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]"