I Pledge of ... What Do we Pledge our Allegiance to?
Janet Kuypers
Listening to people talk on AM radio about the Pledsge of Allegiance recently, I’ve started to formulate my own opinion. There are those who want to eliminate the line “Under God” from the pledge, that this leads some to believe that the United States does not stand for Atheists or people who don’t believe in the same god ss the ever-pervasive Christian God. But I’ve always thought that if that were the case, then Atheists should be against our money (“In God We Trust”???), or for that matter be against the people who founded our country (even though they did not an imposed religion, they were for the most part quite Christian people...). I always thought that This is the way the opledge was written, and we should honor the way it was created.
Then I found out that the Pledge of Allegiance did not include references to God.
I read Joe Hertel’s editorial in Northeastern Illinois University’s newspaper (v20 issue 16) INDEPENDENT. Hertel wrote “The worlds ‘Under God’ were added in 1954 to distinguish us from the Godless Communists” ... so I realized not to make judgements until I actually research something. So I decided to search a little more.
I learned details from a a short story by Dr. John W. Baer (from