The Roman ((Lituus ))..a question out of curiosity...

Joe Biden's presidential inauguration yesterday sure did have a lot of religion in it.

Too bad it was all Christian religion.

Christian scriptures, Christian saints, a Christian hymn that we were all supposed to join in on; even a Christian ending (“amen”) to the silent prayer for the 400,000.

Am I surprised? No. This is, after all, the United States. Am I disappointed? Yes, especially considering the fact that Vice President Harris's family, in its religious diversity (father's family Christian, mother's family Hindu, husband Jewish) looks a lot more like the face of—increasingly—the real America.

In practice, of course, public displays of religious diversity in the US usually involve trotting out a token rabbi and/or mullah in addition to whatever Christian clergy is already presiding. As the rest of us could tell you, yet another demonstration of Abrahamic exceptionalism hardly constitutes a display of religious diversity.

Well, there are lots of religions represented here in America, and there's no way that you can fit all of them into a ceremony gracefully. Adding the stray Hindu or Buddhist now and again wouldn't really help. At thirteenth and last, Big Box religious exceptionalism is no more attractive, or desirable, than Abrahamic exceptionalism.

Nor, frankly, would a generic pagan invocation by Lady Moonwhistle have satisfied me either, although—to be quite honest—the very term “Inauguration” has quite specific cultural roots, and they're certainly not Christian ones.

But, blast it, where are the prayers by the Indigenous First Nations elders in American public life? You want real religious diversity? That would be a start.

Oh, I praise the Biden/Harris administration for wanting a Cabinet, and a team, that actually looks more like America, though one does wonder why it's taken us so long to get there.

I also praise them for (finally!) taking back religion from the Religious Reich. That's a lesson that the Democrats have been far too slow to learn, much to their—and our—detriment.

But I remind them that America is—and has always been—a Land of the Many.

Goddess willing, may it always be so.

As for the auspices—the official taking of omens at the beginning of a new project, which is what inaugurations were originally all about—I'm happy to say that they were all good.

Especially the part where they started early.

 

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