It was inserted in the Pledge of Allegiance during the McCarthy Era, it was a Knights of Columbus lobby of some sort.
Nowhere in the New Testament are believers admonished to be “under” God. We are through him, in him, with him, but never under him.
Mabe some power bottoms would disagree.
All joking aside, the terminology implies oppressive submission, not devotion.
I’ve never understood the phrase “God-fearing Christian.” Shouldn’t they be “God-loving Christians?”
I don’t know. I don’t have a problem with the paternalistic notion that we have to report back to the Higher Power.
Hell, considering the people I am explicitly “under” and have to report to in my job, I can’t say being subject to God Almighty is any more demeaning.
Give unto Ceaser what is Ceaser’s and give unto God what is God’s.
Jesus said that when asked if a good Jew should pay taxes. I think the J-man believed in a seperation of Church and State.
I had a little catholic friend who was so indoctrinated into the god-fearing thing that she actually grounded herself because she didn’t think about the baby jesus one day during the holiday season. We couldn’t have been more than 10 years old!
What do you make of Christ’s command that we pray to God as “Father, hallowed by thy name, etc?” That doesn’t strike you as submissive, as “under”?
I always thought the “under God”, was referring to the “one nation” part and not a reference to the believers. Seemed pretty clear to me that the nation is under God, as in watched over by or guided by, and not the interpretation that the OP is giving it. But, to each his own.
As I understand it, the phrase was introduced to distinguish US from the godless Communists of Soviet Russia—and it actually makes a certain sense: if you were living in the Soviet Union, your ultimate allegience was supposed to be to the state. But for a believer, one’s ultimate allegience should be to God, while allegience to one’s country should be under that: God is the highest authority.
To me, it just involves hierarchy. Not all hierarchy is oppressive submission.
That, too.
Martin Luther said that we should fear God with a child’s fear, not a slave’s.
A slave’s fear is that the Master will come. A child’s fear is that a Father will go away.
And fear is a recognition of God’s authority over us, as well. We fear (if we do it right) to break His will, because His will is what is good. Thus the consequence of breaking His will is not good. And we fear it. Or should.
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t know of any Christians who want the “under God” portion of the pledge removed because of a confusion based upon Christian attitudes toward their Deity, rather they want to see it removed because of the tradition of separation of church and state. Alliegence to one’s country is one thing, alliegence to one’s idea of the numen is another. Sometimes they are in accordance, but at other times, they’re not. Following one or the other, IMHO, should be a matter of personal conscience, not government policy.
Every instance of the separation of church and state is a victory for the church, and an appropriate belittling of the state. The authority to determine what sort of God we are under is to be reserved to the people, exclusively. No such authority should ever be granted to the state, because the state’s authority is always taken at the expense of individual citizens.
It goes one nation, indivisable. One nation is a statement of unity. The insertion of “under god” has taken the emphasis away from the original meaning.
As for hallowed be thy name, that’s something that christ instructs his followers to do in private, not a public declaration.
We were so chickenshit afraid of communism that we needed to profess that we are were nation under god.
Okay, so lets assum most christians want to be “under god”. Don’t you think these extra words can get lost in translation? Are we “the one” nation under god? Aren’t there other nations under god also? Is god so small that he is above only one nation?
Call it my debate symantics, but the atheists, agnostics and separation of church and staters are so right on the money for opposing this.
Or has re-emphasized it. If it means “under the one true God,” then you’d be even more indivisible (if there is such a thing), because you shared that additional bond of obeying said god, too. Obviously, you need not agree that there is “one true God,” or that the Judeo-Christian god is it, but the majority of the founding fathers did, and the majority of the American populace still does and so is probably okay with the language, as long as it’s not being used (and it’s not) to affirmatively screw people who don’t believe in the Christian god (or any god). Implying that we are “one . . . under God” may strike you as a fiction, but it’s not much more of a fiction than implying that we are “indivisible.” In each case, it’s aspirational language only.
That wasn’t your original point. Your original point was that Christians should oppose the language because it’s inappropriately servile. If it’s inappropriately servile, why is it more inappropriate to be thusly servile in public than in private? Doesn’t make any sense. If Christians believe that there are circumstances in which humility/deference/subservience/hierarchical submission before their god is okay, how could it possibly make a difference whether they manifest such respect in private or in public, in terms of making such manifestation overly-“submissive” or not?
I don’t remember the book or verse, but I believe Paul spoke approvingly of being a ‘slave to Christ’.
Ephesians 6:6.
Colossians 4:12
1 Peter 2:16.
Hardly, we just wanted to seperate ourselves from the communist way of life.
“One nation” doesn’t imply “the nation”.
Are you serious?
I dead serious. my semantic arguments might touch on absurd.
run the pledge through a web based language translator with “under god” and without it. big difference.
run an aramaic, hebrew, greek translation on your knowledge of scripture while your at it.
Might? I believe that you are being intentionally absurd, and not serious at all.
By interpretating “one nation under God” to mean “the only nation under God”, you are being as absurd as those who claim that a plaque of the Ten Commandmants on a county courthouse wall is tantamount to the establishment of an official State religion.
Don’t need to. The Pledge was originally penned in the English language, and English is my first language. And, like it or not, English is the de facto first language of the United States of America.
Why, my knowledge of scripture is not an issue here. However, it seems that your knowledge of the English language may be.
Actually, I’m a Christian with a quite different perspective. My allegiance is to God, and to America secondarily to Him – if we nationally screw up (as we seem to be in the process of, it’s my Christian and patriotic duty to object to behavior that is at once unChristian and inhumane). And because I consider that I put meaning into the creeds and affirmations of faith I make, I don’t think that it is proper to mandate that you or Eve or any other non-Christian American must recite them by rote.
Ergo – I have no problem with the Pledge as currently formulated – but only on condition that it is voluntary, not mandatory.