe in. And yes, there are many millions of people in America who do not believe in god (probably between 20 and 30 million at least).

Frankly, this has never made any sense to me. Why change the pledge to include a phrase that as much as 10% of the population cannot accept as fact? I believe the addition of those words actually cheapens the pledge by making it an expression of religious belief instead of just loyalty to country. And as much as I love this country, I have not recited the pledge in many years because I resent being forced by christians to acknowledge the existence of their god. I consider this a violation of my constitutional right to religious freedom (which includes the right to be free from religion).

Do fundamentalists believe that their god cannot survive if he is not forced on others through our nation's laws? Is their god so weak that he must be legislated?