On the day John Ashcroft was sworn in to the Senate in January 1995, he met with his ailing father and some friends in a home near the Capitol. After hymn singing and words of heartfelt advice, the Rev. J. Robert Ashcroft, a titan in the Pentecostal Assemblies of God denomination, knelt beside his son and anointed his forehead. He used some Crisco cooking oil from the kitchen.
As Ashcroft notes in his 1998 book, Lessons from a Father to His Son, Kings Saul and David were anointed in much the same way. So are England's monarchs. Yet the ad hoc...
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