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A better title to this forum might be; It is past time to update the pledge.

As a Friend, my allegiance is to God and God alone. The last line of the pledge has caused me distress for over a decade; "with liberty and justice for all." That is a terrible misnomer in the US, especially after the past eight years are concerned.

Shalom

You know, this nation went for over a century of its existence as an independent nation without ANY "pledge of allegiance." I'd be willing to bet we could dump it altogether and encourage patriotism in other ways - like acting in a way that would make its citizens happy to be Americans.

NO. question how do you get off as a religious reporter , when every thing you print is anti religion?

For me it's been time for years. When I recite the Pledge, I'm silent during the words "under God." I am a religious person and a former president of my synagogue, but I let others speak the two words that in my opinion undermine the separation of church and state. I'd rather honor the confidence and vision of the original writer of the Pledge (a Baptist minister, which is another story altogether!) than encode the fear of those who amended it in the 1950s. To me this country is one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Period. My religious beliefs are separate.

. . . one nation, under Allah, with liberty and justice for those who can buy a good lawyer ...

Those who want to recite the pledge as it is willl do so. Those who don't, won't. It's just that simple. Those of us who are traditionalists will continue to honor the idea/ideal of America in whatever way we feel most beneficial to our feelings. There are many who simply don't recite the pledge, for whatever reason. There are some, like Mr. Brod, who express what many consider a politically expedient view of the the pledge- that is understandable. Inclusion of "that" phrase is a personal decision.
Are we indeed "under God"? We were- I have no way of knowing what God has in mind for America- only for myself.
I dread the day that the onerous onslaught against the recognition of God as the ultimate author of our structure of laws will be successful, and those whose intentions are less than benign or American can begin to redact those very freedoms as man's law.

Anonymous:
When the Patriot Act passed, when we were lied into a war for oil , " signing statements" became the apparent law of the land and Habeas Corpus was wiped away, you didn't dread those days?

All that was done in adding the term, "under God" in the pledge was to make explicit something that was generally implicit in the minds and hearts of the majority of Americans.

Now, you folks are expressing the new anti-God and attitudes that have been inculcated in young people in the schools, universities, and popular culture since the 50's. The implications of such a virulent anti-Christian/Biblical worldview will be catastrophic for the nation. Any studied Jew, Mr Brod, should KNOW this from his Torah. Moses would turn over in his grave.

I was right - our nation will become an Obamanation to God if this tendency toward erasing the one true and living God from our national identity and commitment is left unchecked. But all you guys can see is a rising opportunity to "take counsel together against the LORD, and aganist his Anointed" . . . to "break their bonds asunder, and cast away their cords from us." (Psalm 2) i.e. to rid yourselves of God's sovereignty and moral Law so that you can kill babies in the womb with impugnity and embrace perversion and immorality ad nauseam.

This is what kowtowing to atheists and erasing God from the public forum is really all about: a freefall into the most abject forms of human depravity and sin - all in the name of "freedom" and "tolerance." The mistakes and negatives of the last 8 years will pale in comparison to the flagrant anti-biblical debacle of the next 4.

Enforcing the First Amendment = " kowtowing to atheists" ? Now THAT's a novel interpretation of the law!

Nikos, Nikos...Moses (presuming there was such a person) gave laws for the people of Israel. He had never heard of the USA. Christians, last I heard, were "not under the law, but under grace." History has not shown that theocracies generally rank high on the list of freedom-loving nations. "Studied Jews" also know how many of the thirteen colonies denied to Jews the privilege of holding office. As for sins of debauchery and such, officially "Christian" nations have not been notably purer than others. After all, for long periods of the Middle Ages, supposedly the most Christian period of Europe, many priests openly had concubines and children, and the Vatican ran a brothel. Are sexual sins worse than burning heretics at the stake? Would you rather live in today's secularized Netherlands or the Christian Spain of the Inquisition?