Calling the Nation to Prayer and Fasting

Thoughts on Ezra 8

In Ezra 7, Babylonian King Artaxerxes commissioned the priest Ezra to gather Jewish captives, return to their ancient homeland, rebuild the holy temple in Jerusalem, which had lain in ruins for decades, and also set up a separate civil government. In chapter 8, Ezra assembled the people, but before they set out on their dangerous trek:

Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river of Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God to seek from Him a safe journey for us, our little ones, and all our possessions. For I was ashamed to request from the king troops and horsemen to protect us from the enemy on the way, because we had said to the king, “The hand of our God is favorably disposed to all those who seek Him, but His power and His anger are against all those who forsake Him.” So we fasted and sought our God concerning this matter, and He listened to our entreaty (vv. 21–23).

He called for a time of fasting and prayer so the group could beseech the Lord’s intervention and assistance; and as Ezra attested, God answered their prayers. They journeyed safely to Jerusalem and successfully restored both the temple and civil government in their homeland.

The practice of calling the nation to a time of corporate prayer and fasting is repeated frequently throughout the Scriptures. For example, when the Ammonites came against Israel, King Jehoshaphat “turned his attention to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. So Judah gathered together to seek help from the Lord” (2 Chronicles 20:3–4). Esther also called the people to a time of prayer and fasting before she went to intervene with the king to save the Jews from the death decree issued by wicked Haman (Esther 4:16). And when Jonah preached to the people of Nineveh that God intended to bring judgment on them, “the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them” (Jonah 3:5), and their destruction was thus averted.

This Biblical model was repeated hundreds of times in early America.¹ In fact, on eight separate occasions during the American Revolution, the Continental Congress called the nation to a time of humiliation, fasting, and prayer,² and Founding Fathers who became state governors likewise called their own states to times of prayer and fasting, including signers of the Declaration Matthew Thornton,³ Samuel Adams,⁴ John Hancock,⁵ Samuel Huntington,⁶ Caesar Rodney,⁷ signers of the Constitution John Dickinson,⁸ John Langdon,⁹ John Taylor Gilman,¹⁰ William Livingston,¹¹ and others. This pattern, repeated so often before, during, and after the American Revolution, was also continued under the Constitution by U.S. presidents.

During Washington’s presidency, France and Great Britain were at war with each other, so Great Britain blockaded American ships coming to Europe for fear the materials they carried might be used by the French. This greatly strained relations between Great Britain and America, and in 1794, John Jay negotiated a treaty with the British (known as the Jay Treaty) to ease the growing tensions. But when the Jay Treaty was ratified in 1796, the French (still at war with Great Britain) responded by seizing 300 American ships bound for English ports to prevent any American supplies from reaching the British.

John Adams became president in 1797, and in an attempt to prevent war with France, he dispatched three diplomats to negotiate with French officials. But before the Americans were permitted to meet with those officials, the French agents demanded as preconditions: (1) a formal apology from President Adams, (2) a $10-million low-interest loan to the French government, and (3) a $250,000 personal bribe to the French foreign minister, Charles Tallyrand. Of course, the Americans refused.

The French continued to seize American ships and threatened an invasion of the United States. Congress therefore authorized a military buildup and began preparations for war. Adams’ political opponents believed he was exaggerating the situation and demanded proof of his claims. He therefore released an official report, including the official diplomatic correspondence, but with the actual names of the French agents withheld (they were identified only as W, X, Y, and Z).

On seeing the documents, Americans were outraged. A formal declaration of war against France was narrowly averted, but an unofficial naval war did occur (now called the Quasi-War), which lasted from 1797 until 1800. France eventually relented and signed a treaty with America in 1800, but in 1798 when war with France looked inevitable, President Adams called the nation to a time of prayer and fasting, explaining:

Seasons of difficulty and of danger . . . are a loud call to repentance and reformation; and as the United States of America are at present placed in a hazardous and afflictive situation by the unfriendly disposition, conduct, and demands of a foreign power, evinced [proved] by repeated refusals to receive our messengers of reconciliation and peace, by depredations [attacks] on our commerce, and the infliction of injuries on very many of our fellow citizens while engaged in their lawful business on the seas. . . . I have therefore thought it fit to recommend . . . a day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer.¹²

More than a decade later, and nearly three decades after the American Revolution, many promises made by the British at the end of the Revolution still had not been kept. In fact, British encroachments on American ships and property were increasing. The result was the War of 1812, sometimes called the Second American Revolution. President James Madison regularly called the nation to prayer and fasting throughout the war, explaining on one of those occasions:

I do therefore recommend [a day of prayer and fasting] . . . for the devout purposes of . . . acknowledging the transgressions which might justly provoke the manifestations of His Divine displeasure; of seeking His merciful forgiveness and His assistance in the great duties of repentance and amendment; and especially of offering fervent supplications that in the present season of calamity and war, He would take the American people under His peculiar care and protection—that He would guide their public councils, animate their patriotism, and bestow His blessing on their arms . . . and, finally, that turning the hearts of our enemies from the violence and injustice which sway their councils against us, He would hasten a restoration of the blessings of peace.¹³

In late 1860, it appeared that a national conflict was soon to begin, so President James Buchanan called the nation to a time of prayer and fasting, reminding the country:

In this the hour of our calamity and peril, to Whom shall we resort for relief but to the God of our fathers? His omnipotent arm only can save us from the awful effects of our own crimes and follies—our own ingratitude and guilt towards our Heavenly Father. Let us, then, with deep contrition and penitent sorrow, unite in humbling ourselves before the Most High, in confessing our individual and national sins. . . . Let our fervent prayers ascend to His Throne that He would not desert us in this hour of extreme peril, but remember us as He did our fathers in the darkest days of the Revolution and preserve our Constitution and our Union, the work of their hands, for ages yet to come. . . .Let me invoke every individual, in whatever sphere of like he may be placed, to feel a personal responsibility to God and his country for keeping this day holy.¹⁴

President Abraham Lincoln, while in the midst of the bloody Civil War, called the nation to a day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer, explaining in most profound terms:

It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truths announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. And insomuch as we know that by His Divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been 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—we have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined in 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! It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. . . . All this being done in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins and restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.¹⁵

Times of corporate humiliation and prayer were called in times of national danger and also in times of national tragedy. For example, in 1841 when President William Henry Harrison died, President John Tyler called the country to a time of special prayer, explaining:

When a Christian people feel themselves to be overtaken by a great public calamity, it becomes them to humble themselves under the dispensation of Divine Providence, to recognize His righteous government over the children of men, to acknowledge His goodness in time past as well as their own unworthiness, and to supplicate His merciful protection for the future.¹⁶

President Andrew Johnson called a similar day of humiliation, mourning, and prayer following the death of Abraham Lincoln,¹⁷ as did President Chester A. Arthur on the death of President James A. Garfield.¹⁸

America has a long history of following the Biblical precedent of observing times of corporate prayer and fasting, but this is a spiritual discipline that every Christian would do well to personally develop (Matthew 9:15). After all, Jesus noted that some situations in our lives change only through prayer and fasting (Matthew 17:21), and it allows us to spend time in concentrated prayer in our relationship with the Lord.

Endnotes

¹ See Deloss Love, The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1895), 464–514.

² See the Journals of the American Congress from 1774 to 1788 (Washington: Way and Gideon, 1823) for June 12, 1775; March 16, 1776; December 11, 1776; March 7, 1778; March 20, 1779; March 11, 1780; March 20, 1781; and March 19, 1782.

³ Matthew Thornton, “A Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer,” June 22, 1775, Evans #14275.

⁴ Samuel Adams, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer,” April 2, 1795, Broadside in the WallBuilders Collection; Samuel Adams, “A Proclamation for a Day of Solemn Fasting and Prayer,” May 4, 1797, Independent Chronicle (March 30, 1797).

⁵ John Hancock, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting and Prayer,” Independent Chronicle and the Universal Advertiser, March 26, 1789, 1; John Hancock, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer,” April 25, 1782, Evans #17593; John Hancock, “A Proclamation for a Day of Public Fasting and Prayer,” May 15, 1783, Evans #18024; John Hancock, “A Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer,” April 17, 1788, Evans #21236; John Hancock, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting and Prayer,” March 31, 1797, Evans #23549; John Hancock, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer,” March 29, 1792, Evans #24519; John Hancock, “A Proclamation for a Day of Public Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer,” April 11, 1793, Broadside in the WallBuilders Collection.

⁶ Samuel Huntington, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer,” April 17, 1788, Evans #21761; Samuel Huntington, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer,” Pennsylvania Packet or General Advertiser, March 4, 1780, 3; Samuel Huntington, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer,” March 31, 1791, Evans #23284; Samuel Huntington, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer,” April 12, 1792, Evans #24218; Samuel Huntington, “A Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer,” April 17, 1793, Dunlap’s Daily American Advertiser, March 30, 1793, p. 3; Samuel Huntington, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer,” April 22, 1789, Evans #21018; Samuel Huntington, “Proclamation for a Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer,” March 28, 1789, from Broadside in the WallBuilders Collection.

⁷ Caesar Rodney, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer,” May 6, 1779, Evans #43623.

⁸ John Dickinson, “A Proclamation for a Day of Public Prayer,” November 19, 1781, Evans #17134.

⁹ John Langdon, “A Proclamation for a Day of Public Fasting and Prayer,” April 6, 1786, Evans #19824.

¹⁰ John Taylor Gilman, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer,” April 19, 1804, Broadside in the WallBuilders Collection.

¹¹ William Livingston, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting and Humiliation,” January 17, 1777, The Papers of William Livingston, ed. Carl E. Prince (New Jersey Historical Commission, 1979), I:200.

¹² John Adams, “A Proclamation for a Day of Solemn Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer,” May 9, 1798, Russell’s Commercial Gazette (April 4, 1798); John Adams, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting and Prayer,” April 12, 1798, Norwich Packet, 2; John Adams, “A Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer,” March 6, 1799, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1854), IX:572.

¹³ James Madison, ”A Proclamation for a Day of Public Prayer,” Connecticut Mirror (July 20, 1812), 3; James Madison, “A Proclamation for a Day of Public Prayer,” July 23, 1813, Independent Chronicle (July 29, 1813), 3–4; James Madison, “A Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer,” January 12, 1815, The Yankee (November 25, 1814), 2.

¹⁴ James Buchanan, “A Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer,” January 4, 1861, from a Broadside in the WallBuilders Collection.

¹⁵ Abraham Lincoln, “A Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer,” April 30, 1863, The Liberator (April 24, 1863), 3; “A Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer,” August 12, 1861, from a Broadside in the WallBuilders Collection; “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting and Prayer,” July 17, 1864, Burlington Daily Hawk-Eye (July 14, 1864), 3.

¹⁶ John Tyler, “A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting and Prayer,” April 13, 1841, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, ed. James D. Richardson (U.S. Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1910), IV:33.

¹⁷ Andrew Johnson, “The President’s Proclamation of a Day of Humiliation and Mourning,” May 25, 1865, The New York Herald (April 25, 1865), 8.

¹⁸ Chester A. Arthur, “A Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation and Mourning,” September 26, 1881, from a handwritten draft in the WallBuilders Collection.