A Humble Retraction

Thanks to an honest reader, I must retract my historical ignorance written in my last blog where I made this statement:

“It is so interesting to me how people, for years, have demanded a division between “church and state.”

Yet in our Constitution we claim to be a nation founded “under God.”

I have never ever been a student of history. As a kid, and as an adult, the past was just our past.  Today is the day to seize.  

There was, however, one part of history that did capture by complete attention.  It was in grade school, when we were all required to memorize the Gettysburg Address. As silly as it may seem,  Abraham Lincoln was my one historical hero — in American history that is.

And as it turns out,  it was a sermon given on February 7, 1954 by the Rev. George M. Docherty, A Presbyterian Pastor, that influence President Eisenhower’s decision to rewrite the Pledge of Allegiance of the United State to include the phrase: “under God.”

The occasion of the sermon was the remembrance of Lincoln's date of  birth.  

In that sermon Docherty states:

  

“This is the “American way of life.”  Lincoln saw this clearly.  History for him was a Divine Comedy, though he would not use that phrase.  The providence of God was being fulfilled. 

Therefore Lincoln  claims that ‘UNDER GOD’ this nation shall know a new birth of freedom. And by implication, it is under God that the “government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” 

It was soon after hearing that sermon that Eisenhower  signed the a bill, on June 14, 1954, the change in wording for the Pledge to include “one nation under God” into being. 

This signing was clearly in response to communist threats trying in influence the people of the United States at that time.  

Eisenhower was quoted, in the Washington Post, as saying:The new version would add “…to our country’s true meaning…In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource, in peace and in war.” 

As might be expected, this action created a great debate about how this would polarize the nation; and upset the issue of church and state factor of the constitution.

But however great the debate became, I am glad the phrase remains still today.

But then, I may be just a tiny bit prejudice on this particular issue. 

And yet as those words rolled off my fingers, my mind is wondering how often that phrase has been mis-used and misinterpreted  by political power since 1954.