Rev George Docherty

Dr Docherty aired the idea in a sermon in Washington's historic New York Avenue Presbyterian Church on Sunday, February 7, 1954, and not without an eye on President Dwight D Eisenhower sitting in Abraham Lincoln's pew, and an occasional member of his congregation.

Basing his sermon on Galatians chapter 3, verse 28, Docherty in his typewritten notes inserted "under God" into the middle of the verse, and further referred to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and "this nation under God", preaching that without these words "the definitive factor in the American way of life" would be denied.

Docherty's eloquence persuaded Eisenhower to raise the issue in Congress, and within four months the words "under God" had become enshrined in law at a time when a communist threat to the US had a seriousness unknown today. Docherty's sermon persuasively indicated that without mention of God, the pledge could easily apply to the Soviet Union. He further argued that the phrase "under God" could include "the great Jewish community and the people of the Muslim faith", a move which successfully got round several court challenges to the phrase.

Docherty had been struck by the idea when his son, Garth, then a small boy, related that at school that day the lesson had been on the Pledge of Allegiance. It seemed odd to the senior Docherty that there was no mention of God in the pledge, given his own upbringing in a Scotland where God Save The King had been sung.

"It was everybody's belief that God was part of society," he recalled six years ago.

In his sermon in the 1400-seat Washington kirk, Docherty reasoned that reciting the pledge did not make non-believers profess a faith in God. "He (the incoming president) is pledging allegiance to a state, which through its founders, laws and culture, does as a matter of fact believe in the existence of God," he said. "Without this phrase under God,' The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag might have been recited with similar sincerity by Muscovite children at the beginning of their school day."

Afterwards, Eisenhower said to him, "I think you've got something". The media picked up the message, with the Congressional Record printing the sermon in full.

Within six months, the pledge had been amended to 31 words, with "under God" to be spoken after "one nation." The introduction of the revised pledge was celebrated in a ceremony at the Capitol. "Everybody who was anybody was present except me," Docherty said later. "They forgot to invite me."

George Macpherson Docherty was born at 28 Hathaway Street, Maryhill, the son of a gardener on Lord Weir's estate at Eastwood. Showing early promise at East Park School and Kelvinside Secondary School, Docherty went first to a job in the legal office of Fyffe Maclean in West Campbell Street before moving to shipping agents in Waterloo Street. He fell in love with a secretary in the business, Jerry Watson, and they married.

When he received a call to the church, Docherty graduated at Glasgow University, after which his abilities saw him move into a distinguished ecclesiastical career in churches in Glasgow, including the Barony Kirk, before a move for three years to the North Kirk in Aberdeen (now Aberdeen Arts Centre). While in the granite city, he attended an illustrated lecture by the Rev Erskine Blackwood on the latter's travels in the US, and was so swayed by this vision of the New World that Docherty visited New York. He decided in 1950 to make a new life there, ultimately serving as pastor of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, Washington, for more than 26 years, the church attended by Lincoln and many of his successors in the White House.

An engaging six-footer with strikingly bushy eyebrows, Docherty settled into American life with the same gusto that marked him out in Scotland. Active in the Civil Rights movement, and a leader in efforts to feed and educate the hungry poor of the American capital, Docherty made his church a staging point for anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, with Martin Luther King preached from its pulpit. He also made time to publish a volume of sermons, One Way of Living (1958), and a memoir, I've Seen the Day (1984).

His travels across the US gave him a reputation as a guest speaker whose sermons were not always for either the converted or faint-hearted. In offering spirituality to a congregation in which then-Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski shared the sanctuary with President Richard Nixon, Docherty said he would "line off the moral playing field", adding that afterwards, "I'd let them deduce".

When his beloved Jerry died suddenly, Docherty underwent bereavement counselling, a seminar which included a young American widow, Sue Hollingshead. They married and Sue, a teacher, remained his wife for 36 years.

After retiring in 1976, Docherty, a golfer whose love for the game verged on the fanatical, moved back to Scotland, where at St Andrews he was welcomed as a member of the Royal & Ancient. But America called him back, and he taught for some years to teach at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, before he retired fully in 1989.

Docherty died in Alexandria, Pennsylvania, and is survived by his wife, Sue, five children from his marriages; and five grandchildren. By GORDON CASELY