A Chapel Talk by Fourteenth Rector Kathy Giles, Jan. 20, 2025
Whether you are a citizen of the United States or a citizen of another country, today is an important day. Today, the U.S. celebrates the national holiday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day — 96 years since Dr. King was born, in 1929. And today is America’s 60th presidential Inauguration Day — 69th, if you include the nine partial-term inaugurations. Inauguration Day is also a federal holiday, a celebration of the rule of law and the grand experiment that is our American democracy.
In your studies here, you will do some work with our Constitution in Humanities, and then in Rev. Wynder’s constitutional law elective if you so choose; and by mandate of New Hampshire state law, all graduates of any high school in New Hampshire have to take and pass a civics exam of their school’s construction as well as the citizenship test created by the U.S. Department of Citizenship and Immigration Services. If you haven’t read the United States Constitution, you should do so. We tend to want to think of the Constitution as an ancient document, but it was actually signed in 1787, only 238 years ago. By contrast, the earliest Chinese political dynasties date from 220 BCE; the British monarchy traces its timeline back to the 900s. Do the math: 1787, on this historic scale, makes the U.S. a young country, and democracy, while it is an ancient idea and ideal, is still in its infancy in large-scale practice.
Put another way, if you think about it in terms of generations — defining a generation as the average time it takes for a baby to grow up and have children, which right now on average is 25 years — the United States is nine generations old. How many people here have known your great-grandparents? Grandparents? Parents? That’s three generations. We are the fourth; and for the adults here, many of us have children, the fifth generation; and then grandchildren – a sixth. I am unaware that we have any great-grandparents in the house, but I guess there is a possibility of a seventh. My point is that it is easy for one person’s life to span five or six generations of time and history. When Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas told us last week that she was the great-granddaughter of an enslaved person, and the granddaughter of an elevator operator, I thought about my own great-grandmother, my Nana (Louise) Brophy, who cleaned the public restrooms on Boston Common to support her five daughters just to get through elementary school, and then about my beloved Nana, the eldest of those five girls, who made it through high school and worked for 40 years for the gritty mill city of Fall River, Massachusetts, as a payroll clerk. Think about it for a minute. Nine generations of time is not very long, in terms of human history or even human experience, for a country to exist. The American experience is young: When I did the math on my share of American history, I have been alive for almost 26% of the time that the U.S. Constitution has been in effect. Yes, I’m old, but not that old — we are indeed very early in this American story.
Since George Washington was inaugurated as the first American president in 1789, inauguration days have taken place in April, March and January (and then there are the nine “partial term” dates that took place on an as-needed basis). This is not the first time that Inauguration Day has coincided with the national holiday celebrating Dr. King, which was more recently established. And it is not the first time it is being held indoors, either. In fact, over these 236 years, there have been any number of plans and programs for the inauguration. It is important to note that really, the only element of the inauguration that is specifically constitutionally prescribed is the Oath that was our opening words. The story goes that George Washington added the phrase, “So help me God,” as well as the presence of the Bible. Perhaps being a wise man, he knew that a president would need all the help they can get.
So, 69 inauguration days. Mr. Trump will be our 47th president, and Mr. Vance will our 50th vice president. Interestingly, the first Congress in 1789, citing Article VI of the Constitution, created the “Oath of Administration Act,” which the vice president, members of Congress, and Cabinet members (as well as other federal employees) take, and it goes as follows:
I solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
This time, “so help me God” is part of the oath that Congress legislated. Interesting, in thinking about the intent of the framers — the revolutionary statesmen who wrote the Constitution, intentionally separating church and state — but the action of the first elected Congress —deciding, even back then, to craft its legislation according to what it perceived to be its own prerogative.
When I hear the vice president take this oath today, I will be thinking of our time last year with Admiral John Richardson, our Conroy Visitor, who told us about his adventures as a submarine commander and as a leader of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but who also told us, very pointedly, that he has centered his life on three critical covenants: his covenant with his spouse; his covenant with God; and his covenant with the United States Constitution. What does that mean? A covenant is a special promise, a binding agreement, a big commitment. There is a huge responsibility, in public service, on one’s conscience and commitment to the “we” instead of the “me,” to the rule of law and the processes of justice for all over individual interests, and to making sure that the “we” is aligned with the values of democracy: that all people are created justice, equality, providing for the common defense; promoting the general welfare and ensuring the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
So, we are a young country, and we are part of this grand, important experiment. The U.S. population was 336 million people in 2024. In the 2024 Presidential election, 244 million people were eligible to vote. Mr. Trump received 77.3 million votes, or 49.8% of the popular vote; Ms. Harris received 75 million votes, or 48.3% of the popular vote. In total, 156.3 million people voted; 63.9% of Americans who were eligible to vote — a relatively high percentage, historically, of eligible voters who indeed voted. But of the 244 million Americans who were eligible to vote, 88 million did not. The math is important, here. More Americans who were eligible to vote chose not to vote than the number of Americans who voted for either candidate. This 36% of eligible voters who did not vote is worth noting. Why? What difference does it make? Clearly, it makes a huge difference, real time. Pay attention to conversations about voting rights, voting logistics. Pay attention to equality among citizens, and what is means to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty. Yes, the Electoral College system creates a different level of complexity, but so-called “popular sovereignty” is a critical democratic concept that fails when more than one-third of “we the people” don’t vote.
I will confess that like a few colleagues in the house today — Mr. Morgan, Ms. Kim, the Rev. Wynder — my professional life began as a lawyer. In law school, you immerse yourself in this two hundred-plus years of courts, legislatures and the executive branch fighting out the so-called “balance of powers,” the system of checks-and-balances that the Constitution creates to manage the distribution and exercise of power. It is fascinating, but it is easy to become a cynic. Does law actually have any ethical or moral components — is it actually about justice, fairness, and equality? Is it about the race or wrestling match, depending on your perspective, for economic advantage, in a free market/capitalism tussle? Or it is simply, ultimately, more about the contest for power — which, as we read and heard in last Wednesday’s chapel, in the reading from Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s essay on fascism — can subvert truth and justice with charisma and graft? If our Congress enacted a law banning TikTok on the grounds of national defense, and the Supreme Court affirmed the law’s constitutionality as within Congressional purview, on what basis can the Executive Branch upend those decisions? History is being made right now. We have so much to learn.
All of this is to say that today, Inauguration Day, is a big day, and we are part of it. And we, so help us, God, will be part of them going forward as the country — with the world watching — continues to develop in our important, brilliant, flawed experiment with democracy. There are many reasons for concern … and, there are many more to be hopeful. Today’s reading from Judge Learned Hand, from 1944, shows that the ideas with which we are wrestling are not new, but rather an aspect of human nature with which we continually contend. So does Dr. King’s important, wise statement (1968): The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas’ encouragement that when we show up as a child of God, treating each other with respect and dignity — constitutional values, values of our democracy — we are creating more and better.
There is no better place today to be hopeful than to be in a school, and for me, specifically this school. I think often about the many people who have sat in these seats before us — really, remembering that St. Paul’s was founded only 67 years after the first inauguration (think about it for a minute: Dr. Shattuck, our founder, was born in 1813, when James Madison was America’s fourth president, and the School was founded during the presidency of James Buchanan, the 15th president, who was succeeded by Abraham Lincoln.) Among people who have sat in these seats are Archibald Cox Jr., Form of 1930 and known in American history as a special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal; and more recently, Robert Mueller, Form of 1960, who served as FBI director before being appointed as a special counsel for the Justice Department in the investigation of allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election — also winner of the Gordon Medal and teammate of Senator then Secretary of State John Kerry, Form of 1962. The people who sit in these seats have made, make, and will make a difference in this young country. Yes, complex times. But yes, there is every reason for optimism.
Food for thought on this 60th Inauguration Day, or the 47th President of the United States of America in year 238 of our American constitutional democracy. In the words of Marian Wright Edelman, the first African American woman admitted as a lawyer to the Mississippi Bar and who made civil rights her life’s work and founded the Children’s Defense Fund: “Lord, keep this world in your care, and guide us in the ways of justice and truth” — so help us, God, please.
May it be so, and amen.