Whoever wins the presidential election, on January 20th the victor will take the oath of office with his or her hand on a book that often speaks critically about human rulers. That’s an irony worth pondering. The symbolism of our inaugural ceremony needs to be seen afresh if we’re to weather the crisis of trust in our times. And the first step here is to remember what the Good Book actually says about self-proclaimed good men and women...
Skepticism about human leadership begins in the Bible’s opening chapters, with Adam and Eve, the first leaders of humanity. They're introduced as a royal couple tasked to tend the Garden of Eden, but they fail, and are ousted. In the remainder of the Hebrew Bible, the saga of political Israel mirrors the disappointment of Eden: a string of failed kings leads the people into exile. In the Christian New Testament, a sharp contrast emerges between the Kingdom of God and the corrupt kingdoms of this world—both imperial Rome and the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem. The Bible is not a book with glowing reviews about human political leadership.
The relationship of Jesus himself to public office is a good example. In the Gospel of John, grassroots popularity nearly sweeps him to the throne, but Jesus demurs: “Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself” (John 6:15). This is fascinating, and very counterintuitive. Jesus walks away from the popular triumph most politicians crave! Later, when Jesus stands before the ranking officer of the Roman government, Pontius Pilate, Jesus doesn’t refuse the title “king,” but revises its usual content. “Then Pilate said to him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth’” (John 18:37). In the words of theologian Miroslav Volf, “Jesus argues against ‘the truth of power’ and for ‘the power of truth.’” In other words, this is a different type of kingship: wary of worldly power structures gone awry, and distinguishing between spiritual and temporal authority.
Broadly speaking, the Bible both authorizes and relativizes human governments. It’s neither diabolical nor divine, but somewhere in the middle. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s,” Jesus taught, “and to God what is God’s.” Both sides of this formula are key. Giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s means anarchy is out of bounds. God wants there to be structures of order and justice in the world, overseen by wise humans. On the other hand, giving to God what is God’s means there is a limit on our loyalty to government. Authoritarianism is also out of bounds. Don’t give Caesar a dime more than is required—and certainly not your soul. Politics are legitimate, yes, but not to be confused with redemption.
At one level, then, when a new president swears on the Bible it’s a warning to us, the voting public, not to expect elected officials to satisfy our spiritual yearnings for transcendence and transformation. They can't, and hoping they will simply ensures our eventual disillusionment and their failure.
At another level, swearing on a Bible is a warning to those elected, and a bit of history may be helpful here. In 1789, two years before the Bill of Rights asserted our government’s neutral stance toward religion, George Washington took the first presidential oath of office with his hand on a Bible loaned to him by a Masonic lodge. There was no legal requirement for him to do this; it was a personal choice. Yet later presidents have largely followed his example, four even using the Washington Bible (Harding, Eisenhower, Carter, Bush Sr.). Our first executive had the good sense to realize that the oath of office is more than a legal formality. It has a spiritual dimension. By choosing to place his hand on a Bible, Washington acknowledged a higher moral accountability, embedding a sense of humility in the nation’s highest office—a tradition that, while voluntary, has endured. Thus the summit of political leadership in our country is a paradoxical confession that one is still, at bottom, a follower.
We’re living through an epochal crisis of trust in our leaders, yet from the perspective of the Bible there’s nothing very novel about this. Humans are indeed disappointing. Elections are always at some level a choice between bad options, and the only surprise is that we’re still surprised by this. All along, the Good Book under our leaders’ hands told us not to trust in self-proclaimed good men and women. “Put not your trust in princes,” the Psalmist said, “in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation” (Psalm 146:3).
So what do we do about this? Well, at a time when distrust in our leaders is widespread, we should turn to the slogan etched into our currency—a lesson not just in politics, but in faith. A month before being assassinated, at the climax of our nation’s greatest fracturing to date, Abraham Lincoln authorized these transcendent words to be printed on our coinage:
In God We Trust.
(A shorter version of this article appeared in The Wall Street Journal.)