On Jan 20, Donald Trump will take the presidential oath of office: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” And then he will probably add the phrase “so help me God.”
Those four little words are not in the Constitution, but for many Americans, the phrase has been a part of the oath ever since George Washington was said to have added it 236 years ago.
But did Washington really say “so help me God?” There is no evidence that he did. In fact, no one said he did until 1854, 65 years later, when Rufus Griswold, an editor and literary critic, told the story in a book titled “The Republican Court”: “[Washington] added, with fervor, his eyes closed, that his whole soul might be absorbed in the supplication, ‘So help me God!’”
As a professor of U.S. history, I don’t care if Washington said it or not; my interest is in how quickly “so help me God” became established in the American national memory.
For a 2014 article titled “In Griswold We Trust,” I used various online databases such as Google Books, Internet Archive, American Periodicals Series and Newspapers.com to search for the phrase. Before 1854, there are no accounts of Washington saying “so help me God” at the end of the oath – at least in the millions of print records covered by the databases. Then Griswold told the story, and by the end of the 1850s, almost a dozen books and magazine articles had repeated it. Griswold’s story was so thoroughly accepted that, through the 20th century, no one, including academic scholars, thought to question it.
The best way to understand Griswold’s mythic insertion of “so help me God” into the presidential oath is through the lens of Christian nationalism. While the phrase is relatively new, Christian nationalism itself has been around for a long time.
Second Great Awakening
Scholars Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry have defined Christian nationalism as “a cultural framework … that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life.”
Christian nationalism was big in the early 19th century. Legal scholar Steven K. Green noted in his 2015 book, “Inventing a Christian America,” that the Second Great Awakening, a Protestant evangelical revival movement that peaked in the 1830s, “brought about … a desire to see religious values reflected in the nation’s culture and institutions.”
Rev. Ezra Stiles Ely, a Presbyterian minister in Philadelphia, took things a step further when he told his congregation in 1828 that only leaders “known to be avowedly Christians” should be elected.
In the words of religious studies scholar Richard Hughes, many participants in the Second Great Awakening “sought to transform the nation into a Christian Republic.” In its aftermath, Griswold’s account of Washington prayerfully adding “so help me God” to the presidential oath became part of America’s Christian creation myth.
Another age, another “so help me God” story
Like many cultural ideas, Christian nationalism has waxed and waned through American history. It was popular again in the years just after World War II, a time of increased tensions between the United States and the “godless communists” of the Soviet Union.
Religion was an important weapon in the Cold War. As Sen. Joseph McCarthy said, “The fate of the world rests with the clash between the atheism of Moscow and the Christian spirit throughout other parts of the world.”
In this Cold War context, the U.S. added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, made “In God We Trust” the country’s national motto and created a new version of the Griswold story: that every president, not just Washington, had ended their oath of office with “so help me God.”
Actually, there is no compelling evidence that any president added “so help me God” before September 1881, when Chester A. Arthur was sworn in after the death of James Garfield.
But it was important in Cold War America to prove that it was a Christian nation, so a new story was added to the American creation myth: Through the nation’s history, all presidents invoked God as part of their oath.
A search of the databases shows that this story began in 1948. One of the earliest examples was from Frank Waldrop, editor of the Washington Times-Herald, responding to the Supreme Court’s decision in McCollum v. Board of Education that it was unconstitutional for public schools to promote religion. “Every President from Washington down to Harry Truman has always taken that oath with his hand on the Bible,” Waldrop wrote, “and every President … has added the undeniably religious phrase, ‘So help me, God.’”
Waldrop used the assertion that presidents have all said “so help me God” as an argument for inserting religion into public schools. This is an important point about Christian nationalism: As scholar Eric McDaniel and others have shown, it is not just a view of the past; it is a call for action, specifically to reclaim America as a “holy land.”
Christian nationalism relies on a flawed understanding of the American past, but it has become an increasingly important part of our history.
David B Parker is Professor of History, Kennesaw State University.
The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. The Conversation is wholly responsible for the content.
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19 Comments
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Peter Neil
from thomas jefferson letter to john adams dated april 11, 1823:
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. ... But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding....
the constitution, federalist papers, articles of confederation - none refer to a god, gods, an almighty, or holy chickens.
the founding fathers were not theists. the rights of the people were derived from the people, not some ghost in the sky.
collegepark30349
I recommend reading One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. It give some pretty good insight as to how the Christian Right came into being and whre the idea of "one nation under God" came from. Hint, it wasn't originally on the Pledge of Alliegence nor on the money. Brief synopsis:
The assumption that America was, is, and always will be a Christian nation dates back no further than the 1930s, when a coalition of businessmen and religious leaders united in opposition to FDR’s New Deal. With the full support of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, these activists―the forerunners of the Religious Right―propelled religion into the public sphere.
Bob Fosse
“Christian nationalism relies on a flawed understanding of the American past” and a takes advantage of those who need someone to follow.
plasticmonkey
Phrases like "so help me God" or "in God we trust" or "God bless the USA" help in smoothing over Trump's obviously un-Christian, amoral character. Evangelicals can then feel better about supporting Trump.
bass4funk
I guess the same goes for Clinton, Obama and Biden as well…
We feel good that this administration lost badly. Woke and DEI are DEAD, thank the lord…
TaiwanIsNotChina
It wasn't until the Cold War that we had the combination of the uneducated with religious zealotry.
TaiwanIsNotChina
I believe you should check the films this year and the companies NOT making changes based on Trump.
browny1
It's a fascinating field of study.
I recommend the book by Kristin Kobes Du Mez :
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
Lord Dartmouth
Yes, because everyone knows Christianity is the biggest threat facing America.....thought no one, ever.
bass4funk
I’m looking more at the majorities that are and eventually, the rest will follow.
Bob Fosse
The majorities? Should be easy to give lots of examples then.
bass4funk
Really now?
Bob Fosse
No? Not even one?
Garthgoyle
Bass
You're actually correct about that statement. It goes for all presidents, politicians and people holding power.
bass4funk
Facebook/Meta
FBI
WaPo
Target
Disney
The list continues to grow…
wallace
What happened to the separation of State and Church?
bass4funk
With Wray now officially gone and Disney and WaPo canceling wokeness, I sure hope so.
I think so.
ShibuyaJay2
If you believe that the founding fathers did not hold religious beliefs or worship of a higher power (God) as paramount in their personal lives as well as the formation and continuing success of the great experiment known as the "United States of America," then you are taking too many drugs or are delusional. Notice that I did not say, "Christian," although nearly all of the founding fathers were Christian. Whether or not someone said or who was first to say, "so help me God," is immaterial. Obviously, the founding fathers did vehemently believe in the separation of "church and state" and "freedom of religion" because they did not want one religious group to have too much power in societal or government affairs (see how the Catholic Church dominated politics all across Europe from the Middle Ages through the 1800s) and they believed a person should have the right to worship (or not worship anything) in the manner of their choosing. However, almost universally, the founding fathers believed that morals, ethics, and personal conduct standards derived from religious tenants and moral values (see Greek philosophers) were indispensable to the formation of a decent American society and just governance of her people.
George Washington: 1. "Oh, eternal and everlasting God, direct my thoughts, words and work. Wash away my sins in the immaculate blood of the Lamb and purge my heart by Thy Holy Spirit. Daily, frame me more and more in the likeness of Thy son, Jesus Christ, that living in Thy fear, and dying in Thy favor, I may in thy appointed time obtain the resurrection of the justified unto eternal life. Bless, O Lord, the whole race of mankind and let the world be filled with the knowledge of Thee and Thy son, Jesus Christ." 2. "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can exist apart from religious principle." 3. "Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society." 4. ""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."
Benjamin Franklin: "I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth -- that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that "except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel."
Samuel Adams: "And as it is our duty to extend our wishes to the happiness of the great family of man, I conceive that we cannot better express ourselves than by humbly supplicating the Supreme Ruler of the world that the rod of tyrants may be broken to pieces, and the oppressed made free again; that wars may cease in all the earth, and that the confusions that are and have been among nations may be overruled by promoting and speedily bringing on that holy and happy period when the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ may be everywhere established, and all people everywhere willingly bow to the scepter of Him who is Prince of Peace."
John Adams: 1. "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." 2. "The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God." 3. "We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!" 4. "Suppose a nation in some distant Region should take the Bible for their only law Book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God ... What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be." 5. "The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young Gentlemen could Unite, and these Principles only could be intended by them in their address, or by me in my answer. And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in which all these Sects were United: And the general Principles of English and American Liberty."
Thomas Jefferson: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."
John Quincy Adams: 1. "The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity." 2. "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people... it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." 3. "The hope of a Christian is inseparable from his faith. Whoever believes in the divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures must hope that the religion of Jesus shall prevail throughout the earth. Never since the foundation of the world have the prospects of mankind been more encouraging to that hope than they appear to be at the present time. And may the associated distribution of the Bible proceed and prosper till the Lord shall have made 'bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God' (Isaiah 52:10)."
Patrick Henry: "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here."
Benjamin Rush: "The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible."
John Hancock: "Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual… Continue steadfast and, with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us."
Alexander Hamilton: "For my part, I sincerely esteem the Constitution, a system which without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests."
Noah Webster: "The Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis, or rather the source of all genuine freedom in government and I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of that religion have not a controlling influence."
Jedidiah Morse: "To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys.... Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all blessings which flow from them, must fall with them."
THERE ARE SEVERAL MORE EXAMPLES, but I believe the reader understands my points.
ShibuyaJay2
, SO HELP ME GOD!"