One Nation "Under God"

Abstract

You know its concluding line by heart: “One nation, under God, ­indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” You may also know that the phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance during the 1950s. This historical fact drew public attention in 2002 when Michael Newdow, the parent of a California elementary school student, convinced the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to declare the pledge unconstitutional, as a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Ruling in Newdow v. U.S. Congress, which was later overturned, the court noted that “under God” was added in 1954, “at a time when the government was publicly inveighing against atheistic communism.” The legislative history of the joint congressional resolution signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower adding those key words confirms that its significance was not just a matter of timing. As resolution sponsor Rep. Louis C. Rabaut (D-Mich.) explained, “The fundamental issue which is the unbridgeable gap between America and Communist Russia is a belief in Almighty God.” The stakes were high. “Unless we are willing to affirm our belief in the existence of God and His creator-creature relation to man,” Rabaut warned, “we drop man himself to the significance of a grain of sand and open the floodgates to tyranny and oppression.” The communists' “atheist materialist” viewpoint, Rabaut added, undermined the “fraudulent claims of the Communists to the role of champions of social, economic, and political reform.”