“I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America. And to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
We have all recited that pledge numerous times. It touches on the notion of equality, the antithesis of racism, in the phrase “justice for all.” Recitation of that pledge shows allegiance to the nation whose founding documents state equality for all. But, the Pledge of Allegiance has come under attack many times. It has been the center of controversy for the inclusion of the phrase “under God”. It has come under fire for somehow representing “white nationalism.” While some activists may declare that our pledge of allegiance is supposedly “steeped in nativist or bigoted” language despite its plain wording of liberty and justice for all, new pledges steeped in racial, sexual and gender discriminatory language are popping up everywhere:
Lakeshore Ethnic Diversity Alliance Pledge (LEDA) to Dismantle Racism
Ottawa Coalition of Unifying Churches (OCUC) pledge for committing to faith-driven activism
Zinn Education Project pledge to the truth that America was founded on dispossession of Native Americans, slavery, structural racism and oppression
Many of these new pledges seek to see others exclusively based on the color of their skin, chosen identity, or sexual attraction. The pledges then advocate for alternative treatment based on identity characteristics. In other words, while these pledges make it sound like they are advocating for equality, they actually turn things around, and instead advocate for neo-Marxist group identity principles.
In LEDA’s pledge to dismantle racism, it states, “We once again turn to our communities in hopes that others will join us and commit to finally dismantling barriers, thus ensuring that people of all races and ethnic backgrounds have equal access and opportunity to participate fully in the lives of their communities.”
While this sounds positive, it is redundant. America’s founding documents already make these promises, and they are enforced by law. Rewording the LEDA pledge a little it communicates: “we recognize that all people in our communities are equal. All people have the right to equal access and opportunity to participate fully in the lives of our communities.” Rewording it a little more it communicates: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…” It is important to note that the phrase “all men” is meant to mean all of humanity, not excluding women and children. Whichever way you word it, the goal of the pledge is to assert equality of all people, regardless of race or any other identifier. The Declaration of Independence already sets the foundation.
It is in the path to achieving these aims that the LEDA pledge diverges from the Pledge of Allegiance and America’s founding principles. The following bullet points in the LEDA pledge reveal the neo-Marxist framework of systemic oppression that divides citizens based on characteristics, thus diverging from the idea of “all men” being equal. The LEDA pledge states, “Over the days, weeks, and months ahead, each of us pledges to:
Educate ourselves on the inequities that racism has created in our communities and our places of work.
Understand our own privileges (and what white privilege means) and our biases to help us become accountable allies and activists.
Listen and create safe spaces to have open and frank conversations about racism with our families, colleagues, and communities.
Acknowledge the experiences of Black people’s interactions with law enforcement officers.
Eliminate racist policies, procedures, and systems in our organizations.
Build relationships with the local Black community, Black organizations, Black businesses, and Black leaders.
Step up, speak out, and take action to eliminate racism wherever and whenever it is encountered.”
The LEDA pledge preamble seeks the exact same end goal as the founding fathers, yet the action steps simultaneously reject the founders and their system. Instead, it favors an ideology that intentionally divides people into separate categories.
Meanwhile, some local churches have begun abandoning their posts as spiritual leaders as they bend towards becoming political organizations. In the Ottawa Coalition of Unifying Churches (OCUC) pledge for committing to faith-driven activism”, they include these principles:
1. “We affirm the sacred dignity of every human being, no matter their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration status, economic status, religion, background or ability.”
Again, we see America’s founding principles, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights …” sort of buried in there. But falling into the trap of identity politics, they could not just stop with the phrase “We affirm the sacred dignity of every human being,” and had to carry on by delineating a bunch of identity groups. I’m sure as time goes by, OCUC will find many more identity levers to pull on.
2. “We support the proper separation of church and state as one of the constitutional foundations of our country.”
Somehow, they also wrote this as they pledged to blend church and politics in an extreme way. The word ‘proper’ in that statement is doing some heavy lifting as it intentionally blurs the interpretation between what constitutes true separation of church and state.
3. “We reject claims that individual views can supersede established municipal, state and federal laws outside of the governmental and civic due process on which our residents depend.”
Credentialed experts or the elite are the only ones qualified to lead. During the seemingly never-ending COVID-19 overreach seen at all levels of government, many people objected to tyrannical vaccine mandates (really they were gene therapies) and face masking. In the case of the vax mandates, many people rejected these shots on religious grounds while others rejected them due to unknown safety profiles. Both of these arguments had always been valid reasons for citizens to object to forced vaccination prior to COVID-19. It is still mind boggling to think that many people, particularly our soldiers and workers in the medical field, were forced out of their jobs for refusing an experimental product.
In another bit of irony, while today these church leaders are “pledging” to be activists against a Christian political movement, they were all too accepting of municipal, state, and federal mandates closing their church doors during the pandemic. Churches nationwide still have not recovered their full attendance of pre-pandemic levels, yet now they have determined that those that are most supportive of the Church operating independently of the government (separate of the state) are their enemy. While claiming to be a “faith-driven” coalition of churches, they are aligning their politics with those who were most hostile to religion during the COVID-19 pandemic. One might ask, if they support the further erosion of their entire reason for being, what do they actually believe in? It might also be worth asking if they would be willing to give up their tax-exempt status in their pursuit of political activism?
We have further distortion of Christianity with the “Sparkle Creed.” Like with the previous examples, this one takes original pledges or teachings and repurposes them. In a desperate attempt to sound “inclusive,” the Sparkle Creed takes Biblical teachings and flips them to the point of absurdity. It rejects Biblical understanding, redefining core concepts such as the meaning of the rainbow in the Bible.
There are plenty more examples of absurd pledges cropping up. Teachers across the nation, including some local Ottawa County teachers, have pledged to break laws in their efforts to teach “the truth about this country: It was founded on dispossession of Native Americans, slavery, structural racism and oppression; and structural racism is a defining characteristic of our society today.” But like the other pledges, it also points to the principle of equality. “This history helps students understand the roots of inequality today and gives them the tools to shape a just future. It is not just a history of oppression, but also a history of how people have organized and created coalitions across race, class, and gender.” Some teachers have even gone as far as introducing the Black Pledge of Allegiance. Please watch the first 30 seconds of this video.
Are these pledges honestly seeking equality for all? If so, why don’t they just reaffirm the pledges we already have? Or, are they interested in something else? In every one of these examples, radical political ideals are espoused in a different way. These pledges are all subversive. The teacher pledge is a subversion of well-documented history, rewriting history through a critical theory lens. The sparkle creed subverts the teachings of the church and reinterprets the Bible. The Unified Coalition of Churches seeks to incorporate political activism into the church, going against their own pledge’s tenet of separation of church and state. Lastly, LEDA’s pledge to dismantle racism subverts the American ideals that have led our nation to create the best legal protections of citizen equality in the known universe. So, are all of these organizations, churches, and government institutions misguided, or is subversion the point?