God created the universe in six days, but it took an act of Congress to get Him into the Pledgee of Allegiance. The history of the Pledge is dotted with revisions, including the 1954 adoption of “under God.” And though Americans have said the Pledge the same way for the past 60 years, a survey from the American Humanist Association found that one-third would like “under God” removed, after being told those words were not part of the original text.
“There’s a lot more we could have said,” said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. “We could say more about the history, that it was clearly an effort by the government at the time to endorse a Judeo-Christian perspective in its proceedings. If that happened today, people would be up in arms. The government should not be endorsing religion in any way.”