'One nation under God': the pledge of allegiance as a ritual practice in American civil religion

Wanamaker, Pamela Christine Mansir

'One nation under God': the pledge of allegiance as a ritual practice in American civil religion

Master Thesis

1988

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Religious Studies

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

This document suggests and then illustrates a neglect in the study of American civil religious ritual. It argues that a primary carrier for American civil religion has been the public school system and that one vehicle used in the task of perpetuating the American identity has been the civil religious ritual of saying the Pledge of Allegiance which most American school children routinely perform at the start of each school day. The methodological approach used in this study of the Pledge ritual is a process analysis formulated by Ronald Grimes which combines the concern of sociology with that of history. Three key questions are dealt with: the process of change (a historical study); the social process effecting the ritual (this centers on the legal conflicts) and the processes which the ritual affect (this concentrates on grassroots responses to the ritual and the power, positive or negative, which it generates. The negative power behind the ritual is a dynamic force which has left its mark in the legislature of the country and in the attitude of the adult population towards the Pledge of Allegiance. This paper identifies and explains four motivators which underlie much of the ritual processing, namely, consensus, conflict, crisis and control. It concludes that the Pledge of Allegiance ritual is a dynamic force which reflects the growth and development of the civil-religious dimension of the American nation.