So help me God

After hearing the swearing in of our latest judicial powerbroker, I keep hearing this phrase, “So help me God” and I wonder.

In the United States, the No Religious Test Clause requires that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

Regardless of that, there are federal oaths which do include the phrase “So help me God,” such as for justices and judges in 28 U.S.C. 453.

The phrase “So help me God” is prescribed in oaths as early as the Judiciary Act of 1789, for U.S. officers other than the President. The act makes the semantic distinction between an affirmation and an oath.

The oath, religious in essence, includes the phrase “so help me God” and “[I] swear”. The affirmation uses “[I] affirm”. Both serve the same purpose and are described as one (i.e. “[...] solemnly swear, or affirm, that [...]”)  

Presidential oath

There is no law that requires Presidents to use a Bible or to add the words “So help me God” at the end of the oath. Historian John R. Alden maintains that Washington himself added the phrase to the end after administration of his first oath.

However, all Presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt have used this phrase, according to Marvin Pinkert, executive director of the National Archives Experience.

Oath of citizenship

The United States Oath of Citizenship (officially referred to as the “Oath of Allegiance,” 8 C.F.R. Part 337, taken by all immigrants who wish to become United States citizens, includes the phrase “so help me God”; however 8 C.F.R. 337.1 provides that the phrase is optional.

Not to be confused with the citizen’s pledge of allegiance to the flag.

Military

The Enlistment oath and officer’s Oath of Office both contain this phrase.

Normally, it is not required to be said if the speaker has a personal or moral objection, as is true of all oaths administered by the United States government. However, a change in October 2013 to Air Force Instruction 36-2606 made it mandatory to include the phrase during Air Force enlistments/reenlistments. This change has made the instruction “consistent with the language mandated in 10 USC 502”. The Air Force announced on September 17, 2014, that it revoked this previous policy change, allowing anyone to omit “so help me God” from the oath.

State laws

Some of the states have specified that the words “so help me God” were used in oath of office, and also required of jurors, witnesses in court, notaries public, and state employees. Where this is still the case, there is the possibility of a court challenge over eligibility, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, that such state-law requirements violate citizens’ rights under the federal Constitution. Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia still require “so help me God” as part of the oath to public office. Maryland and South Carolina did include it, but both have been successfully challenged in court. Other states, including New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Rhode Island, allow exceptions or optional phrases. In Wisconsin, the specific language of the oath has been repealed.

Why not “so help me Jesus” or “so help me Allah” or “so help me Braham” or “so help me Yahweh” or “so help me Waheguru” or whatever your God is named whether it be a astral magnanimous creator of all or a cosmic muffin.  

The separation of church and state is a philosophic and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the nation state. Conceptually, the term refers to the creation of a secular state (with or without legally explicit church-state separation) and to disestablishment, the changing of an existing, formal relationship between the church and the state.

In a society, the degree of political separation between the church and the civil state is determined by the legal structures and prevalent legal views that define the proper relationship between organized religion and the state. The arm’s length principle proposes a relationship wherein the two political entities interact as organizations independent of the authority of the other.

The philosophy of the separation of the church from the civil state parallels the philosophies of secularism, disestablishmentarianism, religious liberty, and religious pluralism, by way of which the European states assumed some of the social roles of the church, the welfare state, a social shift that produced a culturally secular population and public sphere. In practice, church-state separation varies from total separation, mandated by the country's political constitution, as in India and Singapore, to a state religion, as in the Maldives.

The First Amendment, which ratified in 1791 state “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” However, the phrase “separation of church and state” itself does not appear in the United States Constitution.

The phrase the United States Supreme Court quoted Jefferson first in 1878, and then in a series of cases starting in 1947. The Supreme Court did not consider the question of how this applied to the states until 1947; when they did, in Everson v. Board of Education, the court incorporated the establishment clause, determining that it applied to the states and that a law enabling reimbursement for busing to all schools (including parochial schools) was constitutional.

Prior to its incorporation, unsuccessful attempts were made to amend the constitution to explicitly apply the establishment clause to states in the 1870s and 1890s.

The concept was implicit in the flight of Roger Williams from religious oppression in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to found the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations on the principle of state neutrality in matters of faith.

Williams was motivated by historical abuse of governmental power, and believed that government must remove itself from anything that touched upon human beings' relationship with God, advocating a “hedge or wall of Separation between the Garden of the Church and the Wilderness of the world” in order to keep the church pure.

Through his work Rhode Island's charter was confirmed by King Charles II of England, which explicitly stated that no one was to be “molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any differences in opinion, in matters of religion.”

Williams is credited with helping to shape the church and state debate in England, and influencing such men as John Milton and particularly John Locke, whose work was studied closely by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other designers of the U.S. Constitution. Williams theologically derived his views mainly from Scripture and his motive is seen as religious, but Jefferson’s advocating of religious liberty is seen as political and social.

A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges varies widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and, typically, in an open court. The judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers of the case, assesses the credibility and arguments of the parties, and then issues a ruling on the matter at hand based on his or her interpretation of the law and his or her own personal judgment. In some jurisdictions, the judge’s powers may be shared with a jury. In inquisitorial systems of criminal investigation, a judge might also be an examining magistrate.

So here is this white guy in a suit and tie, with his wife and his two little girls (he is Catholic, what is with that?) and he places his hand on the Bible (instead of the Constitution) and takes an oath to be fair and impartial (after the diatribes during his job interview) ending with “so help me God”.

Why not end with “Yes, I will” or “You bet” or “I do” (like a wedding vow, but we know those don’t go so well) or just sign on the dotted line like a loan from the people to represent them all fairly and judiciously and if failed during the tenure will be drawn and quartered. Who would judge a judge? I guess God.

If you need the help of God, then maybe we are in trouble? We ‘trust’ in God and we hope God will ‘bless American’ yet somehow I think he or she or they or it are not paying attention. Since I’ve been alive there has been war and petulance and horrid behavior and not a single miracle.

Tomorrow, if the sun rises and the creek don’t rise, I’ll follow my usual routine knowing that I can be informed by truth or lies and have not power to change it accept to vote in November.

I won’t take a loyalty oath or a pledge or an allegiance swearing but will follow the rules to show my ID and state my name and address to confirm I’m the same guy who was here for the last voting.

After that I’ll follow the news and watch the chips fall where they may.

May God have mercy on us all?

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