Politics and God- past and present
January 1, 2009 1 Comment
Well, well, well… I am posting enough of two news articles for you to get the picture of the “legal complaint” that has been compiled by an atheist group about the upcoming Presidential Inauguration and then a bit of a history lesson from Donald R. Kennon, Chief Historian, United States Capitol Historical Society.
As we end one year and begin another I think it is important to us to reflect on our past, what made America great, and what threatens us today. If you do take the time to read over the Kennon piece you will see that he was really pressed with questions in 2005 about America being a Christian nation. Today there seems to be new ways and new people to take up the cause of removing religion from America.
Happy New Year.
Atheist Group Files Lawsuit Against Prayer at Presidential Inauguration.
The head of an atheist group that has filed a lawsuit against prayer at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration says the government is picking a winner between “believers” and “those who don’t believe” and subjecting atheists and agnostics to someone else’s religious beliefs.
Dan Barker, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has joined with Michael Newdow, who fought to have the words “under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, in a federal lawsuit seeking to enjoin the Presidential Inaugural Committee from sponsoring prayers at the official inauguration.
The 34-page legal complaint similarly seeks to enjoin Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr., from adding the phrase “So help me God” to the presidential oath of office.
“We’re hoping to stop prayer and religious rituals at governmental functions, especially at the inauguration,” Barker told FOX News Radio.
“The inauguration is not a religious event. It is a secular event of a secular country that includes all Americans, including those of us who are not Christians, including those of us who are not believers,” he continued.
http://fpc.state.gov/40871.htm
Presidential Inaugurations Past and Present: A look at the History Behind the Pomp and Circumstance
Donald R. Kennon, Chief Historian, United States Capitol Historical Society
Foreign Press Center Briefing
Washington, DC
January 13, 2005So before he can actually begin to execute his office, he has to take this oath. And the oath is very interesting. What’s he swearing allegiance to? He’s swearing allegiance to this: To the Constitution. To a written document that provides the blueprint for our form of government. So people can change, policy agendas can change, parties can change, but the structure remains the same. The individuals are interchangeable, but the structure remains the same. And that’s what’s important.
The oath — I’ll just make a few closing remarks. The oath is usually taken on a bible. George Washington, again, set the tradition of taking an oath of office on the bible in 1789. They had to borrow a bible from a nearby Masonic lodge in order to take that oath and in fact, the so-called Washington Masonic bible has been used on four occasions since that time. And it’s here in town at the National Archives on display. I don’t know if it’s planned to be used at this inaugural or not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is. Many presidents use a family bible and often borrow the Washington bible to take the oath of office, put their left hand on the bible, raise their right hand, and take the oath.
Now, Washington also set a precedent by adding, after he said the oath of office, the words: “So help me, God.” Now, if you go on the website of the Presidential Inaugural Committee today, they will give you the text of the oath of office and they say it’s as specified in the Constitution. And then they have the text. And then they put the, “So help me, God.” [But] “So help me, God” is not in the Constitution. It’s not specified. It’s something that was added by Washington and has been said by almost every president since then. There have been a couple of occasions when that didn’t happen. One was, Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. He simply forgot because he was in such a hurry to get to his inaugural address – in 1933, it’s his first inauguration, he is facing the Great Depression, and he is anxious to get to his speech where he — you may recall the famous words — “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” — a plea for unity in the face of the Great Depression.
It’s unfortunate, but Dr. Kennon is factually wrong when he says that FDR “forgot” to add “So help me God” to his oath of office. The 1933 newsreel recordings of the event reveal that FDR did in fact add “So help me God” to the oath. More important is the fact that there is no known contemporary report or subsequent firsthand account that George Washington added a religious codicil to the presidential oath. The Newdow legal complaint calls this so-called “precedent” a myth. The complaint also identifies the swearing-in ceremony for Chester A. Arthur that occurred after the death of President Garfield in 1881 as the first time we reliably know of a presidential candidate using an extra-constitutional phrase at the end of the oath. If, however, one examines only the Inaugural Ceremonies conducted for elected presidents, then a rigorous search through newspaper archives shows that we have to wait until the 20th century before a president is known to have padded the oath. It is therefore woefully incorrect to claim that “So help me God” “is something that was added by Washington and has been said by almost every president since then.” It turns out that FDR may have been the president who actually initiated the questionable practice whereby the Chief Justice asks the President to repeat the phrase “So help me God.”
The truth of the matter is that neither Dr. Kennon nor the Presidential Inaugual Committee responsible for the last inauguration had done their homework. This is something no one has said of Plaintiff Michael Newdow.