The “devoutly Catholic” President Joe Biden omitted any reference to Almighty God or Divine Providence on Thursday in his annual proclamation of the spiritually charged American feast of Thanksgiving.
In his memorable 1863 presidential proclamation instituting Thanksgiving as a national holiday, Abraham Lincoln urged his fellow Americans to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”
Even in the midst of the civil war, Lincoln recalled the many blessings and bounties bestowed on the nation, attributing them all to the Almighty.
“No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things,” Lincoln declared. “They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”
In this way, he enjoined his fellow citizens to offer up “the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings.”
And in case anyone forgets to thank Almighty God for these gifts, Lincoln also issued a warning, noting that these bounties “are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come.”
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to reporters as he visits the Nantucket Fire Department in Nantucket, Massachusetts on November 28, 2024. Biden and family are in Nantucket, Massachusetts for the Thanksgiving holiday. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Not long afterward, the 19th American president, Rutherford B. Hayes, issued a similar proclamation, earnestly recommending that, “withdrawing themselves from secular cares and labors, the people of the United States do meet together on that day in their respective places of worship, there to give thanks and praise to Almighty God for His mercies and to devoutly beseech their continuance.”
Biden, however, seems to have fallen into the trap of which Lincoln warned us, expressing gratitude “to the American people” while omitting any reference to the ultimate “Source” from which all blessings flow.
While remembering service members and veterans, first responders, firefighters, police officers, workers and union leaders, public servants and teachers, doctors and scientists, somehow Divine Providence gets no shout-out in Biden’s Thanksgiving Proclamation.
In failing to publicly thank God, Biden follows in the venerable footsteps of his predecessor Barack Obama, who, in 2016, also gave God the cold shoulder by similarly writing Him out of the feast.
Thus, while Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump all explicitly recognized Almighty God in every yearly Thanksgiving Proclamation, Biden has joined Obama in the infamy of secularizing the country’s most religious homegrown holiday.
