One Nation Divisible?
Brian Kaylor November/December 2024The tale of a preacher, a president, and a pledge.
During a contentious presidential election, as an unpopular incumbent sought reelection, the challenger hoped to reach out to Christian voters and find political salvation in the ballot box. However, the choice of religious advisor for the Democratic National Committee in 2004 did not work out for Senator John Kerry’s candidacy. Reverand Brenda Bartella Peterson, an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), resigned less than two weeks after starting the job. Her political sin? Signing an amicus brief in a 2004 U.S. Supreme Court case, brought by an atheist, that supported removing the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.
Peterson’s status as one of 32 Christian and Jewish clergy who signed the brief was discovered by a conservative Catholic organization, which drew media attention to the issue. She quickly resigned, noting it was “no longer possible for me to do my job effectively.”1 The incident, although embarrassing for the Kerry campaign, ultimately mattered little to his doomed electoral prospects. It does, however, raise a little-appreciated history.
In the case, Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, a majority of the justices did not ultimately consider if “under God” should be booted from the Pledge of Allegiance; they held instead that the plaintiff lacked standing to bring the case. Yet, as Beau Underwood and I document in our new book Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism, this phrase was not originally included in the Pledge.2 The addition of “under God” in 1954 is often defended as harmless, unifying “civil religion,” but instead it should be viewed as Christian nationalism that creates problems both civically and theologically.
First penned in 1892 to help a magazine sell flags for the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus reaching the Americas, the Pledge started out godless. It remained that way for more than six decades, although it underwent a few changes—such as changing “my flag” to “the flag of the United States of America” in 1923 to clarify which flag someone was professing loyalty to. Congress officially adopted the widely used Pledge in 1942, still without God. That last edit to the Pledge occurred suddenly 70 years ago.
A Powerful Sermon
Although some politicians and preachers had talked about including God in the Pledge for years, one pastor got it done with a single sermon. Reverend George Docherty, a progressive Presbyterian minister in Washington, D.C., had been among those arguing for years that the Pledge needed to recognize God. In February 1954 Docherty seized the chance to make his case when President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended his church, located on New York Avenue, just a few blocks from the White House. This was the church that President Abraham Lincoln had attended, and with Eisenhower sitting in “Lincoln’s pew” on the Sunday closest to Lincoln’s birthday, Docherty delivered a sermon intended for one special visitor.
Docherty, a native of Scotland, later explained in his memoir that he had grown up chanting “God Save the King.”3 Thus, he found it odd when he migrated to the United States and realized the Pledge his son learned in school lacked a similar mix of faith and nationalism. In his sermon he lamented coming to “a strange conclusion” that “there was something missing in this Pledge, and that which was missing was the characteristic and definitive factor in the American way of life.” He defined such an “American way of life” as based on the Ten Commandments and “the words of Jesus of Nazareth, the living Word of God for the world.”
Drawing on Lincoln’s use of “under God” in the Gettysburg Address, the preacher insisted the phrase defined Lincoln’s political philosophy and the nature of the nation. For Docherty the absence of “God” from the Pledge created a problem since “we face today a theological war.” Noting that Russia—newly locked in a “cold war” with the United States—was atheistic, Docherty insisted America needed to mark itself clearly in theistic terms against Communism. Speaking about the conflict between the two nuclear powers, he said: “It is Armageddon, a battle of the gods. It is the view of man as it comes down to us from Judeo-Christian civilization in mortal combat against modern, secularized, godless humanity. . . . To omit the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance is to omit the definitive character of the American way of life.”
The sermon worked. It garnered media coverage—thanks in part to Eisenhower’s presence—which led to multiple congressional offices the next morning contacting the church to request a copy of the sermon. The text was reprinted in the Congressional Record4 and newspapers, and clips even ran in newsreel segments in theaters.5 Multiple members of Congress introduced bills, hoping to claim credit for putting “God” in the Pledge. The legislation passed both houses and landed on the president’s desk less than four months later. Eisenhower signed it on Flag Day (June 14). With that, 70 years ago this year, “under God” officially joined the Pledge.
A Unifying Civil Religion?
When the Supreme Court refused to rule against the Pledge as sectarian, it fit with a widely held perspective that such God language in the public square functions as what sociologist Robert Bellah called “civil religion.” In his classic essay explaining the concept, Bellah specifically cited the presence of “under God” in the Pledge as part of the unifying religious symbols and rhetoric he thought necessary to hold a nation together.6 He insisted such a civil religion was not sectarian, as it instead expressed shared national values. Bellah argued there are “certain common elements of religious orientation that the great majority of Americans share. These have played a crucial role in the development of American institutions and still provide a religious dimension for the whole fabric of American life, including the political sphere.” What he was saying is that since most Americans held some religious beliefs in common, then “God” language could be borrowed to bring the people together, not as a religious body but as a nation-state.
So is civil religion a version of Christianity, or is it a competing religion? Bellah attempted to frame it as neither, making it not quite Christian—thus inclusive of Jews and perhaps other monotheists—but also not quite a religion, either. As he argued, civil religion “borrowed selectively from [Christianity in the early United States] in such a way that the average American saw no conflict between the two. In this way, the civil religion was able to build up without any bitter struggle with the church powerful symbols of national solidarity and to mobilize deep levels of personal motivation for the attainment of national goals.” In essence, he hoped to take the unifying benefits of religion without the divisive debates over dogma.
Many scholars, for decades since, have adopted Bellah’s language and framework to consider issues at the intersection of church and state, although dissenting voices have questioned the idea that such a civil religion can actually be unifying and appropriate in a pluralistic democracy. The fatal flaw in his argument can be seen by simply continuing to listen to the 1954 sermon that led to the Pledge’s “baptism”—an act Bellah himself claimed was unifying, generic civil religion.
One Nation Divided
As Docherty made his case to Eisenhower, the media, and his congregation for adding “under God” to the Pledge, he acknowledged that some people in America could not honestly affirm such a Pledge since they did not believe in God. He defended his proposal anyway: “Philosophically speaking, an atheistic American is a contradiction in terms.” By fusing and confusing Christian and American identities, Docherty advocated for a version of Christian nationalism. He argued that to be a good American, one had to be a Christian. He then sought to civically excommunicate atheists from the body politic as bad citizens because of their religious beliefs: “They really are spiritual parasites. And I mean no term of abuse in this. I’m simply classifying them. A parasite is an organism that lives upon the life force of another organism without contributing to the life of the other. These excellent ethical seculars are living upon the accumulated spiritual capital of Judeo-Christian civilization and, at the same time, deny the God who revealed the divine principles upon which the ethics of this country grow. The dilemma of the secular is quite simple. He cannot deny the Christian revelation and logically live by the Christian ethic. And if he denies the Christian ethic, he falls short of the American ideal of life.”
This is far from Bellah’s unifying civil religion. Docherty said the quiet part out loud: adding “under God” was intended to mark the nation as Christian and specifically redefine who is an American in religious terms.
The problems created by such exclusionary rhetoric has only magnified in the succeeding decades. When Bellah wrote his essay on civil religion in 1967, Gallup found that 92 percent of Americans identified as Christian7 (a number essentially the same as in 1954, when Docherty preached his sermon). That left 3 percent as Jewish, 3 percent as another faith, and only 2 percent claiming no faith. Not only that, but the United States was a nation in which more than two thirds identified as Protestant. America was not officially a “Christian” nation, but it was a nation composed nearly entirely of Christians. Thus, “under God” was, in fact, pretty unifying in a nation in which nearly everyone believed in God. That is no longer true. In 2023 Gallup found just 66 percent of Americans identified as Christian. While those who are Jewish stayed about the same at 2 percent, those of other faiths grew to 7 percent, and those who claim no religious faith skyrocketed to 22 percent. It was these changing religious demographics that led then U.S. Senator Barack Obama to note to a Christian gathering in 2006: “Given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation—at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.”8
If the trends seen in the Gallup polling continue, the United States could in a couple of decades become a nation in which fewer than half of the population claims Christianity. With such religious diversity, a civil religion borrowing from Christian symbols and language will resonate with fewer people and stop serving as unifying for the nation. If a civil religious alternative to religious nationalism can flourish in a healthy way for a nation, that era is in the past for the United States. Bellah’s covenant has expired. Attempts at civil religion today would function essentially like Christian nationalism, as both define a growing swatch of U.S. citizens as not fundamentally part of what Bellah (and Docherty) saw as “the American way of life.”
Two Bad Options
Some today want to emphasize the sectarian nature of such phrases as “under God” in the Pledge or “In God We Trust,” our national motto. Making these official government statements explicitly Christian, as Docherty desired (but Bellah did not want), remains incompatible with a pluralistic democracy. We cannot be both the United States that provides equal rights to all and an officially Christian nation that defines some citizens as un-American based on their religious beliefs. We cannot be the United States that promises religious liberty for all and a Christian nation that codifies and privileges one religion.
Reading “under God” or “In God We Trust” as Christian inherently leads to a Christian nationalism, where Christian and American identities are merged.
Consider, for instance, the perspective of former Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who briefly served as President Donald Trump’s National Security advisor. Flynn is the leading figure behind the ReAwaken America Tour, a traveling carnival of conspiracy theories and Christian nationalism. He opens each gathering by talking about the importance of considering the various phrases in the Pledge, particularly highlighting the inclusion of “under God.” Utilizing rhetoric similar to the progressive Presbyterian Docherty in 1954, the conservative Catholic Flynn insists the nation was founded as a Christian nation, and thus it was important to add God to the Pledge. At one such event he went even further to explain what this means to him: “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God and one religion under God.”9
If we reject the Christian nationalistic reading of “under God” in the Pledge to instead treat it as a generic civil religion, as Bellah desired, we find a different problem. Who then is this “god” the nation asks us to pledge allegiance to if not the Christian God? National values can be generic and nonsectarian, but an invocation of God cannot be.
Either way we read the “civil religion” of “under God” in the Pledge creates a problem. It’s either Christian nationalism by another name or it’s a co-opting of sacred language using the term “god” without actually meaning God. That precise dilemma is a key argument in the amicus brief Reverend Brenda Bartella Peterson signed that led to her leaving her DNC religious-advisor post two decades ago. Others who signed the brief included five Seventh-day Adventist ministers, along with Baptist, Congregational, Episcopal, Jewish, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and United Methodist clergy.10 The ministers noted the problem with either reading of “under God,” especially when utilized in the context of public schools, on which the lawsuit focused. If it was a religious affirmation “embedded in an affirmation of loyalty to the nation,” it would create a situation in which “children who have doubts about God are of doubtful loyalty to the nation.” That is, of course, exactly a situation Docherty acknowledged and scoffed at when he convinced Eisenhower to back the editing of the Pledge. If, on the other hand, “the religious portion of the Pledge is not intended as a serious affirmation of faith, then every day the government asks millions of schoolchildren to take the name of the Lord in vain.” Both routes, the brief added, create religious liberty problems.
That plea went unheard by the justices. The Court’s majority tossed the suit on technical grounds, claiming the atheist father who filed it lacked standing. Three justices—William Rehnquist, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Clarence Thomas—wrote they would have granted standing and then would have ruled the Pledge was constitutionally permissible. Justice O’Connor insisted that “under God” should stay in the Pledge because it is “ceremonial deism” that only “acknowledges religion in a general way” with “a simple reference to a generic ‘God.’ ” She added that “any religious freight” the phrase had originally “has long since been lost” because of “our continued repetition of the reference to ‘one Nation under God’ in an exclusively patriotic context has shaped the cultural significance of that phrase to conform to that context.” So “God” should stay in the Pledge, she argued, because it is just a generic reference stripped of any true religiosity. A Pyrrhic victory, quickly heralded by those who pushed Peterson from her job for suggesting we not use God’s name in vain.
In an age of Christian nationalism the answer is not “civil religion” that functions as just a friendly version of Christian nationalism. Defending the religious liberty of all will continue the work of building a more perfect union. And it will help protect our Christian witness in the name of God.
1 Kein Eckstrom, “Democrats’ New Religious Outreach Director Quits Under Fire,” Religion News Service, Aug. 5, 2004, https://religionnews.com/2004/08/05/news-story-democrats-new-religious-outreach-director-quits-under-fire.
2 Brian Kaylor and Beau Underwood, Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2024).
3 George M. Docherty, I’ve Seen the Day (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1984).
4 Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 83rd Congress, Second Session 100 (1954), pp. A1794, A1795.
5 Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2015).
6 Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America.” Daedalus 96, no. 1 (1967): 1-21.
7 “Religion,” Gallup, https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx.
8 “Obama’s 2006 Speech on Faith and Politics,” New York Times, June 28, 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/28/us/politics/2006obamaspeech.html.
9 Brian Kaylor and Beau Underwood, “One nation Under Michael Flynn’s God?” A Public Witness, Nov. 16, 2021, https://publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/one-nation-under-michael-flynns-god.
10 Elk Grove Unified School District v. Michael A Newdow, https://supreme.findlaw.com/static/fi/images/efile/supreme/briefs/02-1624/02-1624.mer.ami.bailey.pdf.
Article Author: Brian Kaylor
Brian Kaylor, Ph.D., is a Baptist minister, an award-winning writer, and a regular media commentator on issues of religion, politics, and communication. He is the author or coauthor of five books on religion and politics: Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism; Vote Your Conscience: Party Must Not Trump Principles; Sacramental Politics: Religious Worship as Political Action; Presidential Campaign Rhetoric in an Age of Confessional Politics; and For God’s Sake, Shut Up! He regularly blogs at wordandway.org. Follow him on X at @BrianKaylor.