Thursday, May 22, 2014

Tucker Lieberman Touches on Swearing on a Bible

Over at Dead Man Blogging, Tucker Lieberman wrote an article with the title, 

The long and misguided history of swearing in on Bibles.  Here's a taste from the 12/10/2013 original version:

When England was a Catholic country, swearing oaths on physical copies of the Bible held a prominent place in the culture. A religious movement whose adherents were known as Lollards opposed this practice in the early 15th century, as did Quakers in the 17th century. Lollards were willing to swear verbally by God, but were burned at the stake for being unwilling to swear on the Bible. Quakers would not swear at all, which meant that they couldn't take oaths of allegiance and couldn't testify in court. Mohr writes, "A good technique for getting rid of a Quaker you didn't like was to accuse him of doing something illegal. Whether or not he was guilty, when he refused to take an oath his property would be confiscated and he would be thrown in jail for contempt of court."
Read the full 1/11/1017 article here as it has been updated.

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