The Liberty Institute’s Hiram Sasser also supported the move – but for a different reason.That aside, a few points to consider in all this, beside the utter stupidity of Sasser's comment.
“I am glad the Air Force allows airmen to omit parts of oaths with which they disagree because one day the Air Force will ask airmen to take an oath regarding controversial subjects like marriage and Bible-believing airmen will likewise refrain from such oaths,” said Sasser, director of litigation for Liberty Institute.
- The Air Force used to allow airmen to omit the phrase "so help me God" if they so chose. BUT an Oct. 30, 2013, update to Air Force Instruction 36-2606, which spells out the active-duty oath of enlistment, dropped that option. Since that quiet update to the AFI, airmen have been required to swear an oath to a deity when they enlist or re-enlist.
- The issue of the Oath has been left unsettled since that time. According to Chris Rodda,
Yes, that was the Air Force's answer. They're actually having a hard time coming to a definite, consistent decision about this. Why? Because the oath created by an act of Congress contains the words "So help me God." Apparently, the fact that the Constitution, with its "no religious test" clause, trumps any act of Congress doesn't seem to be enough for them to be "prepared at this moment to definitively answer." How could this be?
Well, this is where some revisionist history comes in. There are actually people arguing that the founders saw no conflict between the Constitution and forcing someone to take a religious oath.
Judicial Watch, the right-wing watchdog group that has taken up the cause of forcing everyone in the Air Force to swear an oath to God -- regardless of their clear constitutional right not to -- claims that the proponents of forced religious oaths in the military have history on their side, saying:
While this oath has undergone modifications over the centuries, the phrase 'So help me God' dates all the way back to 1776. So there can be no question regarding whether or not our Founding Fathers believed there was any conflict among the reference to 'God' and our founding principles and the Constitution.No question? Really? Then how come the military oath written by the very first Congress in 1789 left off the "So help me God" line? That's right, the very first Congress, which included a good number of the founders who actually framed the Constitution, did not make "So help me God" part of the military oath! These words were not part of any military oath until 1862, when the oath for officers needed to be changed because of the Civil War. And it wasn't until a full century after that that the words were added to the enlisted oath.
- There is no denying the influence of James Dobson's Focus on the Family as well as Ted Haggard's former New Life Church.
"You have very strong encouragement -- basically carte blanche access to cadets by the leadership of the academy by these groups," Mullin said. "It is corruption, and there is substantial religious discrimination as part of this corruption," he said.
,,,
A 2010 survey found 41 percent of non-Christian cadets faced unwanted proselytizing, even as the religious majority felt that their freedom of speech was being infringed upon.
This is bad for cadets and bad for the country, says Mikey Weinstein, a 1977 academy graduate and founder of MRFF.
- And it is an issue that has a "long" history with an apparent in your face attitude no matter who they might hurt.
Air Force says ‘so help me God’ is optional for enlistment oath | Fox News
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