We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus—and nonbelievers.

—Barack Obama, January 20, 2009

Like many Free Inquiry readers, I greeted President Joe Biden’s inauguration with elation and relief. At last, after a four-year reign of error that on January 6 recrudesced into a spasm of genuine terror, the nation faced the prospect of a return to—well, not normalcy. Our present concatenation of crises demands more than normalcy. But we could hope for a return of decency, rationality, and due respect for science. “We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal,” Biden declared. Huzzah.

There was another return that I looked forward to as Biden entered office, but like every American who doesn’t adhere to an Abrahamic faith, I was to be sorely disappointed. “I haven’t heard Biden’s inaugural yet … . Maybe Biden will follow Obama’s lead,” I wrote in the previous issue’s editorial. (At his historic inaugural twelve years ago, Barack Obama included the first acknowledgment by any president that “nonbelievers” formed part of the American fabric [see the quotation above].) “Let’s hope [Biden] will offer secular Americans more than a phrase,” I continued. “Maybe he’ll recognize us with a sentence or two. It would only be reasonable, given how rapidly the population of nonreligious Americans has grown since 2008.”[1]

As every secular American must know by now, that didn’t happen. Not only didn’t Biden’s inaugural address offer any hat-tip to the nonreligious, it may be the most overtly faith-steeped inaugural since Lincoln’s second one. Granted, Biden is personally a devout Roman Catholic. And who knows, maybe he fretted that his believing supporters needed assurance that he wouldn’t fulfill ex-president Donald Trump’s[2] prediction and “hurt the Bible, hurt God.”[3]

But it’s also true that 34 percent of Americans tell pollsters they identify with no religion.[4] A majority of Americans under age twenty-nine already occupy that category. So what are secular Americans—and for that matter, devout Americans whose religion happens not to be Abrahamic —to make of an inaugural address that included:

• Five references to soul;
• Four references to God (including a gratuitous quotation of “one nation, under God, indivisible” from the Pledge of Allegiance);
• Four references to prayer or prayers;
• Three references to faith;
• A reference inclusive toward “Judeao-Christians” alone, one reference to the Bible; and
• One special fillip solely for his fellow Catholics, a quotation from Saint Augustine?

We can mend America, Biden said, “If we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.” Why not “open our minds” instead? A sizeable minority of Americans don’t believe people have souls. As far as I know, most agree we have minds.

Then there was this. Biden paused in his speech to call on Americans to join him in a moment of silent prayer. (Has any prior president done that in an inaugural address?) He closed that interval of prayer with a heartfelt Amen. Let’s take a moment to unpack that. Yes, of course that act of prayer sent an exclusionary message to Americans who do not accept the efficacy of prayer. But how about that Amen? Who closes a prayer with Amen? Jews do. Christians do. Muslims do (though Muslims often render it Amin, following the Arabic). Who does not close a prayer with Amen? Every religious American who follows a religion other than one of the West’s Abrahamic “Big Three.”

Biden’s silent prayer told not only the nonreligious but also Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Confucians, Shintoists, Zoroastrians, Wiccans, modern neopagans, and any others I left out that they are not real Americans. I’m fully prepared to grant that Biden didn’t know he was doing this. But still: With a single silent prayer and its exclusionary Abrahamic closing, our brand-new president told more than a third of Americans[5] that they don’t belong, and he didn’t know he was doing it?

Don’t even get me started on Garth Brooks, who wrapped up the musical portion of the official inauguration program with a weirdly uncomfortable rendition of “Amazing Grace.” (One wonders: Is there also an uncivil war between Americans who view themselves as “wretches” and those who don’t?)

Even as the inauguration was proceeding, CFI Communications Director Paul Fidalgo eloquently tweeted:

It is unfortunate that these messages of unity do not acknowledge nonreligious Americans. So many calls for prayer—and the presumption of religious belief—exclude us. … [T]here’s a distinction between expressions of personal faith and the weaponization of faith. We can presume the best of intentions from the new White House. But the best way to deal with religious faith at government ceremonies is to leave it out.

For those who prefer to fight their secularist battles on less symbolic territory, I pose another question. In Biden’s groundbreakingly diverse cabinet that “looks like America,” are there any nonbelievers? And if not, how strong a resemblance to America does Biden’s cabinet really bear? (At the Washington Post, Yonat Shimron suggests that “a handful of Cabinet picks do not appear to identify with any religion” but never names names.[6])

I’m genuinely delighted to see Biden in the White House; I truly am. But I wish he had offered in his inaugural some sign that he would be as inclusive toward nonreligious Americans as, oh, the man he stood beside as vice president.

In the future, President Biden should seek to end two more uncivil wars: the one between believers and nonbelievers, and the one between Abrahamic believers and everybody else. Right now, he’s still in the trenches of those conflicts.

Notes

1. Tom Flynn, “Facing a Fraught Future.” FI, February/March 2021.
2. “Ex-president Donald Trump.” Oh, how I loved typing that.
3. https://americanindependent.com/donald-trump-joe-biden-hurt-god-bible-2020-election-white-house/
4. As of 2019. When we get numbers of 2020, it’s likely the total will have risen still farther.
5. The Nones alone account for 34 percent. So no matter how small some of the other groups may be, we’re absolutely talking about more than a third of Americans.
6. Yonat Shimron, “Two Faiths Dominate Biden’s Cabinet Picks.” Washington Post, January 22, 2021.