Several leaders of the Jubilee of Prayer on the Mall noted that it was being held today because, as Marco Rubio put it, 250 years ago today, “our forefathers gathered for a national day of fasting and prayer.” Actually, what the Continental Congress called for in 1776 was a “day of HUMILIATION, Fasting and Prayer.”
Humiliation. The modern folks left out that word.
Yes, the declaration approved by the Continental Congress asked God for support in the coming war with Great Britain and thank Him for his previous interventions. But it declared that the “day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer” would allow us to “confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and, by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease his righteous displeasure, and, through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness.”
I can’t help but think the modern leaders omitted the very Christian concept of ‘humiliation’—let alone bewailing—because they believe that admission of fault is admission of weakness.
One model for proper self-examination was the sermon preached May 17, 1776, by the Rev. John Witherspoon, President of Princeton and soon-to-be-delegate to the Continental Congress. In discussing our sinful nature, he suggested we work on “envy, malice, covetousness and other lusts of man.” Perhaps President Trump could address those.
The Jubilee’s organizers are right about this: the Founders did believe in Divine Providence, and they did ask for God’s intervention, sometimes using explicitly Christian language.
But the Founders did not intend these occasions to be about Owning the Deists by showing that they could audaciously mention God and Jesus, and Jesus some more. Nor were they meant to claim that God forever favored the United States. Rather, the point was to examine ourselves, and become worthy of God’s support.
