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Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

If you attended grade school in the United States, you probably had to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at least once a week with your class.

You know, I pledge allegiance to the

flag of the United States of America. One of the lines in the pledge specifies that the United

States is, quote, one nation under God. The line has been controversial at times, and it wasn't

always a part of the pledge. This is the

story of a reverend and his sermon that changed the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance first

took root in the 1890s, a few decades after the end of the Civil War. It was originally written for school

children as part of a promotional campaign, according to Smithsonian Magazine. A publication called

Youth Magazine wanted to create patriotic programming ahead of the 400th anniversary of

Christopher Columbus arriving in America. A guy named Francis Bellamy was in charge of the initiative,

and he decided to write a salute to the flag.

The pledge originally went,

I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands,

one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Pretty different from the version we know today.

Tweaks came later.

At one point, the words were changed to the flag of the United States

out of concern that immigrant children would not understand which flag they were saluting.

Yeah. children would not understand which flag they were saluting. It was in the 1950s that the idea of adding God to the pledge gained momentum thanks to a reverend

named George Doherty.

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