By David Hegg
As this Sunday is Flag Day, we would do well to reflect on the 31 words that make up our Pledge of Allegiance.
And, if you’re like me, you first memorized it in elementary school and repeated it, hand over heart, at the beginning of every day in the classroom.
Today, our City Council, Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency board, and William S. Hart Union High School District meetings all begin with those in the room standing and reciting a solemn pledge dating back to 1892.
Originally, it began with a pledge to “my flag,” but was soon changed to specify the intended flag and country as the USA.
And, during the Eisenhower administration, the phrase “under God” was added to remind our citizenry that this republic was founded on Judeo-Christian principles.
The pledge is composed of only four simple yet monumental elements:
1. “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands.”
For over a hundred years, our fellow citizens – men, women, boys, girls, American-born, and naturalized immigrants – have voiced their intention to be for America. This pledge is a powerful reminder that each of us has a solemn responsibility to live within the law and to use lawful means to address matters that need to be replaced, changed, or added. At its foundation, the pledge is a commitment to build up rather than tear down, to use our strength and talents for the common good.
2. The pledge goes on to define what our Republic was created to be: “One Nation under God.”
There is no debate that our nation’s founders believed in and relied on a transcendent, all-powerful Creator God. And while our republic has, from the beginning, been intentionally pluralistic in its commitment to freedom of religious belief and practice, it has always been characteristic of Americans to see God rather than human government as the highest power. The careful wording of the pledge reminds us that human government, while powerful, is not supreme but is, as are we all, “under God.”
3. From the beginning, the experiment that was our republic has been defined in an unusual motto found on our coinage: E Pluribus Unum. “Out of many, One.”
Think of it! Thirteen original states, acting as individual governmental entities, determined to do what had never been done before. They willingly gave up their independence and entered into a mutual dependence on all the other states. Ben Franklin spoke prophetically when he declared, “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” To fracture the union was to see the dream of freedom once again dashed by tyranny.
In one simple yet essential word, the pledge boldly calls Americans to be steadfast in maintaining the “indivisible” interconnectedness and mutual dependence that grounded our past and on which our future depends. And yet, it is this simple word that remains at risk as the selfish and often evil lust for individual and ideological power rends the fundamental unity the pledge defines.
Consequently, it must be an essential everyday conviction that our future success as a nation depends on our ability to differ differently, without violence, with an eagerness to understand and work together as a virtuous family, not duplicitous enemies.
4. Lastly, the Pledge answers this fundamental question: How can such a republic last?
How can a nation that empowers the individual long endure? The answer created by our founders is a political system consisting of governance, laws, the judiciary, and citizenry committed to these self-evident truths “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.”
The pledge puts it very simply: “with liberty and justice for all.” The United States of America, represented by our flag, is not only “one nation under God,” and “indivisible,” but is also committed, indeed built firmly on the necessity that “liberty and justice” must be for all, regardless of ethnicity, creed, gender, age, social standing, or any other distinction.
All begin with liberty. All are protected by justice. And all who choose to use their liberty unjustly in criminal behavior will find their right to liberty curtailed.
To have the order liberty allows we must also be committed to enforcing the justice criminal behavior demands.
These last words have always seemed to hang in the air at the end of the recited pledge. We take our hands from our hearts or lower the salute knowing that this essential right can easily be eroded. And that is when we must realize that over, under, and all around this pledge must be the reality that our beloved republic was founded, indeed grounded, on the determination that our country would be a different kind of nation, a nation of empowered citizenry.
In 1863, against the backdrop of the Civil War that was threatening to end our union, Abraham Lincoln boldly and rightly described America’s backbone in his Gettysburg Address. He ended his exhortation to the audience with these words: “ … 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, and for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”
As we begin the run-up to our 250th anniversary as a country on July 4, it is time we reflect and re-commit to the fundamental truths of our Pledge of Allegiance.
It is time we, the people, show up, get up, and continue pursuing the dream that is America.
After all, the country belongs to us all.
Local resident David Hegg is senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church. “Ethically Speaking” appears Sundays.
