People can make almost anything sound sinister if they start with a scary premise and end with a confident conclusion. We slow down and do the unglamorous work: dates, documents, and plain context. That’s how we handle a question we keep hearing, especially in Christian civic circles, about whether repeating the Pledge of Allegiance is “idolatry” or a socialist setup. We trace the real history of the pledge, including why it was created in the 1890s, who actually drove the idea, and how the w...