New to me, and making a rather good point, this came in from a reader: “A
brief comment on your recent Corner posting about Charles Bradlaugh and
’non-religious affirmation.’ While it was no doubt motivated by atheism in
Bradlaugh’s case, there are Christian groups that do not believe in swearing
oaths on the Bible and would also use affirmation in this case. The
Mennonites, my own denomination, is the only one I’m familiar with, though
there may be others. The principle comes from Jesus’ words (and I’m
paraphrasing here) ‘Let your yes be yes and your no no.’ In our view,
there’s no need to swear an oath on the Bible because we are already
supposed to be telling the truth. I guess it’s sort of like when a
politician starts a sentence with ‘Honestly…’ Makes you wonder if he
hadn’t been honest before.”