Under God and anti-communist: How the pledge of allegiance got religion in cold war America

Journal of Church and State

Volumn 45, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 305-324

  Canipe, Lee ^a,b,c,d  

^a DAVIDSON COLLEGE   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA   (United States)

^c DUKE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^d BAYLOR UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33646044451     PISSN: 0021969X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jcs/45.2.305     Document Type: Review

References (47)

1. Robert Bellah, "Civil Religion in America," reprinted in American Civil Religion, eds. Russell E. Richey and Donald G. Jones (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 29
2. Bellah's essay originally appeared in Daedulus 96 (Winter 1967): 1-21
3. Perhaps the most well-known of these efforts are Will Herberg's equation of American civil religion with "the American Way of Life" (in "America's Civil Religion: What It Is and Whence It Comes," in American Civil Religion, eds. Richey and Jones, 76-88)
4. and Sidney Mead's understanding of civil religion as the "religion of the Republic" that unites where traditional religious denominations divide (see "The 'Nation With the Soul of a Church,'" in American Civil Religion, 45-75).
5. Richard V. Pierard, "One Nation Under God: Judgment or Jingoism?" in Christian Social Ethics: Perspectives and Problems, ed. Perry C. Cotham (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1979), 81
6. Martin Marty, "Two Kinds of Two Kinds of Civil Religion," in American Civil Religion, eds. Richey and Jones, 143
7. One notable exception to this trend is Robert J. Linder's intriguing essay on Bill Clinton's performance as the "nation's pastor" during his first term in office. As president, writes Linder, Clinton fluently spoke the inclusive language of American civil religion in a way that celebrated an expansive understanding of "America's world mission and his vision for a world community of civil faith" (744). See Linder, "Universal Pastor: President Bill Clinton's Civil Religion," Journal of Church and State 38 (Autumn 1996): 733-49
8. Garry Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 81.
9. New York Times, 27 June 2002, 1
10. See Newdow v. U.S. Congress, et al., No. 0016423p (9th Cir. 2002)
11. See Howard Fineman, "One Nation, Under ... Who?" Newsweek, 8 July 2002, 20-26. A survey of any daily newspaper's "Letters to the Editor" column for the several weeks following the 26 June 2002 decision will no doubt reveal a number of passionate letters denouncing-and in some cases affirming-the controversial ruling. This study considered letters in the Boston Globe, the Greensboro (N.C.) News and Record, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Savannah (Ga.) Morning News, and the Waco (Tex.) Tribune-Herald
12. Dobson, quoted in Bob Kellogg, "Response Swift to Pledge Ruling," Family News in Focus, 27 June 2002. This article may be found at the Focus on the Family website at www.family.org/cforum/fnif/news/a0021268.html
13. The priestly interpretation claims that the United States enjoys a unique relationship with God, and with that relationship comes a special blessing and an outpouring of God's favor. The prophetic understanding, meanwhile, argues that as a nation to whom much has been given, the United States will be held to a high standard of accountability before the judgment seat of God. Marty's labels have become standard in scholarly conversations about civil religion. While the priestly understanding has certainly been the prevailing way Americans have traditionally understood the phrase "under God," the prophetic reading became especially popular during the difficult years of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and Watergate. Robert Bellah, The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial, 2nd ed. (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1992) is a good example of an extended look at American civil religion from a prophetic perspective
14. See Pierard, "One Nation Under God: Judgment or Jingoism?," 81-103
15. also Gerard Kaye and Ferene Szasz, "Adding 'Under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance," Encounter 34 (1973): 52-56
16. Merlin Gustafson looks at the utilitarian role of civil religion-and its lack of prophetic content-during the Truman administration in his essay "Church and State in the Cold War," Journal of Church and State 8 (1966): 49-63
17. Another article that explores the tensions between priestly and prophetic civil religion is James Juhnke, "One Nation Under God: Religion and the American Dream," Mennonite Life 38 (December 1983): 23-26.
18. "Under God," Time, 17 May 1954, 101
19. Bellamy's pledge replaced an earlier, decidedly less poetic-but infinitely more exclamatory-ode to the flag written by Col. George T. Balch: "We give our Heads! and our Hearts! to our Country! One Country! One Language! One Flag!" See Martin Marty, "Original Intent," The Christian Century, 28 September 1988, 855
20. New York Times, 22 April 1953, 38
21. Ronald Oakley, God's Country: America in the Fifties (New York: Dembner Books, 1986), 5.
22. Richard Fried, The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold War America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 6.
23. The meteoric career of Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisc.), of course, best captures the demagogic, but effective, use of the anti-communist hysteria as a political weapon. The "Red Scare" also helped launch the career of Richard Nixon, then a young congressman on the House Un-American Activities Committee. Clearly, communism was a powerful political issue. "The Democrats stayed in power twenty years by running against Hoover and Hitler," mused a GOP strategist in November 1953. "We have plenty of issues, of course, but we could stay in power for the next twenty years by running against Stalin and [Truman's secretary of state Dean] Acheson." See "Communism-Big GOP Weapon From Now Till Next November," Newsweek, 16 November 1953, 27
24. James Speer, "On the Nature of Patriotism," The Christian Century 70 (1 July 1953): 769.
25. Claude Fuess, "The Perils of Conformity," Saturday Review, 12 January 1952, 7.
26. "Correspondence," The Christian Century 71 (27 January 1954): 241-42
27. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-1971, Vol. 2, 1949-1958 (New York: Random House, 1972), 1253 and 1293
28. In 1965, 97 percent of Americans did the same (The Gallup Report, "Religion in America," Report No. 259, April 1987, 51). Clearly, then, belief in God remained quite consistent throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century. Regular church attendance, however, did increase sharply in the 1950s. In 1940, 37 percent of Americans attended a worship service at least once a week
29. Billy Graham, "Our Greatest Secret Weapon," American Magazine, November 1954, 86-88.
30. For an excellent assessment of President Eisenhower as the "national pastor" of American civil religion in the 1950s, see Richard V. Pierard and Robert D. Linder, Civil Religion and the Presidency (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Academic Books, 1988), 184-205
31. New York Times, 6 October 1952, 14
32. Oakley, God's Country, 324.
33. Eisenhower, quoted in William Lee Miller, "Religion, Politics, and the Great Crusade," Reporter, 7 July 1953, 15
34. Hoover, quoted in William Lee Miller, "Piety Along the Potomac," Reporter, 17 August 1954, 28
35. "Letters," Newsweek, 21 June 1954, 2, 6
36. It is interesting to note that the only significant debate about the revision that did occur in Congress revolved around the question of who would get official credit for it. Understandably, both the Republican Ferguson and the Democrat Rabault (and their respective parties) wanted to claim responsibility for the change, and their bickering on the question threatened to undo the bipartisan goodwill that the pledge amendment had generated. In an unusually gracious political move, Ferguson finally endorsed Rabault's bill as the "official" proposal to revise the pledge. For a more detailed account of this episode, see Kaye and Szasz, "Adding 'Under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance," 52-56
37. U.S. President, Public Papers ..., 141
38. New York Times, 15 June 1954, 31
39. See also Congressional Record 100, pt. 7 (22 June 1954): 8617
40. "One Nation, Under God," Living Church, 4 July 1954, 7
41. William Lee Miller, Piety Along the Potomac (Boston, Mass. : Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1964), 129
42. "Future BSC Meetings to Feature Pledges," Biblical Recorder, 16 November 2001, 1
43. "Tar Heel Voices," Biblical Recorder, 5 January 2002, 2 (emphasis added)
44. See William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas, Lord Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1996), 42-49, for an excellent theological discussion of the third commandment and its prohibition against taking God's name in vain
45. Miller, "Piety . . .", 27-28
46. Elshtain, as quoted in "Civil Religion Flourishes in Public Square After Attacks," The Report from the Capitol, 7 November 2001, 1, 4.
47. Herberg, "America's Civil Religion," 87.