Last week, 535 members of the 116th U. S. Congress were sworn into office. But only two seemed to make the news. That’s because they chose not to honor the tradition of placing their left hands on the Bible when they took the oath of office. If you’re a committed Christian, you probably wish they hadn’t made that decision. If so, I’m with you. However, if you’re an American who values the principle of religious liberty, you ought to be applauding the news. Both reactions are appropriate. But there is more to it than that. Our nation’s most imposing problems have little to do with the book our public servants use to take an oath. What is more troubling is the mindset behind those decisions. It’s a mindset that defies history and the source of our God-given human rights. For that reason, it’s a mindset that threatens to tear our nation apart.
An Oath To The Constitution
The first of the two most notorious cases was that of Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Sinema took the oath using a book from the Library of Congress. The book contained copies of both the U.S. and Arizona Constitutions.
Sinema is the only member of the House or Senate to profess no religious affiliation. Some say she’s a secularist who used the oath as a symbolic gesture meant to reject the intersection of religion and public life. I can’t confirm whether that is true. But if it is, her choice is ironic.
By pledging an oath to the Constitution, she was actually grounding that oath in a biblical view of the world. Our Founders believed that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.” They constructed the Constitution to protect those rights.
In her attempt to demonstrate her secular bona fides, Ms. Sinema inadvertently paid homage to a legal system rooted in the character of God.
No Religious Test
On the other hand, House member Rashida Tlaib of Michigan deliberately denied the God of the Bible with her oath. Tlaib, who is a Muslim, wore a traditional Palestinian robe and placed her left hand on a copy of the Quran. I have no problem with that.
Our Constitution is very specific in its language regarding the oaths our representatives in Congress take:
The Senators and Representatives … shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
~ Constitution, Article VI
Ms. Tlaib has no obligation to place her hand on a Bible instead of the Quran. It’s called religious liberty. And if we claim to hold dear the First Amendment to the Constitution, we had better defend her right to exercise that liberty.
A Bigger Trend
So, taken in isolation, the issue of what book a member of Congress uses to take an oath is not troubling. In fact, the truth is that more than a dozen members of Congress did the exact same thing! That’s not the issue.
The real problem — and the reason I’m talking about it on a blog meant to focus on Christian apologetics — is the mindset that lies behind this trend. Thinking Christians need to be able to explain where that mindset leads.
It matters, not because it’s a Christian thing, but because it’s a human thing. It’s a philosophy that threatens to dismantle the very foundation of the open, tolerant society we all take for granted.
The Primacy Of The Quran
Representative Tlaib’s use of the Quran would be fine if she hadn’t exposed her real motivation for doing so. In a victory celebration with her supporters after the election, Ms. Tlaib let us know what it is. You only have to listen to the first fifteen seconds of her speech here (or to the whole thing if you really want to be appalled) to recognize it.
There we find that her political victory makes her “feel so Palestinian today, I gotta tell you!” No mention of liberty or the U.S. Constitution. No mention of what it means to serve, or be, an American. Not enamored with the freedom of religious practice America has offered her.
She felt Palestinian.
Ms. Tlaib finds her political identity in a place where Sharia Law would prohibit anyone from practicing any religion but hers. The kind of place where women are second-class citizens who are oppressed more than most any other kind of society on Earth.
The Myth Of Secular Utopia
As for Ms. Sinema, she is not the first to herald the utopian promises of a secular society where God is banished from the public realm. And she won’t be the last to overlook the real fruits of that ideology. Think Communist China, the Soviet Union, the Khmer Rouge, Fascist dictators, or the Kims of North Korea. These were all secularists who thought “Christianity was a disease, which turned out to be fatal to the Roman gods” (Mussolini). They’re the ones who detested religion as the “opiate of the masses” (Marx).
And they acted on that ideology.
Atheistic secularism breeds tyranny. It led to the deaths of more than 100 million human beings in the 20th century alone. You don’t even have to imagine what that might look like. Just check out a nighttime picture of the Korean peninsula. The southern half of that country is predominantly Christian. The northern half is living under that secularist ideology as we speak.
Some utopia.
Christianity’s Fruit – Western Civilization
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the freest, most open, tolerant societies in human history reside in what we call Western Civilization.
And what is the basis of Western Civilization? In short, Christianity.
It is Christians who:
- Brought women to equal status with men in the early church and in direct opposition to their oppression in the Roman Empire.
- Nursed and cared for suffering people during some of history’s most horrific plagues.
- Rescue women from the horrors of physical abuse, genital mutilation, and chattel status in Sharia-dominated Islamic cultures.
- Ended the slave trade and slavery itself in the western world.
- Were at the forefront of the civil rights movement in America.
- Rejected racism because they believe every human being is equally valuable in the eyes of God.
- Created the concept of individual human rights held by persons. And created a place where those rights are not dependent on any government.
In other words, Christian thinking formed the basis for a Constitution that guarantees our God-given human rights. Like a fish in water, we swim in that culture and don’t even realize it’s there anymore. We certainly seem to have forgotten where it came from.
True Religious Liberty
True religious liberty allows — and invites — every politician to take the oath of office using any book they desire. It’s an ideology that keeps us all safe and promotes a vibrant, tolerant society. The kind of society that wouldn’t exist anywhere on Earth if it wasn’t for the historical impact of the Christian worldview.
It’s easy to forget that fact. But our eternal vigilance requires that we not allow our politicians to undermine it, regardless of their intentions.
Jeremiah Johnston’s Unimaginable is a great tour of history. It shows what our world would be like without Christianity. I highly recommend it: