The Pledge_ A History of the Pledge of Allegiance - Jeffrey Owen Jones [65]
faith is the living source of our spiritual strength. And this strength is our matchless armor in our worldwide struggle against the forces of Godless tyranny and oppression.
There is no doubt that this, like other statements of the time, combined God and politics.
Quite ironically, Eisenhower had been raised a Jehovah’s Witness (when it was still called the Tract Society), the very group, of course, that would later call the Pledge of Allegiance a tool of Satan. During his childhood, Eisenhower’s parents—particularly his mother, Ida—were active in the Watchtower group. The Eisenhower home in Abilene, Kansas, was routinely used as a meeting place for weekly Bible studies under the Watchtower aegis. Eisenhower turned away from the teachings of the sect when he entered West Point in 1915. But his mother remained an ardent Jehovah’s Witness until her death in 1946. Eisenhower’s father reportedly drifted away from the sect, but when he died in 1942, he was given a full Jehovah’s Witness funeral. In one of the more bizarre familial contradictions in American presidential history—and there have been many—Eisenhower’s mother, who as a Jehovah’s Witness was antiwar, expressed during her lifetime a pride in her son’s accomplishments but also a disappointment that he had pursued a military career. Despite the scrutiny that political leaders undergo concerning their religious affiliations, Eisenhower’s religious background, no doubt because of savior status as an American general in World War II, was never questioned.
When asked about his religious background, Eisenhower provided a vague description of growing up in a household that followed strict biblical scripture. In fact, he professed no official connection to any religious group prior to his election as president. It wasn’t until thirteen days after his inauguration that he was baptized, confirmed, and entered into membership of the Presbyterian faith. He then regularly attended church service at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. This Presbyterian membership would later serve as a critical deciding factor for Eisenhower’s support for adding “under God” to the Pledge.
In the spring of 1953 the first congressional resolution was introduced to officially add “under God” to the Pledge. Several other resolutions were introduced over the next year but failed to generate enough enthusiasm or support to get through the committee process even to be voted on.
Then, on February 7, 1954, a single event propelled the movement into a snowball that culminated in the official addition of “under God” to the Pledge on Flag Day, June 14, 1954.
The event was an impassioned sermon commemorating Lincoln’s birthday given by the Reverend George MacPherson Docherty at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, the very congregation Dwight Eisenhower had joined just two years earlier. Abraham Lincoln himself had frequently attended services in the church, and there was a traditional Lincoln pew that on February 7, 1954, was occupied by Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower.
While the Catholic Knights of Columbus had set the groundwork for adding “under God” to the Pledge, what sealed the deal was a Presbyterian minister who literally had the president’s ear.
In an electrifying and rousing sermon, Docherty hit every point of political and religious patriotism of the day. He focused specifically on what he considered the missing element of the Pledge that he noticed when hearing his children recite it:
There was something missing in this Pledge, and that which was missing was the characteristic and definitive factor in the “American Way of Life.” Indeed, apart from the mention of the phrase, the United States of America, this could be the Pledge of any Republic. In fact, I could hear little Muscovites repeat a similar Pledge to their hammer and sickle flag in Moscow with equal solemnity, for Russia is also a