God, War, Thanksgiving
Reflections on the holiday, 2001 and all time.

By John J. Pitney Jr., professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and author of The Art of Political Warfare.
November 22-25, 2001

Since the war on terror began, houses of worship have grown more crowded, and previously secular people have been looking for something spiritual. Thanksgiving may help them find it, since the holiday involves faith. After all, thank is a transitive verb. On the fourth Thursday in November, we thank the source of all of our blessings — and that source is not eBay, or the Department of Health and Human Services.

Most Americans — much to the annoyance of the ACLU — know about Thanksgiving's religious character. And another side of the holiday has been less prominent in recent years, but is highly appropriate to remember in 2001. At many times in the past, Americans said their Thanksgiving prayers with military matters in mind. They didn't join hands in candlelight parades and sing "Kumbaya." They folded their hands, bowed their heads, gave thanks for battlefield successes, and asked for ultimate victory.

A brief review of the holiday's history will drive these points home.

In 1777, the Continental Congress issued the first national Thanksgiving Proclamation. The occasion was the Battle of Saratoga. The proclamation urged Americans to "express the grateful feelings of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their Divine Benefactor." Though Saratoga had been a great victory, the patriots understood that a great deal of fighting lay ahead. Therefore, they asked God to "smile upon us in the prosecution of a just and necessary war, for the defense and establishment of our unalienable rights and liberties."

Five years later, after the revolutionaries had won, the Congress gave thanks for the cooperation between the United States and its allies, "notwithstanding the artful and unwearied attempts of the common enemy to divide them." To show this gratitude, the Congress recommended "the practice of true and undefiled religion, which is the great foundation of public prosperity and national happiness."

In 1863, following the Union victory at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation setting the precedent for the holiday that we now celebrate. Although the war went on, he observed, the theater of conflict had been "greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union." He therefore declared the last Thursday in November as a day of "Thanksgiving and Praise" to "the Most High God."

Theodore Roosevelt's 1908 Thanksgiving proclamation said that "we owe it to the Almighty to show equal progress in moral and spiritual things," explaining that "in the nation as in the individual, in the long run it is character that counts." (President Clinton often quoted TR, but somehow he missed that line.) Roosevelt never had to fight a full-scale war during his presidency, but nevertheless did not hesitate to merge spiritual and martial rhetoric, exhorting his fellow Americans to "set our faces resolutely against evil" and show an "unflinching determination to smite down wrong."

In a similar vein, ten years later, President Wilson asserted in his Thanksgiving proclamation that the end of the First World War had "not come as a mere cessation of arms" but "as a great triumph of Right." And he took care to celebrate the armed forces of the United States: "In a righteous cause they have won immortal glory and have nobly served their nation in serving mankind. God has indeed been gracious."

On Thanksgiving Day of 1942, the darkest year of World War II, FDR issued a proclamation that has a contemporary ring: "The final months of this year, now almost spent, find our Republic and the Nations joined with it waging a battle on many fronts for the preservation of liberty." Solemnly expressing "our dependence upon Almighty God," he concluded the message with the 23rd psalm.

For thousands of years, warriors have turned to one particular line of that psalm. No doubt, Americans in uniform are reciting it today: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."

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