Whereas each one of the 43 presidents of the United States
since George Washington on April 30, 1789, has commenced his term of office by
placing his hand upon the Holy Bible and solemnly swearing or affirming the
Constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United
States and to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution of the United States;
Whereas each President, after taking the oath of office,
has repeated President Washington's petition prayer seeking divine help by
saying, So help me God
;
Whereas Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United
States, has chosen to swear his Constitutional oath by placing his hand on the
Holy Bible that the 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, used at his first
inauguration on March 4, 1861;
Whereas in Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, one of the
most profound theological statements in American history, he referred to God 14
times, to verses in the Holy Bible 4 times, and invoked prayer 3 times in 701
words;
Whereas the Lincoln Presidency tested the self-evident
truths contained in the Declaration of Independence;
Whereas the Civil War became the test of whether our
Nation could endure as a nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to
the proposition that all men are created equal
;
Whereas President Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation, and before his assassination on April 14, 1865, witnessed
Congress pass the 13th amendment to the Constitution, which forever ended
slavery in the United States fulfilling the Founding Fathers' assertion made 89
years earlier that all men are created equal;
Whereas since the Civil War much has been accomplished in
the struggle for civil rights;
Whereas while much has yet to be done, we can take
enormous satisfaction in the fact that the election of Barack Obama to the
Presidency represents that today, we truly are a nation, conceived in
liberty
and dedicated to the self-evident truths that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness
;
Whereas with the Obama inauguration on January 20, 2009,
we, with God's help, rededicate ourselves anew to the eternal tasks before us
necessary to ensure for generations to come that our government of the
people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the
earth
;
Whereas the Lincoln Bible which Obama selected for his
oath of office represents the powerful 144-year epoch of the civil rights
struggle from Lincoln to Obama;
Whereas the people of the United States deserve the
opportunity to see the Lincoln-Obama Bible
and contemplate it as
a witness to history; and
Whereas the very table that President Lincoln used at his
second inauguration is on permanent display at the Capitol Visitor Center: Now,
therefore, be it
That Congress calls upon the Capitol
Preservation Commission and the Office of the Architect of the Capitol to place
the Lincoln-Obama Bible and a copy of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address on
permanent display upon the Lincoln table at the Capitol Visitor Center for the
benefit of all its visitors to fully understand and appreciate America's
history and Godly heritage.