Subject: Fw: A Patriot Thanksgiving
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 19:02:32 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
22 November 2005 | FederalistPatriot.US | Patriot
No. 05-47
THE FOUNDATION
"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess
a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and
blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and
faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity
all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of
liberty, property, religion, and independence." —Justice
Joseph Story
GIVING THANKS ... FOR HIS SIGNAL AND MANIFOLD MERCIES
"Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with
praise.
Give thanks to Him and praise His name.
For the LORD is good and His love endures forever;
His faithfulness continues through all generations."
(Psalm 100:4-5)
Why is America such a blessed land? Some point to its
bountiful resources, its vast and glorious expanses. Others
point to that which is inspired by these geographical
gifts—the freedom, the entrepreneurial spirit, the economic
and technological wonderment. Still others, however, would note
the rancor and recrimination that currently poison our political
discourse—and argue forcefully that this country is blessed no
more.
Were we to field the question, we would answer it
differently, for we believe our nation to be so heaped over with
blessings that only the most jaded would deny our indebtedness
to Almighty God for His continuing favor. Pressed further, we
would say that America is blessed not so that we should thank
God, but blessed because we have, continually, from our earliest
days on this continent, given thanks to God and humbly sought
ever-better to follow His precepts.
Consider this history: Though the "First
Thanksgiving" by name was in the Virginia Colony in 1607,
our Thanksgiving heritage has its roots with the Pilgrims'
three-day feast in early November of 1621.
The Pilgrims were Puritans, Calvinist Protestants who
rejected the institutional Church of England. After a brief,
ill-starred sojourn in Holland, the Pilgrims left Plymouth,
England, on 6 September 1620, sailing for a new world that
offered the promise of both civil and religious liberty. For
almost three months, 102 hardy seafarers braved the bitter
elements to arrive off the coast of what is now Massachusetts,
in late November of that year.
On 11 December, prior to disembarking at Plymouth Rock, the
voyagers signed the "Mayflower Compact," often cited
as America's original document of civil government and the first
to introduce self-government. While still anchored at
Provincetown harbor, their Pastor John Robinson counseled,
"You are become a body politic...and are to have only them
for your...governors which yourselves shall make choice
of."
Governor William Bradford described the Mayflower Compact as
"a combination made by them before they came
ashore...occasioned partly by the discontented and mutinous
speeches that some of the strangers amongst them had let fall...
That when they came a shore they would use their owne libertie;
for none had power to command them..."
Upon landing in America, the Pilgrims conducted a prayer
service and then quickly turned to building shelters. Starvation
and sickness during the ensuing New England winter killed almost
half their population. But through prayer, hard work and the
assistance of their Indian friends, the Pilgrims reaped a rich
harvest in the summer of 1621. The settlers knew clearly that
their new-world enterprise sought civil and religious liberties,
but, disastrously, under pressure from investors funding their
colony, they reluctantly organized their efforts communally,
holding all fruit of their labors in common so as to send back
half their profits as investment returns. Predictably, their
work yielded little success, and Plymouth Colony was in danger
of foundering after two years.
Governor William Bradford recorded the following in his
history of the colony: "At length, after much debate of
things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst
them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own
particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other
things to go in the general way as before. And so assigned to
every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of
their number."
The Plymouth Colony's first Thanksgiving to God was
celebrated during the summer of 1623, when the colonists
declared a Thanksgiving holiday after their crops were saved by
much-needed rainfall. The reorganization of their labors toward
ownership and property rights set them on the proper path to
reaping continual rewards. Families working together primarily
for their own betterment were freer—and were better able to
pay off the investors.
As the Plymouth Pilgrims' experience clearly demonstrated, a
governing body steeped in liberty and virtue is the sole sure
guarantor of private property, family security and preservation
of freedom.
By the mid-17th Century, the custom of autumnal Thanksgivings
was established throughout New England. Observance of
Thanksgiving Festivals spread to other colonies during the
American Revolution, and the Continental Congresses, cognizant
of the need for a warring country's continuing grateful
entreaties to God, proclaimed yearly Thanksgiving days during
the Revolutionary War, from 1777 to 1783.
Our new nation's first official Thanksgiving Proclamation,
issued by the revolutionary Continental Congress on 1 November
1777, expressed gratitude for the colonials' October victory
over British General Burgoyne at Saratoga. Authored by Samuel
Adams, the man the other Founders turned to for reasoned
statements of liberties as God's blessings, it read in part:
"Forasmuch as it is the indispensable duty of all men to
adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to
acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to Him for benefits
received...together with penitent confession of their sins,
whereby they had forfeited every favor; and their humble and
earnest supplications that it may please God through the merits
of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of
remembrance...it is therefore recommended...to set apart
Thursday the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn
thanksgiving and praise, that with one heart and one voice the
good people may express the grateful feeling of their hearts and
consecrate themselves to the service of their Divine
Benefactor...acknowledging with gratitude their obligations to
Him for benefits received... To prosper the means of religion,
for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which
consisteth 'in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy
Ghost'."
We were at war then, no less than we are now, but do we still
offer such special thanks to God for our battlefield successes,
praying for the continued safe advance of our troops?
In one of the first acts of the new constitutional
government, our Founding Fathers officially recognized the
importance and rectitude of a day for citizens to come together
giving God thanks for our nation's blessings. After adopting the
Bill of Rights to the Constitution, Congress approved a motion
for proclamation of a national day of thanksgiving. Both
chambers of Congress asked President George Washington "to
recommend to the people of the United States a day of public
thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with
grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God,
especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to
establish a form of government for their safety and
happiness."
Washington thereby set his signature to the first day of
thanks for the liberties enshrined in our new Constitution, by
writing as follows:
"Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge
the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful
for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and
favor...
"Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the
26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these
States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is
the Beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that
will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our
sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of
the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation;
for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable
interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of
the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and
plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and
rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish
constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and
particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the
civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the
means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and,
in general, for all the great and various favors which He has
been pleased to confer upon us.
"And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering
our prayers and supplication to the great Lord and Ruler of
Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other
transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private
stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly
and punctually; to render our national government a blessing to
all the people by constantly being a government of wise, just
and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and
obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations
(especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless
them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the
knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the
increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant
unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He
alone knows to be best.
"Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3d
day of October, AD 1789."
As president, John Adams followed the custom of declaring
national days of thanks, and James Madison called for three
national observances of fasting and grateful prayer for
deliverance during the War of 1812. (In light of this, we can't
help but wonder what Madison, the Father of our nation's
Constitution, would have made of the notion that school prayer
is un-constitutional.) But in a foretaste of the
impermissibility that current-day secularizers attach to the
acknowledgment of God as Provider of our country's blessings,
Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams refused to continue the
practice of proclaiming a day of national thanksgiving.
Ironically, on the south bank of Washington's Tidal Basin,
etched in the marble of the Jefferson Memorial, is our third
president's immutable admonition about the origin of liberty:
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of
a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these
liberties are the gift of God?" Surely, they cannot, as
history would soon prove out.
After 1815, there were no further annual Thanksgiving
proclamations until our country was imperiled from the Civil
War, when Abraham Lincoln declared 26 November 1863 a Day of
Thanksgiving, calling for prayer and thanksgiving for the
nation, and saying in part, "[It is] announced in the Holy
Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are
blessed whose God is the Lord... It has seemed to me fit and
proper that...[God's blessings] should be solemnly, reverently,
and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by
the whole American people."
For the following 75 years, every subsequent president
repeated that proclamation, until 1939, when Franklin D.
Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving Day to a week earlier than had been
tradition, to lengthen the growing pre-Christmas consumer
frenzy. Two years later, Congress returned the celebration to
its traditional date and permanently set the fourth Thursday of
each November as our official national Thanksgiving. Alas, we've
come to commemorate the holiday with a near-perfunctory
acknowledgment.
Indeed, by this Thanksgiving, after 40 years of
secularization, our nation has strayed far from the soul-deep
thankfulness toward our Lord expressed by our first countrymen
and generations after them. How, then, can we recover and
properly bend our grateful hearts toward God in 2005?
To begin, we must seek to restore the bedrock of liberty and
democracy, the family. Recent contention has followed the adage,
"It takes a village to raise a child." The unspoken
portion of this aphorism implies that the goal of child-rearing
is forming good inhabitants of "the village." But this
can't account for our national heritage, our history of
remarkable challenges overcome by outstanding leaders and
Patriot citizens.
More astute analysts would argue that it takes a family to
raise a child. And while that is certainly close to the truth,
it still does not offer a complete account. We would submit that
it takes a family imbued in thanksgiving—and not only for
raising good children, but also for everything in a decent and
just society.
We must therefore confront those whose intent it is to turn
our country into a secular utopist commune, where public
religious exercise is forsworn and relegated to individual
private spheres. These secularists, of course, face an
insurmountable fact: Public observances of thanksgiving declared
by government leaders have been the hallmark of our nation since
its inception. Indeed, so long as our nation observes a
Thanksgiving holiday, two irrepressibly logical questions will
accompany it: Thanksgiving for what? And to Whom?
For citizens, participation is noncompulsory—each may
freely choose whether to give honor and gratitude to God, as
respect for liberty of conscience requires—but not for our
country if we wish to remain a land of liberty.
Here, then, we are left to ponder: What is the wellspring of
thanksgiving? Scripture tells us that the fear of the Lord is
the beginning of wisdom. Likewise, humility before our Heavenly
Father plants the seeds of gratitude. We often describe our
national character as based on self-reliance, but that is only
so insofar as we acknowledge that our ultimate reliance is on
Almighty God.
Our successes are not by military might, not by our
firepower, but by His blessing. What the Pilgrims, the
Revolutionaries and the Founders sought was liberty—but most
of all religious liberty. More than merely an adjunct or
afterthought to our manifold freedoms, our forbears knew that
religious liberty is the centerpiece of freedom: A nation that
freely gives thanks is a nation that will remain free.
"Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving..."
(Psalms 147:7)
On behalf of our National Advisory Board and your Patriot
staff, we wish God's blessing and peace upon you and your
families this Thanksgiving.
Semper Vigilo, Paratus, et Fidelis!
Mark Alexander
Visit our Children's
Thanksgiving Quiz.
Permission granted to reprint or forward this edition of The
Patriot.
(Publisher's Note: Regarding our Thanksgiving edition, as
with our Easter and Christmas editions, we take leave from the
rigors of research and analysis of contemporaneous news, policy
and opinion in order to focus on an eternal message, indeed a
Christian message. To our Patriot readers of faiths other than
Christianity, we hope that this edition serves to deepen your
understanding of our faith—the faith of our Founders.)
To our Patriot readers: Our annual 2005
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still need to raise $207,690 before yearend.
If you have not already done so, please take a moment to
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"Our fathers' God, to thee, Author of liberty, To Thee
we sing; Long may our land be bright With freedom's holy light:
Protect us by Thy might, Great God, our King."—Samuel
Francis Smith
Lex et Libertas—Semper Vigilo, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark
Alexander, Publisher, for the editors and staff. (Please pray
for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the
world in defense of our liberty, and for the families awaiting
their safe return.)
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