TRUMP DIDN’T PUT HIS HAND ON THE BIBLE

TRUMP DIDN’T PUT HIS HAND ON THE BIBLE Something resurfaced recently that sent me down a pretty interesting rabbit hole. When Donald Trump was sworn in as President in 2017, he placed his hand on the Bible. When he was sworn in again on January 20, 2025, he didn’t. Melania was standing beside him holding two Bibles, Trump’s childhood Bible and the Lincoln Bible. Trump raised his right hand, took the oath, and never placed his left hand on either one. Tucker Carlson recently brought attention back to it and questioned whether there was something significant behind it. That made me wonder something much simpler. Do presidents actually HAVE to put their hand on a Bible? No. The Constitution gives the presidential oath in Article II, but nowhere does it require a Bible. So where did the tradition come from? This is where the rabbit hole gets even more interesting. George Washington. At the first presidential inauguration on April 30, 1789, Washington took the oath with a Bible. But they didn’t have a Bible ready. One had to be brought over from St. John’s Lodge No. 1 in New York. A Masonic lodge. Yes, Freemasons. The Bible that helped begin one of America's most recognizable presidential traditions was borrowed from a Masonic lodge, and George Washington himself was a documented Freemason. He had joined the fraternity decades earlier and later served as master of Alexandria Lodge No. 22. That doesn’t mean Washington was taking a Masonic oath. He wasn’t. He took the presidential oath prescribed by the Constitution. But it’s a fascinating piece of American history that almost never gets mentioned when we see presidents placing their hands on a Bible. Washington used that Bible in 1789, and the tradition stuck. Not every president followed it. John Quincy Adams took the oath in 1825 using a volume of American laws. Theodore Roosevelt was suddenly sworn in after President McKinley died in 1901 and used no Bible at all. Lyndon Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One after Kennedy was assassinated and used a Catholic liturgical book rather than a Bible. So Trump wasn’t the first president to take the oath without his hand on Scripture. His oath was completely valid. The Constitution has never required a Bible. Still, there’s something interesting about seeing Trump place his hand on the Bible in 2017, then watching the 2025 inauguration with two Bibles standing right beside him and his hand never touching either one. Add in the fact that the presidential Bible tradition traces all the way back to George Washington and a Bible borrowed from a Masonic lodge, and this turned into a much stranger piece of American history than I expected when I started looking into it. Food for thought. #MoreJoyMinistries