By Mike Appleton, Weekend Contributor

“All governments are theocracies. We now live in a secular humanist theocracy. I want to change that to a government with God at its head.”

-Gary DeMar (quoted in John Sugg, “A Nation Under God,” Mother Jones (December, 2005)

When I started first grade in 1951, each school day began with the Pledge of Allegiance. We recited “one nation, indivisible,” because people understood that fidelity to one’s country is not a religious virtue. The National Prayer Breakfast was not on anyone’s calendar because it didn’t exist. Politicians felt no compulsion to invoke God’s blessings on the United States at the conclusion of every speech. Protestants opposed every effort to secure public funding of Catholic parochial schools in order to preserve the “wall of separation” between church and state. The corner grocer didn’t care whether a customer was gay or had been born again. Textbooks were not reviewed by religious committees for conformity with the King James Version. No serious person had yet suggested that insentient, artificial commercial entities could magically channel the religious beliefs of their shareholders. And no one complained that a war was being waged against religion.

But following some of the events at this year’s Values Voter Summit, I have become nostalgic for 1951.

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