Joe Biden’s inauguration was an unqualified success, his acceptance speech was universally praised for its spirit of inclusiveness, harmony and bipartisanship. The event which was scaled-down due to the coronavirus pandemic and threats of violence from Trump cultists struck all the right tones and it resonated with a public desperate for a semblance of normality.

The only point of controversy was the impossibly large Bible that Joe Biden used to take his oath of office. Trump supporters, who see a conspiracy theory in everything, suggested that the several-inches thick Bible, a Biden family heirloom, was Masonic or associated with an Illuminati conspiracy.

I’m not going to waste any bandwidth explaining the Masonic and Illuminati conspiracies, just know that they are as far-fetched as the QAnon conspiracy theories.

Biden has used that humongous Bible every time he has been sworn in as senator and vice-president. It’s not a Masonic, Illuminati or Satanic Bible, it’s a Douay-Rheims Bible, an English translation of a Latin Bible.

I take exception with the fact that elected officials in a secular democracy take an oath of office by placing a hand on a Bible. Elected officials should simply raise their hands when taking an oath of office, or pace a hand on the Constitution.