"under God" pastor dies

From the AP...

The Rev. George M. Docherty, credited with helping to push Congress to insert the phrase "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance, has died at 97....on Thanksgiving...

Docherty, then pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, just blocks from the White House, gave a sermon in 1952 saying the pledge should acknowledge God....

"I didn't know that the Pledge of Allegiance was, and [his 7-year-old son] recited it, 'one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,'" he recalled in an interview with The Associated Press in 2004. "I came from Scotland, where we said 'God save our gracious queen,' 'God save our gracious king.' Here was the Pledge of Allegiance, and God wasn't in it at all."

There was little effect from that initial sermon, but he delivered it again on Feb. 7, 1954, after learning that President Dwight Eisenhower would be at the church.

The next day, Rep. Charles G. Oakman, R-Mich., introduced a bill to add the phrase "under God" to the pledge, and a companion bill was introduced in the Senate. Eisenhower signed the law on Flag Day that year.

It's rare that one can point to a clear cause/effect on such things, so credit where credit is due. The problem is that the legacy of the addition is mixed since the God of the Pledge (and the Money) is not the Trinitarian God of the Bible, but the god of civil religion. Of course, Christians reciting the Pledge are often addressing God, but the culture at large is addressing the deistic or casual god of cultural Christianity.)

Here are two earlier posts on this topic: 1950s Christianity and the 50th anniversary of this occasion (with comments from me out of Christian political economy).