House Committee Vote to Keep ‘So Help You God’ in Oath After Outcry

The U.S. Capitol Building Dome is seen before the sun rises in Washington, on Dec. 18, 2018. (Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)

A House committee voted to keep the words “so help you God” in an oath witnesses are required to take before providing testimony, after an attempt to remove the phrase sparked objections with some Republicans.

The Democrat-controlled House Committee on Natural Resources proposed to remove the reference to God from the committee’s oath, according to a draft of committee rules that was first reported by Fox News. The draft (pdf) shows the words “so help you God” in red brackets, meaning that the words would have been eliminated. The Democrats also planned to add the words “under penalty of law” to the oath instead.

If the rules had passed, the oath would have read as follows: “Do you solemnly swear or affirm, under penalty of law, that the testimony that you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

But on Jan. 30, committee aides told Fox News that the house committee voted to keep “so help you God” in the oath. The committee has oversight of national parks and federal conservation and species protection programs. It is headed by Arizona Democrat Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ).

After the news of the plan to remove the phrase came out, a top Republican congresswoman characterized the edits to the oath as indicative of a hard left shift for the Democratic Party.

“It is incredible, but not surprising, that the Democrats would try to remove God from committee proceedings in one of their first acts in the majority,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) told the news station.

“They really have become the party of Karl Marx.”

Nods to Cultural Marxism

Democrats have previously thought to strike references to God from key party documents. In 2012, an uproar ensued on the floor of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) when party leaders sought to restore a reference to God to the party platform. The reversal came about after criticism from Republicans about the reference being removed.

The views on restoring the reference to God were far from uniform with a group of delegates yelling “no” as the convention chairman called for a vote. The chair had to call for the vote three times before concluding that they “ayes” had it.

A number of Democrats openly ran as socialists during the 2018 midterms. While most lost, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, won a congressional race in New York.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez addresses the crowd gathered at La Boom night club in Queens in New York City on Nov. 6, 2018. (Rick Loomis/Getty Images)

The drаft of the committee rules features other nods to cultural Marxism. The words “his or her” are replaced throughout the proposed rules with “their” and all of the references to “chairman” are replaced with “chair.”

An offshoot of Marxism, cultural Marxism focuses on culture instead of economics. The ideology is steeped in atheism and purports that there is no such thing as race and gender. Cultural Marxism’s central goal is to destroy traditional culture, with a specific focus on family values, faith, and love for one’s country.

In an exclusive series by The Epoch Times, cultural Marxism is exposed as a form of communism used to infiltrate the West. The reporting specifically shows how the campaign to remove references to God traces back to communist ideology.

Epoch Times reporter Ivan Penchoukov contributed to this report