In reaction to Islamic Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison’s decision to use the Koran in taking his oath of office, the “American Family Association” has proclaimed that only the Bible is acceptable for taking such oaths.
Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress.
The most visible proponent of this view seems to be conservative Town Hall columnist and radio show host, Dennis Prager.
I don’t particularly care for religion getting mixed into oaths of office in the first place, but I’m not unduly riled up about it. The point of an oath of office is to imprint upon the office holder’s mind the seriousness of the undertaking and the office holder’s duty to perform to the best of his or her abilities. Associating the undertaking with something the office holder regards with solemnity serves that end. For a devout Christian — associating it with the Bible or Christianity; for a devout Muslim — associating it with the Koran or Islam. If I were taking an oath of office, I think associating it with the U.S. Constitution would serve the same purpose. In other words, the oath of office has to do with the personal relationship between the office holder and the office and not very much to do with the public’s relationship to the office.
So, besides being evidence of intolerant bigotry, this nonsense about a “Christian Nation” and the Bible being the only acceptable text for oaths of office is actually counterproductive to what an oath is supposed to accomplish. How on earth could an oath taken on the Bible enhance a Muslim’s sense of duty to the office? I only hope that this kind of garbage spewing from Prager and the American Family Association reveals their true nature to the public at large and serves to marginalize them in the public dialogue.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
I wish along with you that this would expose the wingnuts further… sadly, they have legions.
I think you are actually on to the correct idea. Why don’t all officials.. who swear to uphold the US Constitution.. use THAT to swear upon? Dont’ they hold that text sacred?
Oh, wait.. they disagree on what sections mean.. First Amendment comes to mind. But that shouldn’t hold them back, since even the wingnuts disagree on what the Scriptures say. (BTW, what was the punishment for my neighbor working on the Sabbath? Stoning? I forget.)
That bit about stoning reminded me of a “letter to Dr. Laura” following her holding forth on homosexuality being contrary to “God’s law.”
Hmm. Would the same thing have happened if Ellison had used the Torah? (I suspect yes…)
Which then leads me to wonder what a prominant Jewish civil servant such as Joe Lieberman does when he takes an oath?
I think for the most part, the oaths are given en masse with the oath takers just raising their right hands. Some of them apparently hold the holy text of their choice in their left hand or under their arm. I think their might be some photo opportunities for swearing in with hand on holy text that is not actually part of the official process.
I could be wrong though. (This is what I’ve read recently for members of Congress; I’m sure the process varies from office to office and jurisdiction to jurisdiction.)
“If I were taking an oath of office, I think associating it with the U.S. Constitution would serve the same purpose.”
Good one, Doug – yeah, you’d think, right?
I hate it when politics and religion are mixed, however lumpily so, together.
I also have extreme distate for the American Family Association. I am American, I have a family, but these people do not, in any way, shape, or form, represent the values I want to impart with my kids.
We need more elected reps like Keith Ellison! I’ll volunteer to lead praying the rosary before public meetings ( eager to see if that’s Christian or not). Eventually,after the fighting in the aisles starts, the Constitution will become the default source for legitimacy,as it was intended.
Hmmm, the first 16 words of the 1st Amendment come to mind:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
I’m reminded that the head of the American Family Association thinks that being gay is a condition that can and should be cured. But he’s declined to be involved in the treatment of Ted Haggard’s “gayness” because he’s too busy and it will take too long a time–up to five years. After saying such silliness, why the hell anyone takes these people seriously is beyond me.
Jeff Pruitt,
I think you missed some words from the Constitution that are even more squarely on point:
One has to love the faithful originalist literalism of the conservative movement, wherein entire clauses of the Constitution mean absolutely nothing at all. Hey! Look! Over thre! Some gay guys might be marrying each other!
I’d just as soon not give the Bible-only-for-oaths crowd (not sure how big this crowd can actually be) the respect implied by getting into a Constitutional argument. I think it’s pretty clear that the Constitution is against them, but I don’t think we should even get to the point where the Constitution has to be a referee in this issue. Common courtesy would seem to be enough to settle the issue.
Doug,
Maybe so, but I find that section of the Constitution, which isn’t even one of those misguided amendments, telling in light of the common bit of Christian fundamentalist propaganda that the United States was founded as a “Christian nation”.
It appears to me that even before the passage of the 1st Amendment by time-travelling hippies infesting Congress and the state legislatures, the Consitution aligned itself squarely with a secular view of the government it established.
Not an anti-religious secularism, mind you, but one that expected the same common courtesy you do. As so often occurs, those who most loudly advocate the supremacy of ancient codices are the ones putting up smokescreens to obscure their betrayal of the very principles they claim to uphold.
The good news is that usually five minutes of direct, original research is all it takes to expose the hypocrisy, as here with Article VI, and with the confusion of the Ritual Declaogue with the Ethical Decalogue (of which there are two slightly different versions of the latter), as recently noted on your blog.
The bad news is that so few people bother to spend that five minutes. I wonder if the reason has to do more with laziness, or more with a dim suspicion of the truth, but an unwillingness to part with the comforting belief that everything that is wrong with the world is the fault of “Libruls” or “Terrorists”. To actually read the Bible or Consitution demands that one either conclude these works to be parts of a massive conspiracy (of the Illuminati, perhaps?), or that one has been a semi-willing pawn of cynical manipulators.
I wonder of the success of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code tells us something about the relative prevalence of the two pheomena…
The most direct indication I’ve found that the United States was not founded as a “Christian Nation” comes from Article 11 of the U.S. treaty with Tripoli, adopted June 7, 1797:
“I think for the most part, the oaths are given en masse with the oath takers just raising their right hands. Some of them apparently hold the holy text of their choice in their left hand or under their arm. I think their might be some photo opportunities for swearing in with hand on holy text that is not actually part of the official process.
I could be wrong though. (This is what I’ve read recently for members of Congress; I’m sure the process varies from office to office and jurisdiction to jurisdiction.)”
You’re exactly right, Doug. The photos with hands on Bibles (or Korans!) are staged afterwards.
“One has to love the faithful originalist literalism of the conservative movement, wherein entire clauses of the Constitution mean absolutely nothing at all. Hey! Look! Over thre! Some gay guys might be marrying each other!”
Branden, there’s a great distinction to be drawn between a Constitutionist and the average conservative. As one who does take a literal approach to the Constitution, I’ve found myself endlessly trivialized by conservatives of the GOP stripe.
Mike Kole:
You wrote:
That’s a fair point. One of the things that has always confused me about the modern conservative movement is that in important areas like Christian government and laissez-faire economics, they appear to be attempting to “conserve” a past which is not real.
I posit that the U.S.’s fall from unfettered anarcho-capitalist grace can be traced back at least as far as the establishment of the first Bank of the United States in 1791.
The U.S. was born a mercantilist nation, not a capitalist one, and its evolution into a capitalist state was accompanied by heavy government subsidization.
I know I’m off-topic with the economics stuff, but I didn’t want to leave economic conservatism unchallenged. I would guess that the average reader of this blog is familiar with the less-than-stellar evangelical Christian credentials of the Founding Fathers, given the Treaty with Tripoli, the Jefferson Bible, and other artifacts of the period.
There’s only one defintion for everything and thats the definition the Bible-toters are peddling.If Thomas Jefferson was Christian, then he must have been like Jerry Falwell.
If we have always sworn on the Bible when we give testimony in Court,then the USA is a Christian country founded by Christians,and law comes directly from Scripture ( as does the Constitution because Jefferson ,the Christian ,inpired or wrote most of it ( and they see Jerry Falwell or the like).
We cant beat the rw-set and their Bibles because we dont speak their language.
The Bush administration does bring us a silver lining. These people have begun to question their own tactics,and many hangers-on will go other ways now. They’ve seen the void and will jump to other greener-looking fields. The core will re-group, but they’ll have trouble gaining majorities to rule because this country will not again soon be taken in by another gullible enabler like Bush.