The D-Day Prayer Offered by Over One Hundred Million People

It’s possible that never before or since have so many Americans prayed together, led neither by a priest nor pastor, but by the president of the United States.

Eighty-one years ago tonight, as American troops and soldiers of the Allied Expeditionary Force descended upon the coast of France in an unprecedented military operation to wrestle control of the continent back from the Nazis, President Franklin Roosevelt took to the radio airwaves to lead the nation in prayer.

Composed days earlier with the help of FDR’s daughter and son-in-law, the words to the prayer had been published in the country’s newspapers. Inspired by the president’s worn copy of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, the wide distribution was intended to allow for Americans to recite the words of divine petition along with their president.

It’s estimated that 100 million Americans tuned in at 10 p.m. eastern time. The audience size is even more impressive when you consider the entire population of the country was just 130 million people.

Prayer has long been the most powerful yet often underused of all human acts. That we have the privilege and capability to communicate directly with the Creator of all things is too implausible for some and too intimidating for others. And yet that’s precisely what we’re able to do — anywhere, anytime and about anything.

FDR’s “D-Day Prayer” would be cited and recited for the remainder of the war, but even these many decades later, its petitions and pleas to God hold up well in a fractured and fragile America.

Could President Trump lead and compel so many to bring their hurts and hopes, their fears and frustrations to the Almighty? Would the ACLU even allow it? Perhaps not, but that doesn’t stop each of us from asking God to intervene and show us the way forward.

In the opening words of his prayer, President Roosevelt qualified the D-Day invasion as “a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.”

We might not be literally facing down the barrel of a gun today, but make no mistake: there is an ideological, philosophical and spiritual battle going on. FDR asked God for “strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith” — and that’s what’s still needed 81 years later to face our troubles.

There is a battle raging for the hearts and minds of our children and for the convictions of their parents. There is an all-out assault on reality. There is a struggle over the basic understanding of the most fundamental of truths regarding male and female, the sanctity of life, the value of marriage, the rights of parents and our religious freedom, to name only a few issues.

“They will need Thy blessings,” prayed FDR. “Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.”

Clashes of culture require patience and persistence. Yes, we vote. But we also must live responsibly, lovingly, graciously, and cooperatively. In the words of the playwright Marcus Porcius Cato, “Fate rewards those who earn it.”

FDR prayed, “For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.”

It’s long been a lie that people of the Christian faith engage culture to establish a theocracy. Instead we pour ourselves into the effort because societies that welcome faith thrive — and those that reject it fail.

President Roosevelt concluded by asking God to “conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies” and to ward off the “schemings of unworthy men.” No matter your party or your politics, that should be a prayer we can recite with one accord.

Image credit: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum