Four words that are commonly heard whenever someone is either required to give an oath, or voluntarily gives one. “So help me God,” is part prayer, and part affirmation. How much more convincing could an oath be than one made in the name of God? It’s at least twice as powerful as “on my mother’s grave.” When someone adds “so help me God” to the end of their oath, it indicates how serious they take the pledge. So what’s wrong with that?

Well, it depends. In many cases there’s nothing wrong with it. Faith and religion are incredibly personal, and the Bill of Rights gives us all the right to worship, or not worship, as we choose. It’s one of our most important rights, and goes hand-in-hand with freedom speech, its First Amendment brother. Swearing an oath to your god is every American’s right, including Barack Obama.

The problem is that when Obama was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts, the phrase was added to the oath of office. If Obama had simply added the phrase on his own, it would be slightly less upsetting. However, Roberts recited the phrase for Obama to repeat, thereby making it a part of the oath itself. There was fervor over the placement of the word “faithfully” in the oath the first time around, yet I’ve heard virtually nothing about this.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

The constitutionality of Roberts and Obama using the phrase “so help me God” in the oath is somewhat open to interpretation. Technically the First Amendment only prohibits Congress from establishing religion, though it was clear that most of the founders, Jefferson in particular, were against any establishment of religion by any branch of the government.

The history of the oath shows that virtually all of our past presidents have invoked their god while affirming their oath, and given our country’s Christian majority, I sincerely doubt anything will come of this, or Michael Newdow’s lawsuit. However, with the current political climate, and many of our “enemies” being religious fundamentalists themselves, I would have hoped that Obama would see the error of our highest leader so openly endorsing Christianity as the one, true religion.

I don’t have near as much faith in Obama as many of my friends do, and this is one of the reasons. Our last president was a deeply, and openly, religious man who claimed that God talked to him, and look how that turned out. I just wish that we could finally get a president who recognized not only the cultural diversity of our country, but our religious diversity as well, and respect the non-Christians enough to not openly endorse Christianity as a form of public policy. Well, there’s always 2012.

Lisa Miller of Newsweek has some pretty good thoughts on the subject as well. I recommend anyone interested in this read her thoughts.