I was in third grade when the US Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Our teacher drilled us on the new language until we could recite it en masse without stumbling or forgetting. At eight or nine years of age most of us had no understanding of the political motives that had driven the change – the perception of threat from the USSR, the McCarthy hearings/witch hunt, the determination to distinguish our country as the exact opposite of the “godless Communists.” It was one more thing that the adults decided that we had to learn, so we learned it.
Except for the occasional grumble about having to relearn something we thought we already knew, I don’t recall hearing any discussion about the change, pro or con. If the one Jewish girl in our class had any qualms, she didn’t express them. The idea that there might be students who didn’t believe in any God at all never occurred to us. Such a concept was beyond our realm of experience. This is hardly surprising, since, as religion scholar Will Herberg has noted, in 1954 91% of the US
