All 4 Uses of

allegiance
in
Change of Heart, by Picoult

If you don't want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, you don't have to.†
*

allegiance = loyalty

In today's top story, a winning decision was handed down in the case of the high school student who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance.†

Religion and politics get into bed with each other all the time: the first thing we do in a courtroom is swear on a Bible; public school classes begin with the Pledge of Allegiance, which declares us one nation under God; even our currency is stamped with the words In God We Trust.†

350 J O D I P I C OU LT There was an appeal that had been filed in the Supreme Court by the attorneys of a skinhead who'd written the word towelhead in white paint on the driveway of his employer, a Pakistani convenience store owner who'd fired him for being drunk on the job; some research about why the words under God had been added to the Pledge of Allegiance in i954 during the McCarthy era; and a stack of mail equally balanced between desperate souls who wanted me to fight on their behalf and right-wing conservatives who berated the ACLU for making it criminal to be a white churchgoing Christian.†

Definition:

loyalty to a person, group, or cause