This Christianist organization is now fanning the culture war flames on the pledge of allegiance. The fag-bashing and flag-waving didn't go over so well. In their latest mass email yesterday afternoon, we learn the following:
Concerned Women for America's (CWA's) Director of Government Relations Lanier Swann will join other conservative leaders in speaking at a press conference tomorrow in support of Sen. Jon Kyle's (R-Arizona) and Rep. Todd Akin's (R-Missouri) Pledge Protection Act. This legislation would ensure the protection of the phrase "under God" in the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance. The press conference will be held on Flag Day, which marks the day in 1777 when John Adams proposed the stars and stripes as the official United States flag.
Swann said, "As Americans commemorate Flag Day, it is also appropriate to remember the importance of keeping God in our Pledge. CWA strongly supports the mention of God in our nation's oath in keeping with our constitutional freedoms. We are free from an established religion and free to worship as we choose. Our country's founding fathers were men of faith who intentionally included the phrase 'under God' in an oath that serves as a symbol of loyalty and patriotism to our great country.
The small factual problem is that the pledge was not created or conceived by the founding fathers, whose deist, cafeteria Christianity CWFA would now almost certainly deride as "secular humanism". (Very few of the founders believed Jesus was divine. Can you imagine what CWFA would say about a politician today who shared Jefferson's worldview?) The pledge was invented by a socialist in 1892; and the phrase "under God" was added as recently as 1954. I have no problem with it, I might add, and find the campaign to banish such harmless invocations of the deity to be petty and counter-productive. But CWA's hysteria and rewriting of American history need to be exposed. They're welcome to their version of Christianity. They're not welcome to their version of reality.
(Photo taken on Flag Day, in 1899.)