Those of us who hold positions of leadership and the people whom we represent must confront these tragic affairs and learn their meaning for us as a nation. These are not matters that can be covered up in the hope they will be forgotten, even though it is always easier to hide our wounds than to heal them.
It is more comfortable to believe in the spiritual symbols of righteousness than to acknowledge the reality and presence of evil in ourselves and in our corporate life. So we become adroit at manipulating religious impulses in our land to sanctify national life.
We tend to put our country beyond the reach of God’s judgment. The words on the back of our Great Seal read, “God hath ordained our undertakings.” Our money is emblazoned with “In God We Trust.” Our leaders solemnly invoke the name of God in their political speeches. We earnestly want to believe that ours is God’s chosen land; that we are his chosen people, and that the leaders we have are divinely chosen and given special wisdom.
This impulse is born out of our own lives. We would rather believe that we merit God’s blessing than admit that we stand under His judgment and are in need of His forgiveness. But however difficult it is to admit our sin, the evidence of it is all around us in the personal dilemmas of our lives and in the crises that afflict our nation; Saint John reminds us that “If we refuse to admit that we are sinners, then we live in a world of illusion and truth becomes a stranger to us.” (1 John 1:18) Continued belief in national self-righteousness, therefore, no matter what we as a nation do, only leads us into greater peril.
We acknowledge that God requires justice, but we have tended to turn our corporate backs to the injustices of racism that continue to threaten the very fabric of our society. We condone by our inaction inhuman conditions in our cities and rural areas where millions are trapped in ever deepening ruts of poverty.
We have become gluttons of the world’s resources at a time when much of the world does not know the source of its next meal. This nation, composing only 6% of the world’s population, last year consumed 40% of all energy used on this planet.
Many believe that our security comes through our materialism, our wealth, and our gross national product. So we despoil our environment and neglect the quality of man’s spirit in order to expand our materialistic self-indulgence.
We are now capable of destroying most of the world’s population in a few moments through the power of nuclear warfare. We operate on the assumption that human life is expendable and rationalize this axiom on the sole basis that this is what our enemy believes; so this must be our belief also.
We are in need of repentance. Our claims of righteousness, as individuals, and as a nation, deceive only ourselves. We should remember the words of the prophet Amos: “I hate, I despise your feasts, and your solemn assemblies, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take away from me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melody of your viols. But let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (5:21-24)
President Abraham Lincoln had a profound sense of the sovereignty of God. He knew how the nation stood accountable to God’s judgment. In the midst of the Civil War, the U.S. Senate requested, and Lincoln responded on three separate occasions to a resolution setting aside a day for national humiliation, fasting and prayer.
Seeing the effects of a nation torn apart, President Lincoln did not appeal to any pretentious image of national self-righteousness; rather, he called the nation to repentance. He believed that only through the acknowledgment of our corporate guilt and confession of national sins that the country could regain its national purpose and unity. Lincoln recognized that though the nation had prospered, “we have forgotten God.” Because the nation had begun to believe that it had flourished through its own superior wisdom and virtue, Lincoln stated, “It behooves us. . . to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
Today our nation has once again been torn apart by a crisis from which there appears little relief. Our refusal to acknowledge our dependence and need for a Power beyond ourselves has severely damaged our national soul. I believe that only a national confession of corporate guilt can save us from the worship of our own finite power and the tragedies that this worship creates. Therefore, today I am introducing a Congressional Joint Resolution calling for a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer. This resolution is modeled after that declared by Abraham Lincoln on April 30, 1863, and incorporates much of his original wording.
I would suggest that April 30, 1974 be chosen for that day which would coincide with the same date when President Lincoln issued his historic Proclamation. Our Government and the other institutions of our society would all cease business as usual, as I envision it, so that we all would be free to consider actions appropriate to a time that would symbolize national repentance.
It is my firm conviction that a genuine spirit of repentance, infecting the climate of our nation at all levels, can heal the wounds that presently afflict us. Reconciliation of the division and animosities that exist among our people can occur once there is a mutual acknowledgment of this need for contrition, which allows human compassion to grow.
There is hope for a land and a people who have the capacity to recognize their sins and their faults, and turn from them. Repentance means precisely this--to turn the other way. In so doing, we recognize that past events and present conditions cannot be rationalized or justified; rather, they must be repented of so a whole new way can be sought. This is how individuals and how our land as a whole can seek authentic renewal and transformation. So it is with this hope that I commend to the Senate this Resolution calling for a Day of Humiliation. Fasting and Prayer in our land.
When this article appeared, Mark O. Hatfield was a United States Senator from Oregon and a Contributing Editor to the Post American.
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