Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Innauguration Day is a day for which all Americans can thank God.

Barring some drastically unexpected events, the United States will once again peacefully transfer power from one faction to another.

Compared to the way nations throughout

history of change leaders, military coup, death, sabotage, destruction, the American story is a gift

of God's grace, despite what will be inevitable protest. Back in 2016, in a video, the late

brilliant British rabbi Jonathan Sachs called inaugnauguration Day, and I quote,

one of the great rituals of modern politics. The speech given by the incoming president is,

he said, a covenant renewal. No, he didn't mean that America is God's country or a New Israel

or something like that, but by echoing similar renewals from the scriptures, every inauguration

day recapitulates the promises

of America's national religion. There's a retelling of our past. There's an acknowledgement of

present problems. There's a recommitment to live up to our promises in the future. Though this

is not to be confused as a religious replacement for or an equivalent with Christianity or Judaism,

the day does draw on themes and rituals that are found in the Bible. In fact, years ago,

on the inauguration of a very different president, Chuck Colson meditated on the many religious

aspects of inauguration day. At the time, with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek,

here's Chuck Colson. There's a ceremony going on in Washington today that's the stuff that

nightmares have made of, that is if you belong to the ACLU. At noon, the Chief Justice of the

United States will ask Barack Obama to place his hand on the Bible, the one used by Abraham Lincoln

in 1861, and to

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