Background
Docherty was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1911.
Docherty was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1911.
After graduation from Glasgow University and a three-year pastorate at Aberdeen's North Kirk, he set sail from Southampton to the United States in 1950. As a result of his sermon, the next day President Eisenhower and his friends in Congress began to set the wheels in motion to amend the Pledge of Allegiance to include the phrase. On February 8, 1954, Representative Charles Oakman (R-Mich), introduced a bill to that effect.
Senator Homer Ferguson, in his report to the Congress, March 10, 1954, said that "the introduction of this joint resolution was suggested to me by a sermon given recently by the Review
George M. Docherty, of Washington, District of Columbia, who is pastor of the church at which Lincoln worshipped." This time Congress concurred with the Oakman-Ferguson resolution and Eisenhower opted to sign the bill into law appropriately on Flag Day (June 14, 1954). The fact that Eisenhower clearly had Docherty"s rationale in mind as he initiated and consummated this measure is apparent in a letter he wrote in August 1954. He became active with Martin Luther King, Junior in the civil rights movement. He developed relationships with later presidents, as well as noted theologians such as Karl Barth and Billy Graham. For 22 years, Docherty had a television program in Washington, District of Columbia. A book of his sermons entitled One Way of Living was published by Harper in 1958. His autobiography, I’ve Seen the Day, was published by Eerdmans in 1984. His sermon collection is now in the stewardship of the Robert East Speer Library at Princeton Theological Seminary. A collection of original recordings of his early sermons are now in the care of the Harvard Divinity Library in Cambridge.
In 1979, he was asked to join the faculty of Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania for a year.
Several years later he would return again to Alexandria, Pennsylvania, near Huntingdon. Docherty died at his home in Alexandria on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2008.