A history of presidential prayer

Faithful Americans have always prayed for their country. Interceding before God to intervene on the nation’s behalf is a rich American tradition deeply intertwined with presidential inaugurations, national holidays, and times of war.

No doubt, the many famous portraits of George Washington kneeling before Providence have helped inspire that tradition. Although the accounts of Washington praying at Valley Forge are probably mythical, they nevertheless have become synonymous with his image as an American hero.

Mason Locke Weems, the clergyman storyteller whose early Washington biography, “The Life of Washington,” introduced many legends about the nation’s first president, including the apple tree fable, conceived a romanticized character study of the father of his country to promote good morals. According to Weems, a local Quaker pacifist, Isaac Potts, encountered “the commander in chief of the American armies on his knees at prayer,” which stirred him to renounce his pacifism. Returning to his wife, Potts announced, “I always thought that the sword and the gospel were utterly inconsistent. But George Washington has this day convinced me of my mistake.”  The fable has never been verified, although subsequent artists further etched it into the nation’s memory.

However, that does not mean that Washington did not pray. In 1789, the president issued a thanksgiving proclamation, noting, “it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor….” In 1795, he urged his countrymen to “meet together and render their sincere and hearty thanks to the Great Ruler of Nations for the manifold and signal mercies which distinguish our lot as a nation” and pray for “habits of sobriety, order, morality, and piety….”

Future presidents followed Washington’s lead. John Adams issued two lengthy proclamations calling for national days of “solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer.” Thomas Jefferson, who declared a day of thanksgiving while serving as governor of Virginia, declined to do so as president. James Madison became the last president before Abraham Lincoln to appoint national days of prayer, inviting the American people to offer “their humble adoration to the Great Sovereign of the Universe” and petition His aid.

These early prayer or thanksgiving proclamations featured several recurring components: gratitude for the blessings of heaven, penitence and repentance over sin and transgressions, and intercession for God to guide or protect the nation. The 16th president included each when revived and popularized the tradition in 1862. His 1863 proclamation featured Lincoln’s characteristically poetic language, reflective of the president’s growing conviction “that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment” for the sin of slavery, an idea he later explored in his Second Inaugural Address.

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God,” Lincoln mourned. “We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.”

Also, in his Second Inaugural, Lincoln noted that “Both [the North and the South] read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other.” This appears to have been true, as Jefferson Davis, the president of the illegitimate Confederate States of America, also made thanksgiving declarations throughout the war.

Lincoln, at the behest of Sarah Josepha Hale, the author of Mary Had a Little Lamb, made Thanksgiving a federal holiday, meaning Thanksgiving proclamations became a permanent feature of the presidency post-Lincoln. However, at the time, the occasion focused less on extravagant meals and holiday shopping, and more on gratitude to God and prayer.

Ulysses S. Grant maintained the call for the American people to abstain “from all secular pursuits and from their accustomed avocations” and instead “offer to Almighty God their acknowledgments and thanks for all His mercies and their humble prayers for a continuance of His divine favor.” Although Grant controversially pushed for the separation of Church and State in public education, resolving “that not one dollar of money appropriated to their support, no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school,” he nevertheless emphasized the value of religion.

“Let us all labor to add all needful guarantees for the more perfect security of free thought, free speech and a free press, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments and of equal rights and privileges to all men, irrespective of nationality, color or religion,” he said.

Theodore Roosevelt issued his prayer proclamations with a typical sense of daring and adventure: “Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds. We can best prove our thankfulness to the Almighty by the way in which on this earth and at this time each of us does his duty to his fellow-men.” Calvin Coolidge invoked the early American revivals, complete with his signature skepticism of the federal government: “Peace, justice, humanity, charity; these cannot be legislated into being. They are the result of a Divine Grace.”

In 1952, Congress passed a joint resolution establishing an annual National Day of Prayer inspired by Billy Graham. Addressing a crowd of 40,000 in front of the Capitol, the American evangelist envisioned, “What a thrilling, glorious thing it would be to see the leaders of our country today kneeling before Almighty God in prayer. What a thrill would sweep this country. What renewed hope and courage would grip the Americans at this hour of peril.” Two days later, the House of Representatives unanimously approved the bill to create a National Day of Prayer, which was signed into law by Harry S. Truman.

Every president since then has issued a proclamation for the occasion. In 1988, Ronald Reagan amended the bill to set the first Thursday of every May as the permanent date. However, post-inauguration prayer services remain common. As Reagan commented during his First Inaugural Address, “It would be fitting and good, I think, if on each Inaugural Day in future years it should be declared a day of prayer.”

Over the years, the line between rhetoric and personal religious fervor has blurred, resulting in Joe Biden becoming the first president to issue a National Day of Prayer proclamation without mentioning God.

Nevertheless, the ritual of praying for God’s blessing, guidance, and protection over our country remains an important one. Today, as the nation gathers in prayer for the new administration, may we find inspiration from the presidents before us.