http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/dec/article009.htmlReligion, The Pledge And American History By Shane Roe
Dec. 1, 2004
There is a battle raging between those who feel that it’s acceptable to mention God occasionally, and those who feel that every reference to God should be eliminated from public display---or rather every good reference to God should be removed. Here is one example: the fight to remove the words “under God” from The Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge has been in existence for many years, but only in the last fifty, since 1954 to be exact, was this phrase added. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had the phrase added to the Pledge to show the difference between Americans, and the Communist regimes, like the Soviet Union who were basically god-less. The dictates of communism provide that no God exists, therefore no religion, and therefore, they are without God.
On the other hand, Eisenhower and others of his time believed that America was morally superior to that kind of thinking, and not just because of the others’ disbelief in God, but because America had been blessed in so many different ways---was prosperous economically, seemed to have happier citizens, religious persecution was basically non-existent, oppression of races was slowly beginning to go away---that those of a religious ethic could only assume that God had had a hand in it.
Now shift to modern times where the fight is to remove this phrase from the Pledge. I would ask these questions: It hasn’t hurt anybody in almost fifty years, why is it hurting them now? If the sensibilities of the few who feel oppressed are so offended, what about the sensibilities of the many who will be offended if and when the phrase is removed? My contention is this---that nobody is really offended by the phrase “under God” unless they allow themselves to be under the guise of hypersensitivity. In another case, county officials in Los Angeles County, allowed a small cross to be removed from the county seal in order to prevent an ACLU-led lawsuit. What did the cross symbolize? The seal was designed with several symbols of the history of L.A. County. Included on the seal were various symbols representative of the fishing industry, the oil industry, and other important historical influences of the area. The cross was symbolic of the early settlement of the region by Catholic missionaries. In no way was the cross on the seal endorsing Catholicism as the state religion, but merely noting its place historically.
Now, let’s contrast that with artwork displayed in public museums. I understand that there is in a major national museum (the Brooklyn Art Museum), a crude painting of Mary, the mother of Christ, with excrement thrown all over her. This is offensive to many people, yet where is the ACLU? Where are those who should just as readily complain about offenses against religion as they complain about alleged offenses in favor of religion? The answer seems clear: their agenda is to rid America of public displays of religion, a direct slap in the face of our nation’s Constitution. Fights have already brewed regarding the innocent singing of religious Christmas songs in schools. No more can the words to “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem”, “Silent Night” and many other peaceful carols, be heard in many publicly funded schools of America. Yet Halloween, associated with religion, and nowadays, all that’s secular and perverse about religion, is routinely played up in schools.
-snip-