Back on Dec. 10, 2013,
Tucker Lieberman posted an article, The
long and misguided history of swearing in on Bibles, which was originally published as part of the now defunct Helium
Network. I posted a segment to American Creation after it came to my
attention. Now
the author has expanded and revivified this same article at his blog that’s called, Dead Man
Blogging, which is “Dedicated to the writings of (mostly) dead, mostly
Western philosophers.”
Here’s
a taste:
'Book-oath'
The term 'book-oath' goes
back at least as far as Shakespeare's Henry IV. Part
II contains the words: "I put
thee now to thy/book-oath: deny it, if thou canst." In pre-Revolutionary
America, swearing on the Bible served as a religious test "designed to
marginalize infidel deists like Thomas Paine, and religious dissidents
especially like members of the Dutch Reformed Church," according to information received from RaySoller.
Placing one's hand on the Bible
Despite this, many U.S.
presidents have recited the oath with their hands on a Bible. George Washington
did so at his first inauguration. ( . . . ) The next well substantiated claim
to this is for the seventh U.S. president, Andrew Jackson, at his inauguration in 1829, followed by the eleventh U.S.
president, James Polk, who also kissed the Bible when he swore on it at his
1845 inauguration, an event that was publicized by telegraph. Social critic and
comic Dean Obeidallah singled out "two presidents, Teddy Roosevelt and
John Quincy Adams, [who] did not use a Bible at their swearing-in ceremonies, but many others certainly did.
Read full article here.
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