I recently watched a YouTube video of a young brother and sister reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at their elementary school.

The little girl spoke with enthusiasm and confidence into her microphone. Her recitation was perfect, but for one teeny tiny exception.

“…and to the Republic, for which it stands, one Nation under nobody, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

At first I was just thoroughly amused, however, my amusement subsided when I began to reexamine a longstanding question of mine: Why do we still have our children pledging their allegiance to a country under God?
According to ReligiousTolerance.org, President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved a bill that added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. Eisenhower declared that schoolchildren would proclaim the “dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.”

That piece of history answers why God is included in our pledge, but it doesn’t demonstrate that God should be.

While there are several reasons why God shouldn’t be included, the most salient ones revolve around children.

Kids pledge their allegiance to a nation “under God” every single day.

They also spend a solid amount of time fearing the dark, searching for fairies, avoiding cooties and making lists for Santa Claus.

How, then, is it in any way appropriate to expect children to understand the weight of our God-laden pledge when they can’t even distinguish between creaky floors and ghosts? Why should we be placing the burden of the totally inaccurate image of our nation’s unilateral acceptance of God on the shoulders of 5 year olds?

It’s also important to remember that not all children are monotheists. I would argue that few children have the capacity to take a stance on religion, but let’s suppose I’m wrong.

If children have the intellectual capacity to form coherent beliefs about religion, some will be believers, some will be nonbelievers, some will believe in many gods and some will believe in one God, but will be confused about why God comes up in school.

The phrase “under God” alienates children who don’t recognize the validity of God in the pledge. They are faced with an unnecessary moral crisis to vow submissive allegiance to a nation under a god they don’t accept, or be cruelly singled out as “different.”

Children are too young to get ensnared in religious debates. Adults cannot even come to a conclusion on what to believe, and if they have, many haven’t even begun to examine their reasons.

What children aren’t too young for is having fun, learning how to think critically and forming opinions about God over a period of decades.

I think it’s about time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance and allow religion to remain a private and critically examined aspect of our personal lives. Moreover, it’s time for this nation to recognize we don’t all live under one god, the God, but also under multiple gods, and no gods at all.

Reach Becky at rrubens1@asu.edu.