With the Second Coming at hand (the Kingdom of Trump) — government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires — this is a good time to revisit, revise, reset, and reboot just about everything we hold dear and sacred. As a writer, I’m a proponent of revising. I have long wanted to rewrite the Catholic Mass, along with our country’s weak system of checks and balances, and nearly all of our traditional Christmas carols.
But I’ll start small: with the Pledge of Allegiance, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Beatitudes.
A post-election Pledge of Allegiance
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Divided States of America
And to the Republic which barely stands,
One contentious nation
Under an incredulous God,
Highly divisible, with one person above the law,
And liberty and justice for some.
Admittedly, not the pledge most of us would like to recite. But it is a more realistic pledge. We grew up pledging allegiance to a country that could never be divided (indivisible), a country that extended liberty and justice to all Americans. As children, we believed it wholeheartedly. How could we not pledge allegiance to such a country? The problem is it wasn’t, and isn’t, true (not yet anyway) and definitely not since Jan. 20, 2025. We are deeply divided, our democratic republic is in peril, the country’s most powerful person is not accountable to the law, and liberty and justice is dependent on your wealth and the color of your skin. We want the old pledge to be true. We believe that eventually it could be true. Some even believe it is true — or pretend to believe it. But the revised pledge above is where we stand now. Will the old pledge ever become a reality? Are we doing enough to make that happen?
An alternate version of The Lord’s Prayer
Our Deity,
Who may or may not exist in the material universe … and beyond,
Genderless and nameless,
May your realm, which already surrounds us, someday rule.
Cleanse our eyes to behold the extraordinary beauty of creation,
Give us, this day, the bread of physical and spiritual renewal, along with thirst-sating, living water.
Forgive our mistakes, and give us the strength to forgive those who have forgotten that we are all connected.
Grant us the wisdom to act responsibly toward our desires, so they don’t bloom into addictions and afflictions,
And deliver us from the suffering that comes from our temptation to live backward, as if we spelled “live” in reverse,
And live instead as if we spelled it “love.”
May it be so, ever and always …
We need to lose the medieval terminology (“Lord” and “Kingdom”), and if God exists, our deity is surely genderless and goes by many names or no name. And any deity that craves continuous praise for their awesome “power and glory” isn’t much of a God. More like a giant ego in the sky. Whatever small steps we have taken on our evolutionary journey should be reflected in our prayers. Praying is a natural human tendency and Jesus, who seemed a much more highly evolved human being (and possibly more than human) instructed us to address God in a more intimate and personal manner. Jesus’ words, whatever they were originally, have gone through the grinder of cultural translation for over two millennia, so we needn’t be shy about adjusting and updating them — as long as we retain the core of what he was trying to say. I have tried to capture the spirit, if not the letter, of the prayer.
The Beatitudes
This beloved mini-sermon on the mount, like the prayer above, also feels closer to Jesus’ actual message. Given the vagaries of translation, however, people still argue about just what “Blessed are the poor in spirit” means. Jesus, I suspect, was not vague. I also suspect something might have been misplaced in translation — and that misplaced modifier may have been left out, but implied, in the rest of the beatitudes. So here it is with all the modifiers (possibly) in their proper place, along with some changes in wording:
Blessed in spirit are the poor, for theirs is the realm of God.
Blessed in spirit are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed in spirit are the humble, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed in spirit are those who long for justice, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed in spirit are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed in spirit are the true of heart, for they will see God.
Blessed in spirit are the peacemakers, for they will be called righteous.
Blessed in spirit are those who are persecuted, for they will be embraced by God.
I changed the medieval term “kingdom” to “realm,” and adjusted other wording, not because Jesus needed editing but because translations need refreshing. Despite the repetition of “in spirit,” I find this a more satisfying rendering, but if you want a real adventure in updating, read Eugene Peterson’s The Message – The Bible in Contemporary Language (Matthew, Chap. 5, v. 3-10). I think you’ll enjoy it.
Shaking up the Bible is long overdue. And real progress in this country is also overdue.
But the revisionism Trump the Sequel has in mind has long outlived its expiration date.