According to Mary Pitman Kitch removing the phrase, "under God" from "The Pledge of Allegiance" undermines our national heritage. She believes that it will cause millions of Americans to be outraged because most people think of the word "God" that is used in "The Pledge of Allegiance" as a very general god. He is not seen as the Christian God, The Lord God Almighty, but more as "god as you understand him." Kitch believes removing it will affect more than just the public school system. In her view this is something that will please only the atheists. Since most people believe in some kind of "god" removing this phrase from "The Pledge of Allegiance" will cause an uproar. She also believes that there are a lot of people for whom this phrase has genuine meaning.
In her opinion this is more of a patriotic phrase than a religious phrase. Kitch believes that without our religious background we would not have the freedoms that we have and that we still embrace religious beliefs as part of our national systems. She says that it all comes back to the controversy of separation of church and state.
I can identify weaknesses and one strength in Kitch's article. The strength that I found is the fact that she clarifies the overall ramifications of deleting the word "god" from "The Pledge of Allegiance." One of the weaknesses that I found is that Kitch tried to see both sides of the issue and ended up contradicting herself. She says it is not okay to impose religious beliefs on a person; but at the same time she is saying it is okay to impose the belief in god in this instance. She also implies that most people do not attach any serious meaning to the phrase "under god" and yet at the same time she says many people do attach serious meaning to the phrase. Another weakness that I noticed was that she talks about Jefferson's "wall of separation" as being "shot full of holes". Yet she bases her article on the premise that the separation of church and state is true and valid.