Religion: Freedom of Worship?

The code of the Free State of Maryland requires that a public official taking the oath of office “declare orally his belief in the Christian religion, or, if he professes to be a Jew, his belief in a future state of rewards and punishments.”

J. Milton Stanford, a practicing Pantheist,* was first elected to the town council of Brentwood, Md. two years ago. He was sworn in with an oath of office, customary in Brentwood, which contained the phrase “I believe in God.” He made no objection at the time but, after thinking it over later on, decided he could not again honestly swear to the statement.

Stanford was re-elected last June. When the town council of Brentwood refused to seat Stanford unless he took the full oath, including the clause on religion, he appealed to the Prince Georges County circuit court to order the council to seat him. Then he set about preparing his case for a hearing late this month. The court will be asked to decide whether the Maryland code is depriving Stanford of his constitutional rights under Amendment 14, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution, which protects basic civil rights of U.S. citizens from abridgment by any state.

* Pantheism (according to Webster’s New International Dictionary): the doctrine that the universe, taken or conceived of as a whole, is God; the doctrine that there is no God but the combined forces and laws which are manifested in the existing universe.