Sovereign God 021
Oaths 7 – A Change in Faith
Oaths 7 – A Change in Faith
The decision to switch from a Trinitarian oath to an oath to the Constitution must have been based on a fundamental change in beliefs. The colonies had recognized that a Christian oath is essential to a Christian republic. Unless the authors of the Constitution didn’t really understand the importance of the oaths, why would they have inserted them into their founding documents? If they were committed to a Christian form of government before the debates at the Constitutional Convention, then something must have changed at some point. How did it happen? What fundamental change had occurred in their thinking, their faith, their philosophy? Continue reading “Oaths 7 – A Change in Faith”
Oaths 6 – Debating the Test Oath at the Constitutional Convention
Oaths 6 – Debating the Test Oath at the Constitutional Convention
So, you might ask, “Didn’t the Constitutional Convention have a point in stating that a religious test oath wouldn’t work?” Here’s a portion of the debate on the matter.
One of the arguments at the Convention was that religious test oaths are ineffectual.
“In one of his famous letters of ‘a Landholder,’ published in December, 1787, Oliver Ellsworth, a member of the Federal Constitutional Convention and later Chief Justice of this Court, included among his strong arguments against religious test oaths the following statement:
” ‘In short, test laws are utterly ineffectual; they are no security at all, because men of loose principles will, by an external compliance, evade them. If they exclude any persons, it will be honest men, men of principle, who will rather suffer an injury than act contrary to the dictates of their consciences. . . .’ ”
But was this a logical & consistent position to take in regard to an oath? What about an oath to the Constitution? Couldn’t we, no, don’t we have people today who fraudulently take an oath to uphold the US Constitution? And don’t we want to exclude “honest men” who don’t hold to faith in the bible & Christ?
Continue reading “Oaths 6 – Debating the Test Oath at the Constitutional Convention”
Oaths 5 – Torcaso v. Watkins
Oaths 5 – Torcaso v. Watkins
Evidence of the pervasive effect of allowing the federal government to forbid religious test oaths in the States of the Union as completely as is the case for federal government offices was the 1961 U.S. Supreme Court case, Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961), is touted as the opinion that settled whether the Article VI religious test clause ban applies to the States after the Fourteenth Amendment. I’ve copied the Wikipedia article on the matter because it sums up the opinion and the lack of resolution of the issue by that opinion. The opinion actually never addressed Article VI because it applied the First Amendment to decide the case. Continue reading “Oaths 5 – Torcaso v. Watkins”
Oaths 4
Oaths 4
In Alabama, a judge entering upon the duties of the office must swear the following oath:
“I, _______, solemnly swear (or affirm as the case may be) that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of Alabama, so long as I continue a citizen thereof; and that I will faithfully and honestly discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter, to the best of my ability. So help me God.”