First blog post of the year, and luckily for me it coincides with a momentous occasion for our nation: Obama's inauguration. Now, this blog post isn’t really a response to Quinn’s article, "Oath to God Shows Contempt For Non-Believers". (in retrospect it ends up being that) It’s just that her article got me thinking about how this small detail of reciting “so help me, God” is being blow way out of proportion."
Let’s back up though. I’m not saying that religious influences aren’t a big impact in today’s politics. Definitely, there is much to be concerned about when religion and other private beliefs breach upon a person’s life, but I don’t see so much harm in Obama asking the God he believes in for assistance. I haven’t always been a very politically active student, and therefore I probably may not be having my facts straight, but I don’t recall there being a controversy over this one line in the inauguration in the past.
I believe that the main fallacy of Quinn’s argument is that she believes that Obama’s reciting “so help me, God” is an oppressive act towards those who do not believe in God. On the contrary, Obama is not asking others to seek help in God by reciting those four words, but is instead exercising his 1st amendment right to be asking for this help from the God he has faith in. Maybe when an atheist is elected president will this precedent be abolished, but until then we should not expect that a president will not swear to his God when he needs help in the term he is about to reign over. (or she!) And Obama’s going to need as much help as he can get.
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3 comments:
Hey Victor,
You bring up a provocative idea about free speech. Although I have no qualms with the utterance of “so help me, God” in Obama’s oath (nor with the “In god we trust” in the Pledge of Allegiance), a few people are consistently offended by these words. (Ironically, many feel that the United States is becoming categorically secularized—to the many people that aren't vehemently religious or atheistic, why does it really matter?)
All the uproar over “in God we trust,” etc. is actually quite quiet—only a few committed atheists have pandered to the media to have their message heard by the generally noncommittal public (see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10103424/). I feel that Quinn’s article is mostly immaterial, and she’s reaching for a topic that loosely relates to inauguration week.
In the end, I don’t think many Americans care about the four words of Obama's oath tomorrow—the public is more concerned about his impending actions to improve our country.
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