Did George Washington Say, So Help Me God?
Jonathan Rowe on Nov 24th 2006
This is one of those things about Washington I thought clearly established by the historical record — that he said “so help me God” before being inaugurated. The “Christian Nation” crowd points out that Washington went so far as to kiss the Bible before uttering these words, apparently not realizing that this is a Freemasonic, not a Christian ritual. Indeed, according to the story, the Bible Washington used was borrowed from a Masonic lodge.
But it may not turn out to be true after all. See this post on Boston 1775, a great historical blog which documents American Revolution era Massachusetts.
Ongoing research has found the earliest statements that Washington added “So help me God” after taking his presidential oath of office date from the late 1850s, almost seventy years after the event. Oddly enough, that’s also decades before Chester A. Arthur was first noted as doing so by a contemporary. (It might be noteworthy that he did not have a formal inauguration, but succeeded to office after James A. Garfield’s death.) The Washingon Area Secular Humanists offer a little more info.
Also see this post which reproduces an email from Dr. Juretta Jordan Heckscher, an official with the Library of Congress:
This is in reply to Barbara Clark Smith’s very interesting inquiry about Smithsonian NMAH [National Museum of American History] curators’ attempts to find out when and by whom the phrase “so help me, God” was added the presidential oath of office prescribed by the Constitution.
Reference specialists on the Library of Congress’s Digital Reference Team have done some research on this topic. In particular, my colleague Kenneth Drexler reports the following information:
“The question was whether or not there is primary-source evidence that Washington said ’so help me, God’ in 1789. The short answer is that I could find no evidence that he did.
[Also,] according to a Washington Post article from [January 20,] 2001,’Whether Washington actually added “So help me God” to the oath is not supported by any eyewitness accounts, according to Philander D. Chase, editor of the Papers of George Washington project at the University of Virginia. “He may have said those words,” Chase said.’
During my research I did obtain a copy of a letter by Tobias Lear to George Augustine Washington dated May 3, 1789 in which he described the inauguration.
I got the letter from Duke University. The letter makes no mention of ’so help me, God.’”
It’s likely that the “so help me God” tradition didn’t originate until Chester A. Arthur.
Update: Michael Newdow is on this and has a funny video about it. Brian Tubbs correctly notes that “Washington was most certainly a devout monotheist, who believed that the United States of America should indeed be under God.” And it was for that reason, I had no problem believing Washington said “so help me God.” However, an important point that Newdow’s video raises is that Washington was very “rule oriented,” and it’s not likely that he would have just casually added words to an oath specified in the US Constitution, but rather would just recite the oath as written in the US Constitution, which, let us remember, does not have the words “so help me God.”
Filed in The Belfry, The Bureau
Yet, it is my understanding that George Washington, his entire adult life, always left religious services early on Sundays, at the precise moment when the minister began the celebration of the ’sacrifice.’
I’ve forgotten where I read that tidbit long ago; is this accurate?
Yes it is. Washington systematically avoided communion leading his own ministers to brand him not a real Christian, but likely some kind of “deist” or “unitarian.”
I have since 1977 always considered ” …
so help me God…” as blaspheme and refuse to take any oath with the words in it. I refused back in 1978 to sign an oath that contain it. Two weeks later the NCSU administration agreed and removed it.
I also consider it is blaspheme to swear on any Holy Book.
“So help me God” in my interpretation means that if I fail to live up to my oath then it is God’s fault for not helping me. Do not think so. Man is repsonsible for their own actions and not God. Man needs to stop blamming God for all of its problems.
Well, I just finished reading the journal of the Arkansas state constitutional convention journal in 1836. The proposed, constitutionally prescribed oath of office for all state officials ends “So help me God”(printed in all capital letters).
Therefore, Chester Arthur didn’t invent the idea of closing the oath with the phrase.
By the way, the proposed Arkansas constitution also bars anyone who denies the existence of God from public office.
Also, Washington was not only a Christian, he saw no conflict between the principles of religious liberty and public professions of faith, viz.,
Washington’s General Orders, Valley Forge, May 2, 1778
“The commander-in-chief directs that divine service be performed every Sunday at eleven o’clock in those brigades [in] which there are chaplains; those which have none [are] to attend the places of worship nearest to them. It is expected that officers of all ranks will by their attendance set an example to their men. While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian. The signal instances of providential goodness which we have experienced, and which have now almost crowned our labors with complete success, demand from us in a peculiar manner the warmest returns of gratitude and piety to the Supreme Author of all good”
Washington’s Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation, October 3, 1789
“Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor,… Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be….
Andrew,
I’ll forward your response to Ray Soller who knows more on the SHMG issue than I do.
However, on whether GW was a Christian, he may have, like J. Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison understood himself to be a “Christian” in some loose, broad, theologically liberal sense of the term, but the evidence is lacking that he was an orthodox Trinitarian Christian.
What you reproduced above illustrates that GW equated Christianity with mere morality or being a good person and indeed, every single time GW speaks of Christianity in the positive it is always in this sense that Christianity is useful for society because it makes men moral. The other 4 key Founders believed exactly this. They also believed the test of “sound religion” was that it made men moral and consequently most or all world religions were valid ways to God.
What they, including GW, personally believed, was the very opposite kind of “Christianity” than the “narrow path” Christianity that believes Jesus to be the only way to God.
Ongoing research into the area of presidential oaths has yielded the claim that Chester A. Arthur is the first president who can be reliably said that he added the words “So help me God” to his presidential oath. No one is saying that President Arthur is the first president to “invent the idea.” Use of “So help me God” inside of federal courtrooms was signed into law by President George Washington on September 24, 1789. Later on, at the beginning of the Civil War, Congress approved the Iron-clad Loyalty Test Oath that concluded with “So help me God.” From that time forward, all federal officeholders, except for the President, have routinely repeated the words “So help me God” as part of their federal oath.
Regardless of what the Arkansas or any other state constitution may say about what it considers to be a qualification of public office, the Supreme Court held in Cole v. Richardson, 405 U.S. 676 (1972) that federal and state governments cannot condition employment on taking oaths that infringe on the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. In the specific case of an atheist, Herb Silverman, who crossed out the word “God” in an application form for the position of a notary public in South Carolina, the S. C. State Supreme Court on May 30, 1997, ruled that his application could not be denied. (See http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/silverman.htm )