August 17, 2022

In a 7-2 decision, the Fargo School Board recently voted to stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to begin their meetings. Is the decision of a school board in North Dakota to stop reciting the Pledge really news of any consequence? It depends on how you look at it. Based on the erroneous reasoning of the majority in the vote, it is apparent we as a society have a lot of work to do to reverse the subversive influence on the population that turns people away from supporting our logical and just moral foundations as a nation. Sometimes even the little things can have big consequences.

The primary reason stated by the board members for their decision against reciting the Pledge was that the Pledge did not align with the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion values. They added that the division the Pledge caused was not a good way to start meetings. This of course begs the question; Is the content of the Pledge inherently wrong and divisive, or are the people opposing it unnecessarily causing the division by objecting to perfectly innocent and valuable content?

Specifically, some members took issue with the words “under God,” which were deemed potentially offensive to certain groups including atheists and agnostics. “Under God” was also deemed non-inclusive due to the perception it references the Judeo-Christian God and not the Gods of other religions. Quotes from the board members (found in the linked article above) on the subject include;

“The text is clearly referring to the Judeo-Christian god and therefore, it does not include any other face such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, all of which are practiced by our staff and students at FPS.”

“I would much prefer that we open our meetings with a shared statement of purpose that would bring us all together to do the work of the board.”

“Rather than starting our meeting on opposing sides of an issue, I’d rather us start by saying something unifying.”

“We live in a diverse community and that is what matters.”

These quotes reflect a profound misunderstanding of not only the Pledge, but our country as well. The Pledge reflects our commitment to upholding a political system built upon American founding values. These American values, which reflect natural law and Enlightenment moral principles, not only promote true diversity, equity, and inclusion among other positive ends, but they are essential to it by informing and guiding America’s course through changing times. The addition of “under God” to the Pledge, when properly understood, actually reinforces these secular and universal ideas by referencing back to the Founding and the sentiment found in Jefferson’s eternal Declaration that inspired our nation. To reject the Pledge on the grounds that the notion “under God” in this context is “divisive” is to reject that which is instrumental to unity in our diverse nation – this ends up promoting division in itself.

The current version of the Pledge of Allegiance is as follows, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Rejecting the Pledge based on the addition of the words “under God” is a missed educational opportunity as well. Directly, “under God” was added to the Pledge in part to differentiate ourselves during the Cold War from the Communist worldview that is more subjective in nature and contrary to the natural law concepts essential to our system of universal justice, fundamental rights derived from the use of reason, and the concept of “ordered liberty.”

It is true that religious organizations supported and encouraged the addition of the words “under God” in the Pledge. There is no question the religious majority saw the move as a positive development for their particular interests. It is also true President Eisenhower, who signed the bill to add the words “under God” to the Pledge, was religious and considered a religious population essential to the proper functioning of democratic institutions in our Republic. But as any educator ought to know, just because a segment of a society supports something for one reason does not necessarily mean the rest of a society cannot support the same thing for other, or additional, broader reasons. For his part, Eisenhower regarded a religious population as good and necessary, and he recognized the obvious orientation of America towards the Judeo-Christian tradition, but he also indicated it was not necessary to favor one religion over another. This sentiment reflects the idea of God as a universal lawgiver, a basis for objective moral principle that rational beings can use to make judgements not on self interest or desired ends, but on logically sound maxims that are good and fair in themselves. In other words, a nation such as ours requires a good, just, and moral citizenry. This is reflected in the concept of God and it is not necessary to believe any personified or specific religious version to recognize the validity of the moral concepts. This is what atheists and agnostics largely miss about the concept of “God” as it pertains to these arguments and America’s founding.

It is generally acknowledged that the campaign to add “under God” in the Pledge was inspired by Abraham Lincoln’s use of the phrase when he delivered his famous Gettysburg Address. Lincoln intended to remind Americans during the Civil War period that we are a people guided by certain moral principles and our justified continued union under the Constitution depended upon it. This is what we were fighting for and what those that died sacrificed their lives to preserve, protect and defend.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

President Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (Bliss Copy), 1863

Given that the speech opens with and references the Founding, Lincoln was likely using “under God” in the way we use it today and the way it is used in the Pledge. Interestingly, the phrase “under God” was not normally used by the American Founders and the people in Lincoln’s era in this way, rather it was used more along the lines of “after God,” “secondary to God,” or perhaps as an alternative to “God willing.” But the Founders understood the philosophy of natural law and the laws of “nature’s God” as the justification for the novel American political system. When Lincoln used it in his Address he was again making a reference to the Founding and the use of reason to conform to the outline “Nature’s God” has for us. If we are acting morally and justly, we are acting “under God” in accord with reason. These are compatible with the requirements of the world’s religions, but they are intrinsic to secular understandings of moral and ethical systems as well. Certainly they are essential to a proper political understanding of the American system. To reject consideration of the entire concept based on a mere label is nonsense.

We ought to teach children what “under God” means to our nation in this context. Everything from natural law, to a proper understanding of fundamental inalienable rights, to the concept of an “an appeal to heaven” found in John Locke’s Second Treatise depends on it. Take this example from Locke; the term “heaven” has a similar connotation as “under God” and may be misinterpreted in the same way by the same types of people. John Locke said,

“And where the body of the people, or any single man, is deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without right, and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment. And therefore, though the people cannot be judge, so as to have, by the constitution of that society, any superior power, to determine and give effective sentence in the case; yet they have, by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there lies no appeal on earth, viz. to judge, whether they have just cause to make their appeal to heaven.”

John Locke, Second Treatise, Of Civil Government (1689)

Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers were inspirations for Thomas Jefferson as he crafted the Declaration of Independence – the document that is the heart and soul of our nation:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence (excerpt)

Imagine educators rejecting these documents and not teaching our youth what they mean in context because they reference “God” and “heaven.” Imagine thinking these ideas are somehow “divisive” and that the recent “social justice” doctrines and fringe Leftist theories of a few dissident malcontents can solve the long-standing problems of injustice and alleviate socioeconomic challenges present in our society better than our traditional moral and philosophical orientation that has already achieved so much progress. This is what is occurring in our schools and it is why, even when discussing the seemingly inconsequential things like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, we must stand firm against baseless accusations and defend our cherished principles.

This is not to suggest we should force anyone to say the Pledge or demand they agree with it. There was a time in my youth when I did not understand it properly myself and was lured into disenchantment with it by certain ideological commentators. There are other reasons one may object to it as well and there are even some ways I would change it to make it better (in my opinion). But to outright reject it and deny it a place in society for these personal reasons is petty and irresponsible. Educators and leadership ought to know better than to bend to the will of people advocating for action based on anti-intellectual, emotional responses. The Fargo School Board should reconsider their position and determine who is really being divisive regarding the Pledge – those that want to recite it and teach children to live up to its meaning, or those that will throw it and what it stands for under the bus because a small minority misunderstand it and are offended by its historically rich, objectively valid concepts.