Way back in the 1630s, the leaders of Puritan Massachusetts got the bright idea that every adult in the colony should be required to swear a loyalty oath to the governor that ended with the phrase “So help me God.”

The iconoclastic Puritan preacher Roger Williams was not impressed.

“A magistrate ought not to tender an oath to an unregenerate man,” he observed. Doing so, Williams asserted, would cause the oath taker “to take the name of God in vain.”

That was a long time ago. I had kind of hoped we had gotten this oath business straightened out by now. And we have – sort of.

Most courtrooms these days will allow an alternative oath for non-believers who don’t want to swear on the Bible or say “So help me God.” Elected or appointed officials being sworn into office can take the oath on the Bible, some other religious book, the Constitution, a law book or no document at all. New citizens being naturalized can choose between a religious or secular oath.

Although there are occasional problems with this, word is getting out that mandatory religious oaths are a violation of the fundamental right of conscience. As our friend Williams pointed out nearly 400 years ago, why would we want to force someone to swear an oath they don’t even believe in? Doesn’t that kind of negate the oath?

Given all of this, I was kind of surprised recently to read about the case of Jonathan Bise, an officer candidate at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama who was told he had to say an oath ending in “So help me God” to graduate.

Bise knew this was not true. Backed by the American Humanist Association and the Military Alliance of Atheists and Freethinkers, he threatened to sue.

Base officials quickly reversed course. The Birmingham News reported that Major Stewart L. Rountree said he had been given bad information about the oath. To his credit, Rountree accepted the blame for the screw-up and vowed to make things right.

“This mistake is my fault and I take full accountability for the bad information,” Rountree wrote in an email to the groups. “Our previous legal advisors were mistaken in advising us that it was required because the (Air Force form) has static text stating ‘so help me God.’”

He went on to say, “[I]t is apparently common practice across the Air Force to allow a secular version. Again, I apologize and assure you that there was no agenda here. I just had bad information that is now remedied.”

That’s great. I wish every church-state issue could be resolved so smoothly and quickly.

Of course, Religious Right groups will probably start carping about this very soon. They’ve been on a tear lately about alleged “hostility toward religion” in the military. It’s all nonsense, of course – another manufactured controversy designed to stir up the theocratic legions and fill the coffers of groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association.

The Religious Right will likely cry and moan about secular oaths and the supposed assault on religious values in the armed forces that a secular option represents. They’ve carped about this before. In 2006, after Keith Ellison, a Muslim, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota, several far-right groups went ballistic over his plan to take the oath of office on a Quran.

The American Family Association went so far as to advocate for federal legislation requiring members of Congress to swear on Bibles. Leaders of the AFA were too dim to grasp that this was an odd stance for conservative Christians to take, given the New Testament’s condemnation of oath-taking. (See the Epistle of James, 5:12.)

More to the point, fundamentalists remain flummoxed by the simple question posed by Williams so long ago: Why would we want to compel someone to swear an oath when that person does not believe what the oath says? What do we possibly stand to gain?

If anyone in the Religious Right has a compelling answer for the good Rev. Williams, I’d sure like to hear it.