On Jan. 3, 2025, Mike Johnson (R-LA) was reelected as speaker of the House. After his reelection, Johnson recited a prayer that he suggested was written by Thomas Jefferson and recited every day in the House during Jefferson’s presidency.
Johnson’s prayer, which he called 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 may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honorable ministry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion, from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitude brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endow with Thy spirit of wisdom those to whom in Thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth. In time of prosperity fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail; all of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”
Johnson said he wanted to share the prayer as “a reminder of what our third president and the primary author of the Declaration of Independence thought was so important that it should be a daily recitation.”
THE QUESTION
Did Thomas Jefferson write the prayer Speaker Mike Johnson recited in the House?
THE SOURCES
- Thomas Jefferson Foundation
- Library of Congress
- Recommendations for the Protestant Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer from 1885 and 1919
THE ANSWER
No, Thomas Jefferson did not write the prayer Speaker Mike Johnson recited in the House.
WHAT WE FOUND
The prayer Johnson recited has been falsely attributed to Jefferson for years, but Jefferson did not write it and it was not recited in the House daily during his presidency.
The earliest version of the prayer, written as recited by Johnson, appeared more than a century after Jefferson’s presidency, which was between 1801 and 1809.
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation says there is “no evidence that this prayer was written or delivered by Thomas Jefferson,” and it’s unlikely that Jefferson would have composed or delivered a public prayer like the one Johnson recited because Jefferson considered religion to be a private matter.
No such prayer exists among the archives on the Library of Congress’ pages on religion at the time of America’s founding, which compile documents regarding religion from the first four American presidents at the time of their presidencies.
While the Library of Congress page shares a version of the Lord’s Prayer written by Jefferson, it makes no mention of a national prayer written or endorsed by Jefferson.
Some of the prayer’s lines match a prayer that appeared in the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church’s 1885 recommendations for changes to the church’s “Book of Common Prayers.”
In those recommendations, a prayer titled “For the country” includes a line that says “Save us from violence, discord and confusion, from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way,” which is almost identical to a line within Johnson’s prayer. Much of the language within the church’s prayer is similar to the one recited by Johnson, although not identical.
The version of the prayer as recited by Johnson first appears in later recommendations for changes to the Episcopal Church’s “Book of Common Prayer” submitted by a commission in 1919. Again, a prayer titled “For our country” appears, but this one mirrors the version recited by Johnson, save for a couple of words.
The prayer made it into the finalized version of the 1929 “Book of Common Prayer.” The prayer remains in the current version of the “Book of Common Prayer,” which was published in 1979.
Historian Seth Cotlar, Ph.D., documents misattribution of the prayer to Jefferson as far back as the 1950s in a thread on Bluesky. A 1941 article in The Witness, a publication founded by the Episcopal Church, notes that the “For our country” prayer was commonly incorrectly attributed to George Washington at the time.