Last week, President Bush issued a Thanksgiving proclamation,
something virtually every President has done virtually every year
since 1863. Before then, Thanksgiving proclamations were the
exception, rather than the rule, but even the exceptions are
instructive and interesting.
President Bush’s proclamation contains two explicit references
to God and one mention of “our Lord.” There are four variations on
the words blessed and blessing, and two references to prayer.
Still, it is hardly the most explicitly religious of the
proclamations Presidents have issued, and surely lies squarely
within the mainstream of such efforts. Only the most doctrinaire of
secularists could find a reason to object.
Thanksgiving is an interesting holiday, at once civic and
religious. It commemorates and celebrates human accomplishments,
like our purely civic holidays, but insists that they are all in
some way dependent upon God’s will. Thus many of the 19th century
proclamations expressed gratitude for “exuberant harvests,
productive mines, [and] ample crops of the staples of trade and
manufactures,” in the words of Rutherford B. Hayes. Others made
grateful reference to our “civil and religious liberty” (U.S.
Grant) and to “liberty, justice, and constitutional government”
(Chester A. Arthur). Still others thanked God for “the blessings of
peace” (Benjamin Harrison). While it’s hard to overlook the
contribution of human effort to all these accomplishments, it’s
also hard to ignore the way in which at least some of them seem
dependent upon God.
The origin of Thanksgiving in the celebration of a successful
harvest helps account for this complication. Farmers recognize
their dependence upon forces beyond their control. When they can
actually reap what they sow, they know that something other than
their own efforts has played a part, providing rain and sunshine in
the right amounts at the right time.
Looking to God for what might otherwise be regarded as the gifts
of fortune, we might come to share in the theologically
discriminating judgments expressed in Grover Cleveland’s 1887
Thanksgiving proclamation:
The goodness and mercy of God, which have followed the
American people during all the days of the past year, claim their
grateful recognition and humble acknowledgment. By His
omnipotent power He protected us from war and pestilence and
from every national calamity; by His gracious favor the
earth has yielded a generous return to the labor of the husbandman,
and every path of toil has led to comfort and contentment; by
His loving kindness the hearts of our people have been
replenished with fraternal sentiment and patriotic endeavor; and
by His unerring guidance we have been directed in the way
of national prosperity.
We should be grateful, Cleveland says, for protection from what we
are wont to call “acts of God,” for the generous recompense for our
efforts, for the love we share with our neighbors and fellow
citizens, and for our leadership.
Some of these sentiments might seem to jar the modern ear. How
does God show us the path to peace and prosperity? That’s what
political leaders are for, we might say. In any event, we surely
hold — are surely holding — Presidents responsible for our
domestic economy and our international troubles.
Part of the explanation can be found in George Washington’s
second Thanksgiving proclamation (1795), much less frequently cited
than his first. Calling upon us “to meet together and
render…sincere and hearty thanks to the Great Ruler of Nations
for the manifold and signal mercies which distinguish our lot as a
nation,” he urges us as well to:
Humbly and fervently…beseech the kind Author of these
blessings graciously to prolong them to us; to imprint in our
hearts a deep and solemn sense of our obligations to Him for them;
to preserve us from the arrogance of prosperity, and from hazarding
the advantages we enjoy by delusive pursuits; to dispose us to
merit the continuance of His favors by not abusing them; by our
gratitude for them, and by a correspondent conduct as citizens and
men; to render this country more and more a safe and propitious
asylum for the unfortunate of other countries; to extend among us
true and useful knowledge; to diffuse and establish habits of
sobriety, order, morality, and piety, and, finally, to impart all
the blessings we possess, or ask for ourselves, to the whole family
of mankind.
Yes, we have intelligence and ingenuity, but unless we recognize
them as gifts of God, we are prone to abuse and misuse them,
exalting ourselves in our arrogance and deluding ourselves
regarding our potency. By reminding us of our limitations, giving
thanks to God humbles us. We ought not to be confident that we know
it all, that we have all the answers. And we ought not to regard
our capacities as ours alone, to be used as we please. We are
accountable for them, not just to our fellow citizens, or to the
voters, but to God.
Here’s how Abraham Lincoln put it in his 1863 proclamation of a
“Day of Thanksgiving, Praise, and Prayer” (in August, by the way,
not in November):
I invite the people of the United States to
assemble…in their customary places of worship and in the forms
approved by their own consciences render the homage due to the
Divine Majesty for the wonderful things He has done in the nation’s
behalf…and finally to lead the whole nation through the paths of
repentance and submission to the divine will back to the perfect
enjoyment of union and fraternal peace.
We can’t be thankful without at the same time being humble and
submissive.
The balance struck by most Presidents in their proclamations,
looking outward at the nation while also looking upward to God,
reminds us of our limitations and our responsibilities, and of the
resources beyond ourselves upon which we can call to overcome the
one and fulfill the other. This is a civic religion, but not one
that glorifies the country or the state. It conjoins liberty and
limited government, on the one hand, with responsibility and
limitless love, on the other. It acknowledges and indeed cherishes
our religious diversity, seeking to include all rather than to
exclude any.
That makes it just about my favorite civic holiday. Let us all
give thanks.
