On Thursday, President Obama’s inaugural committee disinvited Rev. Louie Giglio from delivering the invocation. Giglio’s sin was preaching a sermon that was not hateful, and that stuck to a biblical position that until last year was Obama’s own public position. He is being Chick-Fil-A’d. Does the pastor have the right to hold that position, or does he not? Should holding that position preclude him from participating in a public ceremony, or should it not? That’s the real issue here — do we have freedom of conscience or must we all conform?
Obama will take his oath of office on a stack of Bibles, one that belonged to Abraham Lincoln and another that belonged to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As symbols go it’s tough to improve on that — one freed the slaves, the other fought for a colorblind society.The latter was a reverend himself, for whatever that’s worth.
But if Obama is going to have his inaugural committee disinvite a preacher for sticking to a position articulated in the Bible, why then should he take his oath of office on any Bible?
If Obama is being consistent, then he should not. That’s what self-described socialist Lawrence O’Donnell is saying, in his slightly bent and overheated way, here. He’s right.
Now, as has happened in other debates, I now expect some conservatives to misunderstand or go with a libertarian-lite position that, of course, the Bible doesn’t belong in that ceremony despite the fact that it forms the basis for our society and text from it is engraved into the United States Supreme Court building. That would be a mistake. Giving the other side its inch will whet their appetite to take another mile.
We should be clear about what’s going on with all this. O’Donnell is very clear in his comments, that he believes the Bible should be rewritten to suit our whims or it should be done away with. Most leftists aren’t that honest, but it is objectively what they believe, or at the very least, it’s where their energy will lead. There is and has long been a movement on the left to marginalize Christianity and drive Christians from the public square. One of the many things that drove me into a life in public comment was to resist that movement. It’s also among the reasons that the Second Amendment is so necessary; the left and the Democrats have a history of enslaving and lynching people that they don’t like, and I don’t intend to be their victim. But I’m under no illusions; the marginalization of Christianity is succeeding, faster than I expected, and it is gathering pace. The fact that a pastor can be disinvited from a presidential inauguration for holding a biblical position that still gets majority votes from California to North Carolina, while the federal government is now forcing Christians to service abortion and abortifacient drugs against our will, says where we are as a nation. The left is objectively anti-Christian in its rhetoric and actions. Our current government is powered by that ideology.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–I’d rather be ruled by Christians than Progressives.
When the First DA/DT Justice delivers the Supreme Court opinion this Spring that rules same-sex marriage is a “civil right,” and guts the First and Tenth Amendments in the process, there will be a massive initiative to rule that it is “hate speech” to utter, or adhere to, traditional religious positions.
The anti-Christian left misses the point of swearing on a Bible entirely. It isn’t about trying to endorse religion in the way they think. It’s about the symbolism of making an oath to a power higher than another human being. We make all kinds of promises to each other all the time, and sadly, we often break them although we shouldn’t. The use of the Bible is to enforce the idea that this is one oath you SHOULD NOT break or undertake lightly. Even if you do not believe yourself, the symbolism should not be offensive to you. Do you want your public officials taking their oaths of office lightly? Do you want people preparing to give testimony in court taking that lightly enough that they might think nothing of lying?
Of course, I understand that for the unbeliever, the Bible means nothing and you believe that there is no especial weight because you invoked your oath on God, but shouldn’t the mere symbolism, the idea, be enough to give you the extra weight to hold to your oath?
For the believer, you do believe that you swore in God’s eyes, and that carries with it all the attendant problems if you break your word.
It’s not about religion so much as about making a super-weighty, solemn promise and driving that home.
“Individuality is fine as long as we all do it the same way.”
Maj Frank Burns, MASH 4077.
– his hand on a copy of the Constitution; he will never touch it again, after that.
Even if he’s not even a Christian he still needs to use these Bibles for a specific purpose, but not to give weight to the oath. What he’s doing is more of a symbolic ritual to psychologically anchor himself in our minds to Jesus, Lincoln, MLK, and his wife’s family. That combination is the full identity package he wants to project as who *he* is, since otherwise he’s still a formless and shapeless mystery man who desperately wants to fill a particular mold for political power and the history books.
Christians (black churches especially) are the key demographic he needed to manipulate and deceive to gain the initial power foothold and he still needs them for the 2nd term final push for total power. The hope he has of change is the that of escaping the conservative shackles of the U.S. Constitution. All that comes into play when he cynically takes this oath on these Bibles while suppressing his laughter.