by Eric Lendrum
On Tuesday, a school board in North Dakota voted overwhelmingly to abandon the sacred tradition of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, claiming that the Pledge doesn’t align with the district’s values.
As reported by the New York Post, the Fargo School Board voted 7-2 to cancel the Pledge at all of its future bi-weekly board meetings. Those who voted in favor of the ban claimed that the Pledge of Allegiance wasn’t inclusive enough, primarily due to the use of the phrase “under God.”
Seth Holden, one of the board members who voted for the ban, claimed that because “the word ‘God’ in the text of the Pledge of Allegiance is capitalized…the text is clearly referring to the Judeo-Christian God and therefore, it does not include any other faith such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, all of which are practiced by our staff and students.”
Holden also supported the ban due to its alleged exclusion of atheists, and thus the Pledge was contradictory to the school board’s goals of promoting “diversity, inclusion, and equity,” a now widely-used phrase referring to the promotion of multiculturalism and many far-left concepts of race, religion, and identity in America, including Critical Race Theory.
President of the Board Tracie Newman had proposed that the Pledge be replaced with “a shared statement of purpose that would bring us all together,” which she claimed would be more “unifying.”
“I’m just not sure that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is a useful way to begin every one of our board meetings,” Newman added.
Former Board member David Paulson, who first proposed the idea that the Pledge should be recited at every school board meeting, said those who voted to ban it were “misinterpreting” the Pledge of Allegiance.
“The Pledge isn’t a show of our patriotism, it’s an affirmation of our commitment and our loyalty to the greater cause, and that greater cause is freedom,” Paulson explained.
– – –
Eric Lendrum reports for American Greatness.
