Politics Index

Taking The Pledge

December 1st, 2008 admin Posted in conservative |

George M. Docherty died this Thanksgiving. If you’ve never heard of Rev. George Docherty, he’s the one who gave us the “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegience.

On Feb. 7, 1954, with President Dwight D. Eisenhower sitting in Lincoln’s pew, Rev. Docherty urged that the pledge to the flag be amended, saying, “To omit the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance is to omit the definitive factor in the American way of life.”

He borrowed the phrase from the Gettysburg Address, in which Lincoln said, “this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”

Rev. Docherty’s inspiration for the sermon came from his son’s schoolroom experience of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, which was written in 1892 by Baptist minister Francis Bellamy. When Rev. Docherty realized that it had no reference to God, he later said, “I had found my sermon.”

Without mentioning a deity, Rev. Docherty said, the pledge could just as easily apply to the communist Soviet Union: “I could hear little Muscovites recite a similar pledge to their hammer-and-sickle flag with equal solemnity."…

But in 1954, with Eisenhower in the congregation and the threat of communism in the air, Rev. Docherty’s message immediately resounded on Capitol Hill. Bills were introduced in Congress that week, and Eisenhower signed the “under God” act into law within four months.

Then as now, legal scholars questioned whether a reference to a deity in a patriotic pledge violated the First Amendment separation of church and state. In recent years, there have been several court challenges to the phrase.

But Rev. Docherty remained unmoved. The phrase “under God” could include “the great Jewish community and the people of the Muslim faith,” in his view, but he drew the line at atheists.

“An atheistic American is a contradiction in terms,” he said in his sermon. “If you deny the Christian ethic, you fall short of the American ideal of life.”

But did he intend for it to be used by fundamentalists as part of their agenda to make America a “Christian First” society? And would he have been welcome in their circle now? After all, today’s social conservatives would probably have taken issue with Docherty in other areas:

During his 26 years as pastor, he became better known for his liberal social activism than for his quest to alter the Pledge of Allegiance. He promoted racial equality and led outreach efforts to feed and educate the city’s hungry and poor. His church was often a staging point for civil rights and antiwar demonstrations, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached from its pulpit. Rev. Docherty was with King on the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the “Bloody Sunday” civil rights march in Selma, Ala., in 1965.

Rev. Docherty often spoke out against the Vietnam War in his sermons, even when Robert S. McNamara—defense secretary in the 1960s—was present for services.

I have to wonder if Docherty realized the influence that moment has had on the religious right. Would he have done the same thing today?