How is this even possible? From the Washington Post:
An airman stationed at Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nev., was denied reenlistment because he omitted the part of a required oath that states “so help me God,” according to a letter from the American Humanist Association. The letter was sent on Tuesday to the Air Force’s Office of the Inspector General on behalf of an unnamed airman.
How can a branch of the government require anyone to say “so help me God” as a condition of employment? How is that not a glaring violation of the Establishment Clause?
inquiries into the oath uncovered a change to Air Force rules last year that previously went unnoticed, as the Air Force Times noted. Until October 2013, Air Force Instruction 36-2606 (which governs the enlistment oath) included a short note: “Airmen may omit the words ‘so help me God,’ if desired for personal reasons.” That was removed in an amendment to the rule, effective Oct. 30, 2013, according to the Air Force Times.
Removed by whom, under what authority? Did Baby Jesus hack into the Air Force computer system, or what?
Speaking to the Huffington Post, U.S. Air Force Public Affairs Officer Chris Hoyler said that the change now makes “reciting ‘So help me God’ in the reenlistment and commissioning oaths…a statutory requirement.”
According to the Air Force’s statement to the independent Air Force Times, Congress would have to change the statute mandating that part of the oath in order for the Air Force to make it optional again.
Now that it has the attention of the AHA and the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, the policy change seems bound to become another source of disagreement over the role of religion in the U.S. military.
The Air Force, in particular, has faced intense scrutiny for what some believe is a preferred status for Christians in the service and at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Because that’s what we need in this country – religion enforced by the military. What could possibly go wrong?
And in the same month that the Air Force’s enlistment oath rules changed to make the “so help me God” portion mandatory, the Air Force Academy announced that it would allow its cadets to opt out of the very same phrase in the honor code.
Those changes, however, have angered some conservatives and evangelicals in and out of the Air Force, who believe that many accommodations designed to protect religious minorities in the service violate the Christian majority’s right to religious freedom.
Seriously? Those specific changes have angered those people for those reasons? Allowing people not to say “so help me God” is seen by those people as a violation of the Christian majority’s right to religious freedom? How? How is imposing a religious oath on unwilling people a form of religious freedom?
It’s Humpty Dumptyism run mad.
As they should be. Will it kill these wilting flowers to say “under God”? It’s three fucking syllables. Fucking atheist fundamentalists are too fucking sensitive these days. Everything’s an outrage, and everybody’s looking to be offended by something.
Look, atheists in the sixties and seventies fought for real change, due to real harm. But these days they take it too far. I don’t mind saying ‘under God’, or hearing ‘God bless’, and if you’re the kind of atheist who is, then you need to get a life and some perspective.
/bravelydefyingfundamentalistatheistdogma
Sorry, “so help me God” is four syllables. Clear evidence of Christian culture and the so-called ‘theocracy’.
Whatever. Fanaticism like this hurts the cause and makes us all look bad.
/bravelydefyingfundamentalistatheistdogma
I apologise for those derailey comments—I was of course riffing on the “pseudo-brave conservative ‘contrarian'” behaviour discussed in the previous thread.
@Anthony K
Even if I agreed with you that it was counterproductive to choose to pursue redress of this issue, how in the hell does the text you quoted have anything to do with your point? If it’s really no big deal and atheists should just get over it, then why does it bother the conservatives and evagelicals to remove it? If these types of matters are truly so trivial then why not go after the people who are against removing them? Even if you think it’s not that important, don’t you agree that the egalitarian and Constitutionally-compliant stance is to just remove them? Unless your posts are some sort of overly subtle snark I don’t know why you have so firmly placed yourself on the wrong side of the issue.
They were, jonmoles: I was snarking on how often atheists pull this line of reasoning when it comes to other issues, such as harassment of women. I was not serious, and I again apologise in addition to my comment #3.
Nonetheless, your counterarguments were on point and well written. I’m being sincere when I say You’re exactly right.
It’s the old Establishment Clause Two-Step:
1) In public, claim that it’s outrageous to remove these words from the oath, that these words are important and meaningful and it’s a sign of American decline that anyone would even want them removed;
2) In court, insist that the words are just “ceremonial deism”: stuff that’s just there for historical reasons and no big deal and gee, these whiny atheists make a big deal out of nothing. And then, when the “liberal” justices pretend to swallow this tripe and uphold the requirements (because they’re too afraid of a backlash), revert to Step 1 and brag in public about how this is a really big deal and you’ve saved America from godlessness.
Anthony, I got your snark, but I am familiar with your posts here. 😉
I would like to emphasize the point made by jonmoles, and it’s something I’ve been saying for years when the PoA or other overt religious government acts are challenged:
The people who most strongly argue for keeping these things are the biggest argument against them. They are the ones who claim that taking the words out of the pledge (you know, that ‘ceremonial deism’) would be such a tragic, world ending state of affairs. In the next breath, they claim it can just be ignored by those who don’t like it……
The commenter Sastra has often pointed out how ceremonial deism gets played like an ace in blackjack. When calls to remove overtly Christian religious symbolism are made, the symbols are often defended exactly as you describe: they’re generic, they’re secular, they don’t really count. A cross isn’t a Christian cross, it’s just a symbol traditionally used for memorials. The God in “In God We Trust” is just a placeholder for ‘higher authority’.
Of course those same symbols are then used to prove the US is a Christian nation. Says “In God We Trust” right on the money. What more proof does one need?
Astonishingly, the point is being missed here. Oaths, declarations, affirmations, are matters to be taken seriously, and they are binding statements. Religious people believe that they are accountable to a deity if they break one of these things: atheists have their own conscience, which is much more real and present, to contend with.
I think it does matter as these are not just words, they are commitments; and so atheists should be allowed to use a form which affects them; which causes them to accept responsibility on their terms, not the terms of someone they do not believe in, For an atheist like the writer, “so help me God” is as meaningful as “so help me Donald Duck”. I administer Oaths and Declarations in overwhelmingly Godless England; and I insist that people use the form of words most suited to their beliefs – otherwise it means nothing.
Well, the oath itself always means nothing. It’s partially the ritual, and partially whether or not one can be prosecuted for failing to uphold whatever contract the oath affirms that means something. There is no magical combination of words, whether spoken by an atheist or devout believer, that prevent the words spoken before or after from being lies. If I’m not going to commit perjury in a trial, it’s not because I said ‘so help me God’ first or something more specific to my atheism. Without the legal threat to uphold an oath, especially one to speak the truth, it becomes a problem of recursion. If you can’t trust me to honestly tell where I was the night the victim was slain, how can you trust me to honestly tell you I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth and then tell you where I was the night the victim was slain? Similarly, if I’m a liar who can’t be trusted to uphold a contract, then I’m a liar who can’t be trusted to promise you I’ll uphold a contract.
I once had to take an oath to qualify for government employment.
Of the six people taking the oath, I was the only one who ‘affirmed and averred’ rather than ‘so help me godded’.
I knew the others and if their Christian Behaviour was any indication, I was the only one who took the oath seriously.
Anthony K @10: these oaths don’t mean nothing. They’re more than just affirmations in a ceremonial setting, they have huge legal ramifications.
chrislawson @12, well yes, but that’s what Anthony was saying: the oath-taking itself is what matters.
Thanks, John @13.
Yes, chrislawson @12, the legal ramifications are there, but the actual form the oath takes is irrelevant, in the sense that I’m on the hook for violating an oath, whether I made it to God or not.
That said, I’m going to walk it back a bit, because I do think Laurence Mann is probably right that it’s important that someone not swear an oath with words that are meaningless to them, for reasons of varying importance to different people. I’d focussed a lot of my comment on oaths to uphold the truth in a court, but there are a lot of other oaths Laurence administers that are obviously more personal to people in varying degrees. I think I simply disagree with Laurence that it’s theists and their gods, or atheists and their consciences that dictate the severity of their oaths: it’s the legal ramifications. Theists and atheists who are not likely to lie anyway probably won’t under oath either, and those who are likely to lie probably won’t be deterred by the ceremony of having taken an oath more than the legal ramifications. But maybe I’m wrong in thinking this.
Anthony K above,
Legal and social.
(Reputations are much more easily lost than gained)
@John, 15,
Yes, I was neglecting the social ramifications, for some dumb reason. I would suspect they’d be one of the biggest factors in a person’s likelihood of keeping an oath under most circumstances.
Thanks for catching that.
And I am genuinely glad for Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Oaths and people in similar positions like Laurence Mann in #9 who feel it is important for people to affirm oaths using language that suits their conscience and secular legal requirements, as an occasional oath-swearer.
So thanks for that, Laurence.
This is an interesting discussion mainly because it is testing my own hypothesis about the nature of Oaths and other solemn affirmatory declarations. That hypothesis is that there is a scalar difference between the “OK, I’ll do it”, sort of promise, and the one which is stated to be binding. Now some people say that the difference simply arises from the legal implications, and I admit that for many that they may be right. However many other people do not understand those implications, and it is possible that the format of the Oath/Affirmation has arisen because of this.
I do believe that the importance of “telling the truth” does not just depend on legalities, but upon formalities too.
Going back to the rights or wrongs of compelling a form of Oath which is invidious to non-believers, the reason for my post was that someone said that the “so help me God” was just a few extra words, so what was the problem? My contention is that those few words deprive the non-believing deponent of his or her right to assert that he or she is committed to the truth of what he or she has said, by rendering what they say as nonsense.
It’s a nudge or reminder; an underliner; an emphasis-enhancer. There’s that phrase “solemnly swear” for instance. My guess is that Laurence Mann is right that it does have an effect, even if not one that would deter someone really bent on perjury for compelling reasons.
Another example is oaths like “on my mother’s/child’s life” – it doesn’t strictly mean anything but – it doesn’t feel comfortable to treat it as meaningless.
When courts decide whether a child is mature enough to testify, the test is usually not whether the child knows what prosecution for perjury is, or believes in certain metaphysical concepts, but just whether the child understands what it means to tell the truth and that it’s very important to tell the truth in this particular setting.
Question: Should I have to testify in court, how do I go about ‘affirming and averring?’ Do I have to inform anyone beforehand? Just wondering if anyone here has any experience with this?
(I’m American, btw.)
So, Anthony K, Your issue with atheists lying during oaths indicates to me that oaths are meaningless to you. Some people still have codes that revolve around their sense of right or wrong, not convenient or inconvenient.
I personally don’t take oaths that I don’t mean, and if I said “under god” in an oath you can pretty much rely on the fact that I don’t feel any compunction to stick to any other parts of the oath I’ve uttered. It’s rendered void.
I tried to say the form of a particular oath (eg whether or not an oath includes ‘So help me God’ or ‘by the infinity of the Cosmos as revealed by Neil deGrasse Tyson on Sunday nights on Fox’) is more or less meaningless to me. But, Ophelia’s example in #19 is a good example of that ‘more or less’: I wouldn’t swear on my mother’s life either. It feels weird, though part of that to me is that I don’t live in a culture where oaths like that are sworn. If someone pledged on their mother’s life to me, I’d wonder if they weren’t pulling some kind of con.
Of course, but I don’t see what that has to do with this conversation. Or are you suggesting that I don’t have such a code, because I don’t value the forms as much as others?
If I were in a court of law, and the only oath available to me in that court included ‘under God’, I wouldn’t sweat it. I’d say the oath as is, and hold myself to the intent of the oath, and disregard the form. I most certainly wouldn’t use the inclusion of a reference to God as a loophole. I do understand why others might take the form of the oath more seriously, and why there should be options for secular oaths, particularly in agreements with the state.
I suppose not, but it’s one possibility, It’s perplexing and frustrating to me when people make light of lies…and that’s what an atheist swearing to god/s is. It seems to me an oath is nothing more than an acknowledgement that humans lie for all sorts of reasons, but this thing is important so don’t do that. So, when one includes a lie in ones acknowledgement not to lie (or whatever promise pne is making) it’s problematic…even if the particular person doing it intends to tell the truth going forward.
neither would I. Admittedly, I am privileged in that I’ll almost certainly never be in a situation where deviating from the only oath available to me would get me imprisoned, tortured or killed. But then again, threat of imprisonment, torture or death would be a loophole for lying in my opinion. I’d tell that authority anything they wanted to hear in those circumstance.