In 1892, the nation was preparing to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America. In Boston, Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister, chaired a committee to plan the program for Columbus Day in the public schools. His activities included a flag raising ceremony and the recitation of a salute to the flag that he composed and entitled, “The Pledge to the Flag.” The words were printed in the leading family magazine of the time, “The Youth’s Companion,” on September 8, 1892, and a month later more than 12 million school children across the nation recited the words:
I pledge allegiance to my Flag,
And to the Republic for which it stands:
One Nation indivisible,
With Liberty and Justice for all.
If you read the words carefully, you will notice some differences from today’s Pledge. In 1923, to avoid confusion among immigrants over the meaning of “My Flag,” the phrase was changed to the Flag of the United States. The words, “of America” were added a year later.
The Pledge to the Flag was recited daily by children in schools across America, with particular fervor during two World Wars. On June 22, 1942, Congress officially sanctioned the Pledge, but one year later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that children could not be forced to recite it in school. In 1945 the Pledge received its official title as the Pledge of Allegiance.
The words, “under God,” were added to the Pledge on Flag Day, 1954 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced, “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 war.”
On June 26, 2002, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that even voluntary recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools was an unconstitutional “endorsement of religion” because of the phrase “under God.” The matter is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. If government is compelled to divorce itself from any formal recognition of God, songs such as “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful” will have to be re-written or abandoned in our schools, and while we will be allowed to sing the first three stanzas of our National Anthem, we will be prohibited from straying into the fourth: Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”
The Pledge of Allegiance is a declaration of loyalty and devotion, not only to the flag, but to a way of life—the American ideal. By reciting those words, we promise our loyalty to the Flag itself, to Idaho and the other 49 states, to the Government that unites us all. We recognize that we are ONE Nation under God, that we can not and should not be divided, and that the right of Liberty and Justice belongs to ALL of us.