Mennonites and Oath Swearing

Another weird Mennonite factoid that people may have heard of but may be unaware of just why it is that in traditional Mennonite belief, they do not swear oaths. For example, in a court of law, the whole put-your-hand-on-the-Bible-and-solemnly-swear-to-tell-the-truth thing is against Mennonite interpretation of Mattthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount, in this regard:

Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

When Mennonites do end up in a situation, like a court of law, where they are required to swear some sort of oath, they don't put their hand on the Bible and they affirm that what they are about to say it true. They don't swear.

The context of that particular passage, seems to me to be about not making promises to God that you may not be able to keep and I suppose that Christians who do swear oaths take it as they are swearing oaths to the state, not to God, so that the instruction in Matthew doesn't apply.

However, this is where the Vulcan in me comes out: It is illogical to take criminal of some sort (assuming he or she is guilty) to court and expect that he will tell the truth simply because his hand is on the Bible. Truth needs no embellishment. I am either telling the truth or I am not telling the truth. So it makes much more sense to me not to make a mockery of either truth or God by putting one's hand on the Bible since if God struck dead all the liars who have put their hands on the Bible and swore to tell the truth, there would be distinct decline in the general population, and no former heads of state to be found anywhere in the world.

God clearly does not strike people dead and the hand on the Bible does not make someone determined to lie tell the truth so the most logical thing a person can do, Christian or not, is to simply affirm to tell the truth. I don't know how it is in US courts but here, possibly because of the large Mennonite population, the few court cases I have seen have always given a person that option straight away. You don't have to ask for it specially.

I haven't researched it but would be interested to know where the idea came from anyway, that putting one's hand on the Bible and swearing to tell the truth imbued some inability to lie. Particularly in this day and age, in which people are very lost and often believe and have faith in nothing, not even their very own selves, the Bible has no more importance to truth-telling than Playboy magazine.

This swearing of oaths also applies to everything else. I believe there have been issues in the States with regards to some parents not allowing or wanting their children to swear the Oath of Allegiance to the flag. Among the Amish and Mennonites, the above reasoning would be why they don't want to do that, coupled with the idea that our citizenship is in Heaven, with the Eternal, not the temporal, and the implication in swearing allegiance to anyone but God implies that God is not in first place.

This is partly also why traditionally Mennonites were not to hold any sort of public office - many of them require the swearing of an oath and to Mennonites all potential promises come with a caveat - that they will obey God rather than men. Even if the state in which they are residing is a good state, there is no guarantee that it will remain that way, and they want to avoid swearing an oath to a country, seeing it sort of like a blank cheque, that they might, or their children might later oppose in some way, if that state requires something of them that is not in keeping with their Christian faith.

I remember the link that you posted to the Christian flag which I didn't know existed and actually, I don't think that outside of the US many Christians would be aware of that flag. I have asked a few people whether they have ever heard of a Christian flag and none of them had.

I saw the Christian flag thing and the oath, as a well-meaning attempt by an American pastor to redirect American Christians to where their allegiance ought first to lie - to Christ and not to the state. He assumed that the rest of the world had the same problem. But to my way of thinking, he failed, in his attempt to make it some sort of worldwide symbol of Christianity because flag worship just isn't in most of the world's mentality.

We have no flag here that we pay allegiance to. The closest thing that we ever had to something similiar was singing "God Save the Queen," which was more in keeping with praying for those who are in power, and that God will direct them in righteous paths, than swearing a blank cheque oath to a state, which being of this world, will pass one way or the other.

Layla