Francis Bellamy: The Minister Who Gave America Its Pledge

Francis Bellamy: The Minister Who Gave America Its Pledge

In the closing years of the 19th century, as the United States struggled to reconcile its past and define its future, a Baptist minister named Francis Bellamy (1855–1931) composed a few lines that would outlast him by generations. Spare, deliberate, and softly forceful, the Pledge of Allegiance became one of the nation’s most recognizable civic expressions—recited daily, often from memory, and embedded in American life. A Minister Shaped by Fait…