Vice-President Calvin Coolidge assumed the office of President of the United States upon the death of his predecessor, President Warren Harding. It was an unexpected moment for Coolidge, so much so that his father, a notary public, swore him into the office with the Presidential Oath of Office. Coolidge remains the only president to have been sworn in to the office by his father.

President Coolidge’s tenure in office may have had portents of impending trouble ahead but he was a quiet captain at the helm of the ship of state. He was infamously known as “Silent Cal” because he offered very little in the way of conversation or commentary. The story goes that at an official dinner a lady approached him and said she had bet her husband she could get the president to say more than two words. President Coolidge replied, “You lose.”

This points to the Congregationalist and egalitarian nature of President Coolidge’s faith. He was described as both convicted but willing to entertain other points of view. Both of these realities stand out as hallmarks of Congregationalist piety.