It's not talked about much, probably because the modern world has little respect for oaths. They're merely ceremonial to most people. It's a ritual they perform because they have to, and it's a nice way to get your supporters to attend the start-up of your new position. But according to scripture, your attitude to an oath is irrelevant to whether God holds you to it. He does, whether you think it important or not; to treat it with nonchalantly is not an approach that will prepare you for the office into which you're about to embark. Therefore, the oath is extremely important.
I grew up in nothing but secular schooling - nine years public school in Montgomery, Alabama, three years private high school in Montgomery, and a state university where I received two degrees. I grew up in what I call the first wave of contemporary southern Christian schools, when they were often perceived, correctly or incorrectly, as mere escapes from desegregation for southern white children. The second wave seemed to begin in the late seventies and early eighties and was partly a response to the cultural and legal machinations of the Carter administration. Until Jimmy Carter, a governor of Georgia before being elected president, the culture war was fueled mostly by court rulings, like those dealing with prayer and bible reading and, of course, Roe v Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court case that decriminalized state laws against abortion. The case, though civil, was brought by a Texas woman challenging the Texas laws criminalizing abortion as unconstitutional. Jane Roe (her real name was Norma McCorvey) was later to become a Christian and oppose abortion.
But with Jimmy Carter as President of the United States, the culture war seemed to move from the courts to the federal government acting to affect the entire culture, including education. "In the 1970s, however, the challenge appeared to emanate from a national government that seemingly had loosened restraints in hundreds of ways. The actions of secular authority not only offended traditional moral values, but also seemed to threaten the ability of conservative Protestants to protect themselves and their families from corrupting influences." See Brian F. Le Beau's "The Political Mobilization of the New Christian Right," Part II, no date for website, accessed 4 Jan 2014, http://are.as.wvu.edu/lebeau2.htm.
"President Carter was the first President to advance the homosexual agenda, to defend Roe v Wade, and to initiate the creation of a new cabinet position, that of education. "In 1976, the National Education Association endorsed Jimmy Carter for president, partly because of Carter's promise to create a Department of Education.17 It was the first time the NEA had endorsed a presidential candidate in the more than a century of its existence, but the NEA had long supported the creation of a federal department. Indeed, NEA's website says that in 1867 it "won its first major legislative victory when it successfully lobbied Congress to establish a federal Department of Education."18 In 1979, after a lobbying push by the NEA, the American Federation of Teachers, and other groups, Congress narrowly passed legislation to split a new Department of Education off from the existing Department Health, Education, and Welfare.
"In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected president promising to abolish the new Department of Education, calling it Jimmy Carter's boondoggle."
Go to: Neal McCluskey's "Downsizing the Federal Government, May 2009, accessed 4 Jan 2014, http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/education/k-12-education-subsidies#sthash.nvvgv1sB.dpuf. At the end of his administration, there was discussion that private Christian schools, if not shut down, should be regulated by those in power, who would "have more expertise in training children." Even on the state level, parents were being jailed for violating state laws and home schooling their children. It seems that good education to liberal progressives is much more than reading and writing; it involves training in atheistic evolution, acceptance of alternative lifestyles, and, of course, the accompanying birth control required to permit consequence-free, promiscuous sex without population increase, which for liberals includes abortion. And, of course, "good" education for the progressive is automatically statist.
Therefore, the second wave of Christian school creation was more explicitly Christian or Biblical in its foundation, curriculum, and administration and even less likely to submit to government intrusion. The home school movement was also a large part of this wave. This was the group that overwhelmed the phone system of the U.S. Congress when a bill almost passed Congress that included a surreptitious attempt to regulate home schools by sneaking some regulating legislation into "a reappropriations bill for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act." Go to HSLDA website, updated 19 Mar 2007, http://www.hslda.org/about/history/battle_hr6.asp. The 1994 legislation "would have required all teachers in the U.S., potentially including home educators, to have teacher certification." Go to Wikipedia, "Home School Legal Defense Association," no date, accessed 4 Jan 2014. The HSLDA was founded by Michael Farris in 2000 as an advocacy organization for home schools and played a key role in alerting home schoolers to the threat and that they should alert their congressmen. It worked, and the legislation didn't pass.
Obviously, the culture war cannot be toned down and moderated when the Left seeks to change the religion and morals of the children of the average American citizen. Also, the war was started by the Left, not Christian conservatives, who simply sought to preserve what they understood as their core values and beliefs. This war will never end as long as the antagonist who began the war and despises the beliefs of average Americans insults those Americans by demanding that they cease creating controversy and simply reach across the aisle. The Left's version of compromise is very simple: "Accept our beliefs, drop your ancient superstitions, and make peace, or we'll take you to court, war upon you legally and by regulation, and malign you in public in every way we can conceive." Yes, the Left are such peaceniks, aren't they, when it comes to enemies of that part of the U.S. with which they disagree and the rest of the world hates also.
The key lever the Left uses is the U.S. Constitution, or, I should say their version of the U.S. Constitution. So, what is the Christian's attitude to the U.S. Constitution to be? It is the foundational law of the land. All public officials, state and federal, are required to swear allegiance to it. It wasn't always the case, but today even lawyers (sometimes their state's constitution only) and military recruits must swear to the oath.
The U.S. Constitution, Article VI, states: "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, 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."
The oath for the President of U.S. reads: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God." The other oaths for officials in civil government and the military also contain verbiage like the President's.
Christians are to take oaths seriously, both in the taking of them and in the refusal to take them. Your baptism is an oath to believe, love, and follow Christ as your King and Savior over all other allegiances because He is God Almighty. No other allegiance can compete with that allegiance. Your wedding vows were an oath. These oath-created relationships are not mere contracts; they are more. They are covenant relationships. The wicked don't keep covenant. In fact, it is considered in scripture as one of the most wicked and reprobate of sins a person can commit, a defining characteristic of those who are utterly given over by God to judgment.
"And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." Romans 1:28-32.
So, as a Christian politician, you had better know whether you can honestly take the oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution. And you'd better be able to keep it. So how do we as Christians look at the U.S. Constitution?
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