Thomas Jefferson didn’t write prayer recited by Mike Johnson

On Jan. 3, 2025, Mike Johnson (R-LA) was reelected as speaker of the Home. After his reelection, Johnson recited a prayer that he instructed was written by Thomas Jefferson and recited day-after-day within the Home throughout Jefferson’s presidency.

Johnson’s prayer, which he known as Thomas Jefferson’s Prayer for the Nation, is as follows:

“Almighty God, Who has given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech Thee that we could all the time show ourselves a folks aware of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honorable ministry, sound studying, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion, from pleasure and conceitedness, and from each evil approach. Defend our liberties, and vogue into one united folks the multitude introduced hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endow with Thy spirit of knowledge these to whom in Thy Identify we entrust the authority of presidency, that there could also be justice and peace at house, and that by obedience to Thy regulation, we could present forth Thy reward among the many nations of the earth. In time of prosperity fill our hearts with thankfulness, and within the day of hassle, undergo not our belief in Thee to fail; all of which we ask by Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”

Johnson mentioned he needed to share the prayer as “a reminder of what our third president and the first creator of the Declaration of Independence thought was so necessary that it must be a day by day recitation.”

Did Thomas Jefferson write the prayer Speaker Mike Johnson recited within the Home?

No, Thomas Jefferson didn’t write the prayer Speaker Mike Johnson recited within the Home.

The prayer Johnson recited has been falsely attributed to Jefferson for years, however Jefferson didn’t write it and it was not recited within the Home day by day throughout his presidency.

The earliest model of the prayer, written as recited by Johnson, appeared greater than a century after Jefferson’s presidency, which was between 1801 and 1809.

The Thomas Jefferson Basis says there may be “no proof that this prayer was written or delivered by Thomas Jefferson,” and it’s unlikely that Jefferson would have composed or delivered a public prayer just like the one Johnson recited as a result of Jefferson thought-about faith to be a non-public matter.

No such prayer exists among the many archives on the Library of Congress’ pages on faith on the time of America’s founding, which compile paperwork concerning faith from the primary 4 American presidents on the time of their presidencies. 

Whereas the Library of Congress web page shares a model of the Lord’s Prayer written by Jefferson, it makes no point out of a nationwide prayer written or endorsed by Jefferson.

A few of the prayer’s strains match a prayer that appeared within the Basic Conference of the Protestant Episcopal Church’s 1885 suggestions for modifications to the church’s “E book of Widespread Prayers.”

In these suggestions, a prayer titled “For the nation” features a line that claims “Save us from violence, discord and confusion, from pleasure and arrogancy, and from each evil approach,” which is sort of equivalent to a line inside Johnson’s prayer. A lot of the language throughout the church’s prayer is just like the one recited by Johnson, though not equivalent.

The model of the prayer as recited by Johnson first seems in later suggestions for modifications to the Episcopal Church’s “E book of Widespread Prayer” submitted by a fee in 1919. Once more, a prayer titled “For our nation” seems, however this one mirrors the model recited by Johnson, save for a few phrases.

The prayer made it into the finalized model of the 1929 “E book of Widespread Prayer.” The prayer stays within the present model of the “E book of Widespread Prayer,” which was revealed in 1979.

Historian Seth Cotlar, Ph.D., paperwork misattribution of the prayer to Jefferson way back to the Nineteen Fifties in a thread on Bluesky. A 1941 article in The Witness, a publication based by the Episcopal Church, notes that the “For our nation” prayer was generally incorrectly attributed to George Washington on the time.