The Pledge of Allegiance Project

Since May 15, Alonzo Fyfe has been posting exclusively about the Pledge of Allegiance and the need to remove the words "under God" from it. He calls it The Pledge Project.

In his opening salvo, titled "The Pledge Project: Acting Against Anti-Atheist Bigotry", Alonzo declares:

I consider 'under God' in the pledge, and the national motto of "In God We Trust" to be the most significant cause of the deteriorating political situation that atheists in specific and secularists in general are facing in the United States, and I want to see these practices ended.

He goes on to write:

Let's be honest – these policies were adopted, and they continue to be enthusiastically supported – because they serve as a way of keeping political power out of the hands of any person who will not pledge allegiance to 'one nation under God'. They are loved (by those who love them the most) because they endorse a religious barrier to public office that only allows those who are willing to express a belief in God can pass through.

I won't reproduce any more of it here. Some of you may have already read it, and for those of you have not, you can just click on the link above.

To be honest, fighting to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance was never something that resonated with me. While I agree in principle that the Pledge should be restored to what it was before those two words were added in the mid-Fifties, I always felt that it would amount to expending a lot of time and effort on something of symbolic value when there were more substantive issues that demanded attention. My thoughts on the issue are pretty much summed up in one of my first posts on this blog, "One Nation Under Zeus".

Still, reading one of Alonzo's posts recently got me to thinking about the Blasphemy Challenge that drew a lot of interest last year. As you may recall, the Blasphemy Challenge involved people filming short videos of themselves "denying" the Holy Spirit and posting them on Youtube. Well, I figured, why not adopt the same idea for The Pledge Project? How about we make videos of ourselves and others saying the Pledge of Allegiance sans the words "under God"?

I left my suggestion in the comments section of one of Alonzo's posts, but thus far he has not responded.

Well, at any rate, I have decided to take the first step, and have filmed my two children saying the Pledge of Allegiance without the words "under God." It seemed appropriate, because they have to say the Pledge every day in school, whereas most of us grownups are rarely ever in situations where we are required to recite it.

Here is the video for your viewing enjoyment:



I expect to add my own recital of the Pledge too either today or later this week. I don't know if this will catch on with the rest of the atheist blogosphere (at least for those of us here in the United States), but let's see what happens!