I’m not big on subtlety, but I give U.S. Senate candidate Brian Bengs a patriotic kudo for his subtle dig at Christian nationalism.
On his What I Believe campaign webpage, Bengs opens with five great quotes encapsulating what he calls “the founding values of our country—equality, democracy, liberty, truth, and justice”:
1776 – We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….
1787 – We the People ofthe United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
1863 – Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
1892 – I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
1952 – Truth, Justice, and the American Way [Brian Bengs, “What I Believe,” campaign website, retrieved 2025.08.27]
I’m cool with squeezing Superman in alongside the Declaration, the Preamble, Gettysburg, and the Pledge of Allegiance.
I’m super-cool with Bengs’s reference to the original Pledge of Allegiance, which was written by Francis Bellamy, a patriotic Christian socialist and Baptist preacher who didn’t think we needed to invoke his God to defend the flag and our inclusive Republic. Sure, Bellamy’s pledge was also part of his magazine’s ploy to sell flags, but hey, the Stars and Stripes also stands for striving to make a good capitalist buck, right?
The Pledge didn’t turn to Christian exclusivity until Congress and President Eisenhower added “under God” in 1954 to tweak those godless Commies… and godless Americans in general:
In February 1954, Eisenhower attended a sermon by Reverend George Docherty at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. that greatly influenced his ideas on the subject.
“To omit the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance is to omit the definitive factor in the American way of life,” Docherty preached. He discounted the right of atheists to object, arguing that an “atheistic American is a contradiction in terms,” because if “you deny the Christian ethic, you fall short of the American ideal of life.”
With Eisenhower on board, the campaign to adopt the phrase had more momentum. On June 14, Flag Day, Eisenhower signed a law adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance [Becky Little, “Why Eisenhower Added ‘Under God’ to the Pledge of Allegiance During the Cold War,” History.com, updated 2025.06.30].
I’m an atheist. I’m an American. I don’t cotton to anyone telling me I can’t be both. I thus omit “under God” every time I speak the Pledge. I am pleased to see Brian Bengs do the same on his campaign website and gladly read his citation of the original Bellamy pledge as a subtle signal that he won’t stand for Red Scariness or theocracy and that he believes instead in America’s better motto, E Pluribus Unum.