I don't like the Pledge of Allegiance -- at least not now. I used to like it. I liked the respectful mood we assumed as we all stood for the recitation in school. I considered it a beautiful affirmation of what our country represented - liberty and justice for all. That was back then, before President Eisenhower, during the Cold War in the 1950's, gave in to religious pressures and allowed them to override that precious liberty by inserting the words "under God" in the Pledge.

Now today, everyone saying the revised Pledge is forced to affirm a contradiction: there is no way you can have a nation "under God" and still call it "indivisible," because too many Americans are divided on their ideas of that God. Christians oppose allowing a Hindu to give the prayer in Congress or having a Muslim legislator take his oath of office on the Koran. Pope Benedict XVI asserts that other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches.

Our nation has a long history of religious conflicts. The Jehovah's Witnesses is a case in point since theirs is a religion that opposes saying the Pledge in general because they believe that saluting the flag amounts to placing another deity before God. They have borne years of shameful persecution for this sincere belief, even having the Supreme Court, during the days of pre-World War II patriotic fervor, rule that their children should be forced to pledge allegiance to the flag in their public school, thus violating their personal faith (Minersville School District vs. Gobitis).

This decision encouraged hate crimes against the Jehovah's Witnesses. In Texas their missionaries were chased and beaten by vigilantes. One Southern sheriff told a reporter why Witnesses were being run out of town: "They're traitors; the Supreme Court says so. Ain't you heard?"

A Kingdom Hall was stormed and torched in Kennebunk, Maine. Their literature was confiscated and burned and American Legion posts harassed Witnesses nationwide. Nearly 1,500 Witnesses were physically attacked in more than 300 communities, according to a report to the Justice Department made by The American Civil Liberties Union.

Partly because of this violent reaction to its decision, the Supreme Court reversed itself in 1943, and declared a beautiful affirmation of our First Amendment freedoms: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion" (West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette).

This ruling reaffirmed the secular basis of our government - a stance that would protect the religious liberty of us all if truly followed. After all, there can be no freedom OF religion unless individuals are free FROM OTHER PEOPLE'S RELIGION. Too bad that President Eisenhower, and now today's religionists, insist on weakening that important principle by destroying government neutrality toward religion.

The ruling establishes the right of Jehovah's Witnesses children to refuse to pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag in public schools. That wording also confirms my right, as one who does not believe in any god, let alone our nation "under God," to recite the Pledge as originally written - "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."