The Campaign to Take Out "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance

The atheist group American Humanitarian Association (AHA) began a new campaign on Monday promoting a boycott of the Pledge of Allegiance. AHA’s newest campaign is called “Don’t Say the Pledge.” The organization claims that the phrase “under God” is unpatriotic and should be taken out of the pledge. Until the removal of the phrase, AHA encourages individuals to not participate in the Pledge of Allegiance.

According to the campaign website, AHA argues that “‘Under God’ wasn’t part of the original Pledge of Allegiance” and that current pledge “is twisted, with divisive religious language that implies true patriots must be believers.”

The campaign promoters argue, “A new study by The Seidewitz Group, commissioned by the American Humanist Association with support from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, reports that 34 percent of Americans support removing the phrase 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance.”

In an interview with the Christian Post, Roy Speckhardt, executive director for AHA, said, “We have a responsibility to do what we can to make our pledge an appropriately inclusive one, regardless of whether or not we believe in a God.”

There have been previous legal cases about the Pledge of Allegiance, such as in May with the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in which the same phrase was in question. Ultimately, the court decided, “Although the words 'under God' undeniably have a religious tinge, courts that have considered the history of the pledge and the presence of those words have consistently concluded that the pledge, notwithstanding its reference to God, is a fundamentally patriotic exercise, not a religious one.”

Travis Weber had a differing opinion in an interview with Christian Post. Weber is the director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council.

He told the Christian Post, “Recent polls have shown that at least nine out of 10 Americans support keeping the pledge as is. Most people can see right through such efforts as those the AHA engages in here; and thus, the group is only increasingly marginalizing itself.”

AHA has pushed for the same change to the Pledge of Allegiance in the past, but without success. The organization claims to promote a society where there is good without a God.

“The AHA's own motto is 'good without a God.' Well, we all have gods — it's just a matter of what we choose to worship. One only has to look at Soviet Communism to realize that not all gods are equal, and it's not really possible to have good without God,” said Weber.