Does the Pledge of Allegiance mean much if your heart isn't in it?

Is my memory faulty, or in 1963 did I really have to sign a loyalty oath to get a summer job with a McDonald’s precursor? I rather think I did. Lord knows I was a subversive 16-year-old who could have threatened national security while turning out French fries.

I was reminded of this by the recent furor over the Bremerton City Council’s decision to stop opening their meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance. I am one veteran who doesn’t view that omission as disloyal or unpatriotic — nor do I view it as dishonoring the service and sacrifices of my fellow veterans, living or dead. Shades of the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s! Is anyone seriously worried that the Bremerton City Council has been infiltrated by anti-American subversives who hate America? “Patriotism,” the English author Samuel Johnson once said, “is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” We certainly have plenty of media and political scoundrels hiding behind it now.

I grew up when we started every public-school day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer. Both became a matter of empty ritual. Most of us mouthed the words without thinking about them, and I don’t remember a single teacher ever commenting on what they should mean to us. And more to the point, the religious tradition I grew up in always held that prayer means nothing if your heart isn’t in it.

I would bet Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames recited the Pledge of Allegiance in school, as did Jonathan Pollard. Hansen and Ames spied for Soviet Russia, Pollard for Israel. More recently, Jonathan and Diana Toebbe tried to sell submarine secrets to an FBI agent whom they thought was representing a foreign country. They too must have recited the Pledge in school.

As for the Lord’s Prayer, over the years, I’ve heard from more than one reader who traces all our current problems — including our rise in gun violence — back to the 1962 Supreme Court decision outlawing prayer in public schools. Theirs, I suppose, is the vengeful God of the Old Testament who would strike down the innocent children of the non-believers and backsliders. Somehow, I doubt that reciting the Lord’s Prayer on a regular basis would have unhardened the hearts of the school shooters from Columbine to Robb Elementary. And generations of violent criminals grew up reciting it prior to 1962.

Jerry Falwell Sr. and Pat Robertson likewise present a case in point. Both believed an angry God allowed Islamic extremists to attack us on September 11, 2001, because we were allowing abortion and tolerating homosexuality. I’m not an atheist, but I don’t see God’s hand in the 9/11 attacks, the COVID pandemic, or any of the misfortunes that have befallen us. Rather, I believe Rabbi Harold Kushner is right about “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People,” the title of his 2004 book. First, we are created with free will and are free to do good or evil. Second, God created a universe in which its systems can break down all on their own. God doesn’t cause the breakdowns, nor does he intervene in human affairs.

In other words, there is not a “special providence in the fall of a sparrow.” God doesn’t cause or allow children to get cancer. Accidents, genetic and otherwise, happen. Still, Kushner views God as on our side. He believes we can pray for Him to give us the courage and the strength to withstand or at least accept whatever comes our way. And as Kushner sees it, God judges us on how well we handle our misfortunes and whether, like Job, we don’t lose our faith in Him.

I realize I’ve been ignoring the elephant in our particular room — former Bremerton football coach Joe Kennedy, whose school-prayer case has been heard by the Supreme Court. I take no position regarding whether voluntary prayer in the stadium after a football game should or shouldn’t be allowed. What bothers me is the holier-than-thou grandstanding involved. Christ himself is supposed to have warned his followers not to make a public spectacle of their devotion. He called those who do so “hypocrites” (Matthew 6:5-15). It seems to me Christ understood there is a fine line between true devotion and the sin of pride.

The link here, of course, is devotion — secular or sacred. I wasn’t bothered by Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the National Anthem. He was merely reminding people America is not all it professes to be. Personally, I don’t care if the Bremerton City Council decides to open its meetings with the Canadian comedian Red Green’s Man’s Prayer: “I’m a man, but I can change — if I have to, I guess.” They could also recite Green’s Woman’s Prayer: “I am woman. Hear me roar! I’m in charge. Get over it!” Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance won’t make any city council member more or less loyal and patriotic.

What it all comes down to is something my fellow Vietnam veteran and critically acclaimed author and poet W.D. Ehrhart once wrote: “When the rituals and ceremonies of freedom become mandatory, we’re all in trouble.” I could say the same about mandatory prayer.

Contact Ed Palm at majorpalm@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Ed Palm: Bremerton's Pledge of Allegiance vote and the Lord's Prayer