President Obama swore in on a Bible, in 2009, as the First Lady Michelle Obama held the Bible
January, 2012
Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times
Jan. 20th — Presidential Inauguration Day, for President Barack Obama — is a Sunday, so all the pomp and ceremony will be pushed by a day.
Interestingly, Jan. 21 is Martin Luther King Jr. Day also. It will be the second time that this federal holiday has coincided with a presidential inauguration. The first was President Bill Clinton’s second inauguration on Monday, Jan. 20, 1997.
This is all good omen, for the first black President of USA to be inaugurating his second term on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, who dreamed a lot in his I have a Dream speech, for the Afro-Americans and other citizens.
Last time President Obama took oath, he did that by putting his hand on a Bible. An avid reader that the President is, we can assume that he knows more about the Bible today than he did four years ago.
A Gallup poll in 2011 showed that whereas 46% of Americans with only high school education or less believed the Bible to be the literal word of God, this proportion decreased dramatically in college graduates to 15%. Irrational exuberance about the Bible is directly proportional to lack of education according to this poll.
But, even this statistic does not give a complete story about the limitations of the Bible. More you research, more problems you find.
In a book published in 2012, Forged: Writing in the Name of God–Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are, Prof. Bart Ehrman has further consolidated his research about the New Testament and exposed one of the most unsettling ironies of the early Christian tradition: the use of deception to establish the truth. With the scholarly expertise and provocative claims for which he’s known, Ehrman revealed which texts were forged in the name of Jesus’s disciples and showed how the deceptions of an unnamed few have prevailed for centuries.
The untold story of widespread forgery in the ancient world has shed new light on how documents of scandalous origin became part of the Bible we have today.
Virtually half the New Testament was written by impostors taking on the names of apostles like Paul. At least according to Bart D. Ehrman, a renowned biblical scholar, who makes the charges in his book “Forged.”
“There were a lot of people in the ancient world who thought that lying could serve a greater good,” says Ehrman, an expert on ancient biblical manuscripts.In “Forged,” Ehrman claims that:
At least 11 of the 27 New Testament books are forgeries, CNN reported.
So it does not bode well for the President to use the Bible for his swearing in ceremony. If half of the book is forgery, how would it reflect on the President’s integrity and his promise to uphold the constitution?
The Constitution does not require that the president take the oath of office by swearing on a Bible.
Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, a political comedian and frequent commentator on various TV networks, wrote in an Op-Ed today in CNN:
Placing a hand on a Bible while reciting the presidential oath is simply a tradition started by George Washington. Indeed, two presidents, Teddy Roosevelt and John Quincy Adams, did not use a Bible at their swearing-in ceremonies.
Although Roosevelt’s reasons are unclear, John Quincy Adams’ reasons could not be more plain. Adams, the son of President John Adams, was a religious man. But he chose to be sworn in with his hand on a book of U.S. laws. He wanted to demonstrate that he recognized a barrier between church and state and that his loyalty was to our nation’s laws above all else.
U.S. presidents should not be sworn into office with their hand on a Bible, they should use the USA constitution instead. A 2012 Pew Research Center poll showed that the number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.
If the President wants to hedge his bets, he could use both the constitution and the Bible. This would open the possibility, for the future Presidents to add other scriptures to this pile, to illustrate the Separation of Church and State that is enshrined in our constitution.
The White House still has three days to get the matter straight and should arrange for a gilded copy of the constitution and advise President Obama to follow in the foot steps of John Quincy Adams, lest using a book, with half of it a forgery, casts a negative omen on his second term.
Here are some additional demographics about the Bible to convince the President that he cannot go wrong with the Muslim Times’ suggestions:
According to the Gallup poll, views about the Bible vary by party identification and ideology. The poll finds 42% of Republicans, compared with 23% of independents and 27% of Democrats, saying the Bible is literally true.
In the end, the Muslim Times wishes the President well and congratulates him on his upcoming inauguration and wishes him great success in his second term.
Categories: Americas, Separation of Church and State, Uncategorized, United States