Somewhere in the First Amendment between the establishment clause and the free exercise clause we need to pry open enough elbow room for American culture to stand.

I understand that the Pledge of Allegiance as written by a defrocked socialist minister never mentioned God at all, and that the words “Under God” admitted by President Eisenhower had more to do with the Red Scare of the mid-fifties than piety of any particular stripe. So much is, as they say, history.

Here’s the rub. As a person of faith, and there are a few, of various faiths, my allegiance is already pledged. The nature of faith is that it is supreme, transcendent, over arching, and over ruling all other commitments. Normally this isn’t a problem; most faith systems that have lasted more than a couple hundred years are pretty consistent with social order. But along comes the Pledge of Allegiance, and without that little two-word caveat “under God” I am hard pressed to make such a pledge. Of what value would it be?

I am old-fashioned, believing a pledge or promise to be just that. And this is after all the 21st century, where promises were made to be broken, contracts have escape clauses, and a few men and women on active duty feel no compunction carping to the press corps about their orders. But then I remember this is also the era of “keep it real” and “just do it.” Walking your talk never goes out of style, but being circumspect about your talk in the first place has done.

What’s at stake in the debate on the Pledge is not theology. God goes on, so does faith. Or if you are of the faithless persuasion, so does integrity, conviction. What is at stake is the Pledge itself, and our allegiance to the Republic, which is us, each of us, and all of us. If one party can’t say the pledge with, and the other party can’t say it without, then we remain, regardless of the Pledge, one nation eminently divisible.