No one needs binoculars to do sightings of religion in American public life when a new president comes into view.  Presidents signal something of their and the nation's acknowledged needs and chosen images by bringing their clergy along to inaugurations.  The choice to take the oath of office on the Bible -- often open to a particular verse -- or to cite the Bible in an inaugural address signals what someone has called the "religiocification"of the presidential transition, one unmatched in republics elsewhere.

The folks at National Public Radio had me revisit past choices of open-Bible texts or citations in speeches two days ago.  What stands out?

Only one selected passage has ever been explicitly Christian or christological. (Avoiding "through Jesus Christ our Lord" is not a recent secularist invention.) Calvin Coolidge chose John 1, a passage dear to Christians but a problem in a pluralist republic. Several have quoted Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, and two chose Matthew 5,  including passages which would see a republic with millions of amputees and no divorcés (see verses 27-30).

Franklin Delano Roosevelt chose the favorite-of-brides passage by Paul in First Corinthians 13 all four times!  Proverbs receives inordinate attention and Psalms ordinate attention.

Two themes are implied in most choices.  The first is easy. When one becomes president, he (so far, only "he") does not surrender personal freedom in faith, and thus may bring his private faith into the public zone, to suggest commitment and, of course, need and hope.

The other implied theme is more complicated.  Most of them cite the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures, in large part because there's not much of governmental import in the New Testament.  In these books the nation or the people addressed is always the chosen, the elect of God, Israel, which received a special covenant, responsibility, and promise. Whether that does or can easily transfer to any other nation or people, as chief executives by their scriptural choices infer that they do, is a bit more chancy.  Abraham Lincoln, for instance, made it work.

Both Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan in this mode chose Second Chronicles7:14, a passage today favored by cultural critics and political agencies and actors on the right.  One translation reads: "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

One can say that such passages have import by analogy to modern republics, self-chosen people, as in a nation like ours which has been perceived by many as "scripted" and "scriptured."  But problems of hubris, exclusivism, and misapplication can go with such citations.  "Handle with care!" is the warning that critics use bipartisanly on all such occasions.