There is a very good reason why the framers of our government put the religious test prohibition in article VI of the Constitution and severed government and religion in the very first amendment. The Declaration of Independence lays it out.

The British King is the head of the church. When the Declaration says endowed by their creator with unalienable rights it is a rejection of religious intrusion into government, not an embracing of that concept.

Read the Declaration. It is all over the document.

Any religious invocation at an inauguration flies in the face of the very concepts in both of the two most important documents of our founding.

Our president does not rule by the grace of god, but by law as laid out in the Constitution.

I don't care what my president's beliefs are as long as he or she keeps them to themself and doesn't use the office of the presidency to display their beliefs.

Invocations at the inaugural do this very thing and furthermore hangs a veil of religious authority to the office.

I find both fucking repugnant!!

And as long as they are continuing it, I am going to have to support them getting the best people possible to use the opportunity to send a message.

But what's next? A coronation in the National Cathedral? No doubt many Republicans would approve of that.

It is going to take a cultural change to get rid of these shenanigans. Those don't happen over night. It took a generation to change things on LGBT rights, and we've still not got that one done. I imagine one generation may not be enough for this, though.

Gotta keep plugging away. Work, work, work.


on edit: one new congresswoman took her oath on the bhagavad gita, so maybe there's some hope.

Once it is no longer assumed that it will be a christian benediction or a bible on which people swear, there will be opportunities for non-christian believers and non-believers to more opening question these traditions.

Although I do not know how that could happen without causing a big brouhaha, especially if the justice ignores the request.

Diversity is our friend. Yes, indeed. Therein lies the path to meaningful cultural change.