Andrew Seidel: "Leave God Out of the Presidential Oath"

This is from Andrew Seidel of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. A taste:

The spoken words have been as deliberate as the written words. We know that Washington didn’t add the words to the oath. Edward Lengel, former editor-in-chief of the Papers of George Washington project, concluded, “any attempt to prove that Washington added the words ‘so help me God’ requires mental gymnastics of the sort that would do credit to the finest artist of the flying trapeze.”

Like so much U.S. mythology, including Rip Van Winkle, Ichabod Crane, and the Headless Horseman, we owe this Washingtonian myth to Washington Irving.

American Creation's Ray Soller has done a great deal of very important detective work over the years on this issue.

John Milton and Isaac Newton: From Arianism to Socinianism

I need to put this book on my "to read" list. 

"In a book in progress, I will argue that Milton is an early adopter of a set of positions characteristic of the Newton circle of the late seventeenth century. Shared Arian belief in a preexistent Son precluded full agreement with Socinians, who believed that the Son did not predate the birth of Jesus. Nevertheless, Milton and Newton shared Socinian and quasi-Socinian positions, for example, an emphasis on reason and an attack on metaphysics in biblical interpretation, an insistence on toleration, opposition to infant baptism, and a focus on the exemplary character of the Christ’s passion as opposed to stressing the crucifixion as atonement. Complicating reliance on categories and labels, the boundaries between Arians and Socinians in the seventeenth century were sufficiently fluid that one of Newton’s circle, Hopton Haynes, described Newton as Socinian, while another, William Whiston, labeled him as Arian. Frank Manuel, a leading scholar of Newton and religion, describes Newton as some Milton scholars have described Milton, as Arian in theology and Socinian in religion."

This was often the kind of "Christianity" that elite philosophical types in the American founding lauded. Or at least they lauded Milton and Newton (and Locke, Clarke and others).