[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 874 Introduced in House (IH)]
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117th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. RES. 874
Supporting the designation of a National Year of Humiliation, Fasting,
and Prayer.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 19, 2022
Mrs. Rodgers of Washington submitted the following resolution; which
was referred to the Committee on Oversight and Reform
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Supporting the designation of a National Year of Humiliation, Fasting,
and Prayer.
Whereas the people of the United States have unspoken sentiments and concerns
about our Nation;
Whereas we believe our Nation is unique, distinctive, and exceptional;
Whereas American exceptionalism is too often misunderstood to mean something
that it is not, and it does not mean--
(1) justification to dominate or condescend to other nations or indulge
in flattery to ourselves that we are better; or
(2) that we are a chosen people or that circumstances give us privilege
to circumvent law;
Whereas our Nation is bound by the same universal moral principles that must
bind and shape the behaviors of all civilized nations. In this regard we
are the same as all nations. And yet we are different--very different in
a very important way;
Whereas it is not wealth or military power that makes us exceptional. It is not
our institutions nor the genius of our written Constitution or our Bill
of Rights. Not directly. These are manifestations of something more
fundamental and profound;
Whereas our exceptionalism is based on something else, a singular belief, a
proposition underlying all legal and constitutional beliefs;
Whereas our assertions of human equality and unalienable rights: life, liberty,
and the right to pursue happiness, the right to find meaning and purpose
and value in our individual lives, derives from a single assertion--that
life, given to us by Creator God, is the moral basis of the unshakable
bedrock of our Republic;
Whereas that proposition--the thing that makes us distinctive--is that we
believe a Creator God endowed us with rights. Not just us. Everybody.
Everywhere;
Whereas it is a gigantic revolutionary belief. And it is belief. It is our faith
statement. It is what speaks to the soul of our Nation;
Whereas there are many great and ancient nations that believe in freedom as we
do. Most countries in the world claim the rule of law and have written
constitutions. Many use the language of rights and equality and declare
for human dignity. But none have a coherent basis for doing so;
Whereas we alone occupy that space. God gave us rights--made us in His image and
therefore demonstrated all human beings are created equal. Even the
unborn. From conception;
Whereas the poor, the infirm, the old, the weak, all colors and kinds, all
races, all of us are endowed by the Creator, equally, because we are
made in His image;
Whereas, without this fundamental belief, rights become only social protocol,
conventions, historic inheritances, creatures of state citizenship,
class, identity, features of consensus, and they become malleable and
fading creatures in the capricious hands of willful men;
Whereas America is different because God endowed us with rights;
Whereas that belief is either true or it is false. If it is false, then we
Americans, among all mankind, are most to be pitied. The experiment must
fail. It cannot and must not succeed;
Whereas, if it is true, then we have built our country on a foundation that
cannot be shaken if we are true to it--we are anchored to the eternal
bedrock of all truths. As Lincoln said, ``as a nation of free men we
will live forever or die by suicide'';
Whereas to those whom are given much, much is expected. And somewhere deep down
inside ordinary Americans know this. It is in the air we breathe;
Whereas only we ourselves can end this great experiment, and there are no
external mortal forces that can overcome the bulwarks of that eternal
truth;
Whereas what we believe matters, our invisible immaterial beliefs are the
strength of the national soul, and the things that we hold to and serve
are the foundations of our institutions, our laws, our liberty, and the
hope of the Nation;
Whereas, when the Founders established this Republic 250 years ago and created
the institutions that guide us, they were well aware that those
institutions were insufficient in themselves to govern a free people;
Whereas the lifeblood and heartbeat of the Nation is moral character. Not the
institutions. Not the institutions or even the laws in themselves. For
laws and institutions are corruption without the rectitude and wisdom of
a moral, decent people themselves;
Whereas without the people bracing themselves to wisdom and the holdfasts of
character our institutions have no power to preserve us;
Whereas if the people ever lose their love of truth, justice, goodness, and the
efflorescence of beauty that flourishes in them--there can be no hope in
the parchment barriers of a Constitution or the institutions created by
it. No matter how noble that hope is. In effect everything rises and
falls in our Republic as consequence of the character of the people;
Whereas as a Nation we live or die by the standards of our own moral character;
Whereas the Founders knew this--but many of us know we are forgetting it;
Whereas John Adams wrote to the militia of Massachusetts, ``We have no
government armed with power capable of contending with human passions
unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition and revenge would
break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a
net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It
is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.'';
Whereas John Adams is saying that the power of the state is not secured by the
power of arms, but is anchored in the honesty and decency of the people;
Whereas today this may seem a quaint notion, but the Founders who experimented
in government to create a just and free society understood explicitly
that freedom and justice are not the product of institutions but rather
institutions that defend freedom and justice are the product of a moral
people;
Whereas freedom cannot exist without morality. George Washington understood
this. John Adams understood this. Abraham Lincoln understood this. Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this;
Whereas when we drift from the Creator we drift from the source of our own
liberty;
Whereas when we forget our duties to God we forget our duties to each other;
Whereas when we become prideful and lazy and forget the Father of all rights we
become the orphans of oppression, and we are lost without the guiding
hand of the Almighty;
Whereas it may seem that Congress is not the place to introduce an appeal to
God, but our rights and all our institutions are based upon the
presumption of a just and Almighty God;
Whereas Congress itself rests upon the foundation that our Creator gave us the
right to govern themselves;
Whereas Abraham Lincoln said, ``It is altogether fitting and proper that we do
this'';
Whereas we the people of the United States continue our search for a more
perfect union;
Whereas we are a people conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition
that all are created equal, yet like in the days of President Abraham
Lincoln, when he observed that ``we have forgotten the gracious hand
which preserved us in peace and multiplied, enriched, and strengthened
us'';
Whereas ``we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all
these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our
own'';
Whereas we confess we are a self-consumed, prideful, and unloving people, quick
to point out the speck in another person's eye while missing the log in
our own;
Whereas we are trusting in our wealth and skill and leaning on our own
understanding;
Whereas we have become ungrateful, lovers of pleasure, stubborn, hardhearted,
divisive, and unforgiving;
Whereas we confess that instead of speaking of forgiveness, we cry out for
vengeance, and we have allowed the poisonous root of bitterness to grow
up to trouble us;
Whereas the global pandemic of COVID-19 has intensified fear, unknowns, chaos,
and confusion;
Whereas the impact of lockdowns and isolations has been severe further
exacerbating the breakdown of mental health, families, communities, and
our Nation;
Whereas we are divided, perhaps like we haven't seen since the Civil War, when
President Abraham Lincoln by faith prayed saying, ``May we again devote
ourselves to prayer and acknowledge as a people and as a nation our
dependence upon the overruling power of God. Let us confess our sins and
transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with the assured hope that genuine
repentance will lead to mercy and pardon'';
Whereas, by faith, at the 1787 Constitutional Convention when the outcome looked
grim, Benjamin Franklin appealed to the delegates and urged prayer
asking, ``I have lived, a long time, and the longer I live, the more
convincing proofs I see of this truth--that God governs in the affairs
of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice,
is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?'';
Whereas, during World War I and at the signing of the Armistice, President
Wilson proclaimed, ``Complete victory . . . God has indeed been
gracious, let us thank Him.'';
Whereas this year marked the 80th anniversary of the initial National Bible Week
declaration made by President Franklin D. Roosevelt just weeks before
the start of World War II;
Whereas George Washington Carver, born a slave during the Civil War, testified
in 1921 in front of the House Ways and Means Committee expounding on a
myriad of ingenious uses for the peanut transforming the economy and
which had been revealed to him by faith as he regularly walked through
the woods at 4 a.m.;
Whereas President John F. Kennedy said, ``The guiding principle of this nation
has been, is now, and ever shall be `In God We Trust''';
Whereas Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., encouraged us to ``Pray daily to
be used by God in order that all men might be free'';
Whereas it is time for us to offer a resolution to humble ourselves and entreat
wisdom from God--the Father of all blessings and mercy: a resolution of
national contrition, prayer and fasting. A resolution in the great
tradition of our free people. We have as His guidance many times before.
A resolution to return to the wellspring of liberty and our rights; a
resolution to depart from iniquity and entreat His guidance. A prayer
that we remember Him as the Father of every good thing that we have, and
everything as a Nation and people we aspire to be; and
Whereas we must ask ourselves, what might God do in the next 365 days if we
commit to reading His Word daily and praying together weekly for our
Nation? In our families? For this generation in misery and despair? We
are expectant that He will do immeasurably more than all we could ask or
imagine (Ephesians 3:20), and that He will hear from Heaven, forgive our
sins, and heal our land (2 Chronicles 7:14): Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) expresses support for proclaiming a year of National
Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer;
(2) prays that in this hour of our great need, our
Sovereign God will come and do again as He has done in days
gone by;
(3) prays for a time of healing from our brokenness--broken
lives, broken families, broken communities, and broken system;
(4) humbles ourselves, prays, seeks God's face, turns from
our wicked ways, and thanks and praises the God of our
ancestors who has given us wisdom and strength and who controls
the course of events; and
(5) calls upon the people of our Nation to humble ourselves
before our Creator and acknowledge our complete dependence upon
Him, to repent of our pride and selfishness, and ask the Lord
to break our hearts for the things that break His heart; that
we may we not miss hearing His voice, and that He will pour out
His spirit, once again, on our Nation and leaders.
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