Evangelist Franklin Graham (son of Billy) said recently on Fox News that “The National Day of Prayer goes back to the Continental Congress with George Washington, when he set aside a day of prayer.” Graham apparently went on to invoke the “Judeo-Christian” tradition, and that evangelical Christians are somehow carrying forward the true intentions of George Washington.
But, Jonathan Hutson reports at Talk to Action, the new blog devoted to discussing the Christian Right and ways of most effectively opposing it, that Graham is misrepresenting what Washington said and what he meant. “In fact,” Hutson writes, “President George Washington used his first proclamation of a national day of prayer and thanksgiving to take a preemptive slap at anyone who might try to hijack the holiday for their own sectarian purposes.”
I wrote the other day, “If religious equality is to survive in our time, I believe it is necessary for us to reclaim our history and stand up to the historical revisionism of today’s theocratic Christian Right.” Reclaiming our history was one of the three main themes of my speech at the recent conference on the theocratic Christian Right in New York a few weeks ago.
Hutson’s debunking of Graham’s slippery invocation of Washington and the founders is exactly the kind thing we need more of, and that we are committed to doing at Talk to Action.
