You have to wonder how Francis Bellamy (1855-1931) would greet today’s fracas over
the Pledge of Allegiance. The Mt. Morris native — who, as historian John W. Baer
relates, attended Rochester Theological Seminary, married Wayne County native
Hattie Benton, preached in Boston, became an editor and later an ad man, and
eventually retired to Florida — probably would shake his head and get back to
work.
That’s the impression you get from
reading a short biography of Bellamy by John W. Baer, which supplies some
interesting angles on a full life:
Hardly a standard-issue preacher,
Bellamy was a “radical” and “Nationalist” (the latter term back then meant
someone who believed in nationalizing certain domestic economic institutions).
He had a high rank in the National Education Association, and he was also a
vice president of the Society of Christian Socialists. His sermons about “Jesus
the Socialist” and other critiques of capitalism got him into hot water, as
you’d expect.
After being fired from a Boston
congregation, Bellamy joined the staff of the Youth’s Companion magazine. There he wrote the Pledge, with some input
from his boss, James Upham. (Later there was controversy over which man was the
true author.) The original text was this: “I pledge allegiance to my flag and
to the Republic for which it stands — one nation indivisible — with liberty
and justice for all.” Baer says Bellamy once considered using the words
“equality” and “fraternity” but rejected those echoes of the French Revolution
as being too radical for his contemporaries. And preacher though he was, he
left out any mention of God. The aim of many radicals of the era was to unite
an emerging immigrant society, and Bellamy intended to do something like this
among young people.
The Pledge soon became public
property, of course, and it veered away from Bellamy’s original aim — you
might say, from solidarity to chauvinism.
For years, standard school Pledging
practice included raising the arm with upturned palm, similar to the Nazi
salute. World War II brought change. But small “n” nationalism and religiosity
came to the Pledge in 1954, after the Knights of Columbus twisted political
arms and got the words “under God” inserted. This was not the biggest
capitulation of the McCarthy Era. But it helped instill conformism and promote
witch-hunts. Just ask the poor California atheist who dared assert a mere
constitutional right and was condemned from the pulpits of Congress.
Again, we wonder what Bellamy would
think — or what his famous lefty cousin, Edward Bellamy, author of the novel Looking Backward, might write. It’s hard
to transport ideas and personalities across so many years, especially from the
lively populist-Progressive Era to the dim Slough of Reaction today. But maybe
there’s something we can absorb from Francis Bellamy’s compositional process.
Why not drop the “under God” and its clear violation of the First Amendment,
and adopt “equality” as, well, a substitute teacher? That would add just one
syllable, and there’d be much more to be learned than from a corrupted text.
Of course, no history of the issue
should omit the 1943 US Supreme Court decision, which said the Jehovah’s
Witnesses, and by extension all dissenters, could not be forced to “salute the
flag” or recite the Pledge. “Compulsion as here employed is not a permissible
means of achieving ‘national unity,’” said the Court. All you students out
there: write that down; you will be tested on it.
This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 2, 2002.
