WASHINGTON – Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will take the oath wednesday of Bibles full of non-public significance, writing new chapters in a long-standing American culture, and which doesn’t seem to be anywhere in the law.

The Constitution does not require the use of an express text for swearing-in ceremonies and only specifies the wording of the president’s oath. This wording doesn’t come with the word “so help me God,” but the fashion president has added it to his oaths. and have selected symbolically significant bibles for their inaugurations.

That includes Biden, who plans to use the same circle of Bible relatives he used twice when he swore as vice president and seven times as a Delaware senator.

The book, several centimetres thick, which his late son Beau also used in his oath as Delaware attorney general, has been a “family legacy” since 1893 and “all the vital dates are there,” Biden told the host of an expiration. -Stephen Colbert night show last month.

“Why is your Bible bigger than mine?Do you have more of Jesus than I do?” joked Colbert, who like Biden is a practicing Catholic.

Biden’s use of the Bible from his circle of relatives underscores the prominent role his religion has played in his private and pro-life life, and will continue to do so as he becomes the Catholic president in American history.

It follows the culture of many other presidents who have used the family circle’s writings to take the oath, adding Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt, according to the Joint Congressional Committee on Inauguration Ceremonies.

Some have noticed that their Bibles are open to passages personally applicable to their ceremonies. Bill Clinton, for example, chose Isaiah 58:12 – who urges the devotee to be a “gap repairer” – for his opening moment after a first period marked by schism policies with conservatives.

Others took the oath of office from closed Bibles, such as John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president, who in 1961 used his family’s century-old e-book with a giant cross on the front, similar to Biden’s.

The culture of a Bible dates back to the presidency itself, the sacred e-book used through George Washington that later appeared in the demonstration at the Smithsonian on loan from the Masonic Lodge that provided it in 1789. The Washington Bible was then used for oaths through Warren G. Harding, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter and George HW Buisson.

But all presidents have used a Bible. Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office in 1901 after william McKinley’s death, while John Quincy Adams used an e-book of laws in 1825, according to his own account.

Some have used several Bibles in their ceremonies: Barack Obama and Donald Trump chose to use, along with others, the copy Abraham Lincoln swore on in 1861.

Harris plans to do the same with his oath as vice president, a Bible that belongs to a close circle of close circle of close relatives who belonged to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had fallen behind in the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall. pioneer as the first African-American judge of the Superior Court.

“When I raise my right hand and take the oath tomorrow, I bring with me two heroes who speak for those who have no voice and help those who desire it,” Harris tweeted Tuesday, referring to Marshall and his friend Regina Shelton, whose Bible he swore. California attorney general and then the senator.

Harris, who attended the Baptist and Hindu religion as a child, loves the Baptist religion as an adult.

While U. S. lawmakers have used the Bible for their oaths, some have selected opportunities that reflect their devoted diversity.

Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim elected to Congress, used a Koran belonging to Thomas Jefferson in 2007, objections from some Christian conservatives.

The Jefferson Koran returned in 2019 under the oath of office of Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, one of the first two Muslims elected to Congress.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, chose a Hebrew Bible in 2005 for her Jewish faith. Newly elected Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, who is also Jewish and swears Wednesday, plans to use the Hebrew scriptures belonging to Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, a best friend of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement.

Former Representative Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii, opted for the Bhagavad Gita in 2013 after the first Hindu was elected to Congress.

And Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona, the current member of Congress who identifies as “unaefaly to religion,” swore the Constitution in 2018.

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