The presidential oath of office is specified in Article II, Section of the Constitution: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Article VI, Section 3 decrees that "[N]o religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
Yet we can be sure that whoever wins the upcoming election, on January 20, 2009, he will place his hand on a copy of the Bible (the press will make much of the history of that particular Bible; if the winner is Obama, rumors will circulate that a Koran was used instead) and will repeat the above oath, adding to the end of it, "so help me God," a phrase that the framers of the Constitution were careful not to include. The cheering of the crowds will drown out the sound of the Founding Fathers rolling over in their graves.
4 comments:
No, there will not be rumors a Koran was used. What will happen, see, is the photographers and cameramen and so on will ZOOM IN to the book to figure out if it's the Bible or the Koran...
I really really REALLY just want to make like a bear and hibernate until Bush goes away, but then I wouldn't get to vote.
And Fox News will Photoshop the picture!
The additional words may or may not be an affront to the Constitution, but I'm not sure swearing in on the Bible is, in and of itself, an affront. The Constitution simply states that a religious test may not be required; it doesn't prohibit a candidate from doing so voluntarily.
That said, the more interesting aspect of all of this is that it is, in fact, an affront to Christianity. Christians are explicitly prohibited from swearing oaths (by Jesus himself, I might add). Not that anyone ever seems to notice, or to point that out.
There's an old tradition of Christians picking and choosing what parts of the Bible they want to observe, and even try to force others to observe, and what parts they simply ignore.
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