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I believe the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is wrong and should be omitted from it. This phrase was not in the original pledge written in 1892. It is a complete violation of church and state. It is also oppressive to those who do not believe in one God, the Christian God. It goes against what the Pledge of Allegiance even means, which is freedom, choices, meaning you don’t have to do or say what you don’t want to without being persecuted for your beliefs. The Founding Fathers intention with the Constitution was to give people the freedom of religion. They may themselves have been Christian, but they knew to try to have a theocratic society and enforce a religion on people was a risk. They knew this because they had escaped from England where their people had been persecuted if they did not practice the religion forced on them. Their whole idea was to form a society that would be a better place by giving people the freedom to choose their religion, or whether or not they were even religious. They chose to keep church and state completely separate. To insert “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is completely oppressive to many people. The Knights of Columbus (a self proclaimed “strong right arm of the church”) meant the Christian God by this. They did not mean a generic god. We know this because the ‘g’ in god is capitalized, and the Knights of Columbus were strong Catholics. Some opponents try to say they meant any God in which one believed it, and it was the choice of the individual.
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