God goes public: the inauguration and the return of faith-talk

This Inauguration Day, Jack Chisnall explains why the 'Church and State' separation just can't hold.

Jack Chisnall

Jack Chisnall is a former gag teller and Oxford Theology graduate, combining the two at Holy Fooling.

The 47th President of the United States of America

Inauguration Day. Donald Trump again makes an oath to defend and uphold, as best he can, the Constitution of the United States. It has always been a fairly swift-moving bit of public pomp - swift compared to coronations at any rate, which typically take hours just to put a crown on a royal head. The Presidential inauguration can take as little as six minutes, and viewers get more bang for their buck: the President is confirmed not only as the head of the ruling government, but the representational head of state too.

It’s all a good lesson in the ‘separation of Church and State’ some will opine. Forget the medieval-sounding solemnities and pageantry, and Archbishops intoning things over altars. Here, a man in a suit enters a civic covenant with the people who have democratically elected him. Before President Jackson’s escort was swamped by 20,000 spectators in 1829 and security protocol had to cordon off spectators, the first inaugurations had a humble, almost mundane aspect: the new president would go about to shake hands with citizens who had popped along to see the ceremony, and to wish the new guy “good luck”. Sources show that Abraham Lincoln shook over 5,000 hands when he was inaugurated for a second time in 1865.

But such well-worn narratives - of humankind progressing from strange, religious druidry to sane, reasonable democracy - are looking creakier than ever, in 2025. Such views were all the rage in the 20th century. But the West is having a fundamental rethink about what exactly it would mean for humans to ‘de-anchor’ themselves from a religious way of being. We have learnt by now - the hard way - that we merely swap one form of worship for another in supposedly ‘irreligious’ societies.

In the first place, the ‘separation of church and state’ history is not as simple as all that. While it’s true that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution did not establish a church on the national level, as in England, there were plenty established at the state level just fine. Connecticut was Congregationalist until as late as 1818 - residents paid taxes to, and were educated by, the church. There was nothing in the law to prevent it.

But it is the inauguration itself which reveals that religious instincts cannot be extracted so easily from human affairs. For George Washington, the first President to be inaugurated back in New York City in 1779, the rather last-minute idea was that he should swear on a Bible. None being found to hand, they borrowed one - from a nearby Masonic Lodge. It was fitting. The Founding Fathers certainly tweaked and trimmed the traditional religions they were raised in - but they could not dispense with them. Even the word, ‘inaugurate’, is snagged on a religious root. ‘Augury’ was the practice of discerning the will of the Gods in Ancient Roman political cult.

Christian imagery and sentiment has, over time, returned to irrigate the dry, rationalistic plains of U.S. civic ceremonial. Certainly the likes of Washington and Jefferson saw their country under the auspices of a Supreme Being, just not necessarily aligned with one of the world’s faiths. But for the George Bush inauguration of 1989, the evangelical tone was explicit. Billy Graham began things with an invocation, and the new President ordered a national day of prayer to follow, in thanksgiving for a successful transfer of power. There will be quite an obvious development of this during Trump’s 2025 inauguration, when Franklin Graham, the son of the famed evangelist, will lead the invocation prayer alongside Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

There is, perhaps, no getting around the human need to call on something larger than ourselves in our most meaningful moments - when we pledge to love someone for the rest of our lives, or swear our commitment to rule justly. The inauguration has been a good indicator of this, in the way that it has increasingly reached for an older, outright Christian language in which to express the profoundest longings and ambitions of a nation. God, it turns out, never quite leaves the frame.

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13 May 2025

4 min read

This City is Ours – truth and lies about the global drugs trade

The drug-dealing family drama reflects the impact of the drugs world.

Henry Corbett

Henry Corbett, a vicar in Liverpool and chaplain to Everton Football Club.

Family saga.

BBC.

I asked a thoughtful Scouser and cinephile “What do you think of This City is Ours? – the crime drama TV series set in Liverpool. I wondered if he would hate all the talk of drugs, the power games, the violence and that the series about a global trade is located in our city.

“Well, it’s true.”

As a priest in Liverpool, I have taken the funerals of drug dealers and users, including one where the family quoted me Jesus’ saying, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” I have known too many people caught up first in the heroin trade of the 1980s and then more recently with cocaine.

I agreed that the series is truthful, and on many levels. Those involved in the criminal world of illegal drugs are still people.

I remember Peter (not his real name) who I knew when he was a young lad in the youth club I helped with. He was sitting in our kitchen with a mug of tea. He had bruises all over his face because of a drugs debt he hadn’t paid. One of my daughters came in to get something out of the fridge, and Peter apologised to her for the state of his face, explained it was because of being involved in drugs, and advised her strongly against it. He then asked after her interests and what she enjoyed and was ‘made up’ – happy - when she spoke of liking art. My daughter never forgot that conversation. She learned that people in the drugs trade were still people and could be kind, and that the illegal drugs world was to be avoided. People are both made in the image of God, capable of love and concern, and also flawed and able to be drawn into a trade that affects people so badly across the world.

So, the eight episodes of the first series of This City Is Ours show that the global criminal world of illegal drugs is brutal, violent and full of jeopardy. There are chilling deaths, executions, and vengeance. All truthful to that world. There are power struggles and a vicious family succession battle too. But there are also scenes of the same family at the dinner table, of the longing for a baby with a girlfriend who is very much loved. One moment a character is a hard-hearted killer and the next moment a tender partner. That is so truthful to the different compartments that people can live in: someone can be a loving son who cares for their mother and a ruthless power-hungry toxic gangster.

The consequences of that unnecessary “necessary” action are tragic.

A further truth that I see at every funeral is the ripple effect on partners, siblings, parents, the wider family, and friends, and outward across the community. Every episode of the show features family members: some in the gang, some outside the gang, some wanting a cut of the lucrative proceeds, others desperate to get out from this dangerous, chilling world. What we do can massively affect others close to us. So often family and friends, and a community, must live with the consequences of actions taken in a criminal underworld they are often excluded from and fearful of. Even young children can be affected and dragged into a battle for power.

So, there are truths, but what about the lies? Here’s two stand outs:

“Are we safe?” “Yes, babe.”

We know they are not safe. Definitely not. There’s a target on your back, and often on the family’s back as well.

And the second:

“It was necessary”. Or “f***ing necessary”.

No, it wasn’t. He didn’t have to become engaged in a succession struggle for power, money, and control. He didn’t have to kill someone he looked up to, respected, even loved. The consequences of that unnecessary “necessary” action are tragic.

Then there is the third lie about loyalty and trust. That false sense of being in a gang that will look after you and look out for you, that will secure your future and give you a sense of being someone who counts. From early on, this series shows that people are expendable, can be shot and tossed over a cliff, and that person you looked up to may be an informant to the police. That is maybe how they have stayed out of prison.

A fourth lie the series so truthfully nails is the notion that it is easy to walk away once you have seen through the attractions of money, of Spanish villas, of designer gear, of fragile power. It very often isn’t. You may desperately want a worthwhile life that brings good not bad, peace not killings, a freedom from looking over your shoulder and from a troubled conscience. But there may be money demanded by your supplier, there may be enemies you have made along the way. I have known people successfully move away from it all but that has often only been after a spell in prison, and with a sound alternative - whether a job to keep, a daughter to look after, or a move away.

Wisdom is a much-valued quality throughout history. Five of the Bible’s 66 books are often called Wisdom books and Jesus called Christians to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” This City is Ours is beautifully shot, expertly scripted, brilliantly acted, and it truthfully lifts the lid on the world of the drug-dealing criminal underworld and on some of the lies peddled in that world. And I did explain in the funeral service that when Jesus said “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword” he was not recommending that way of life but warning against it.