Thanksgiving Day brings us together around dinner tables to give thanks. Americans, no matter what their professed formal religious confession, or lack of such profession, know we are directing this thanks to Some-One. The One we thank is the God who our founders recognized, even if they did so in differing ways. This is the God who can lead our Nation toward recovery in a time of need and unite us in the midst of growing divisions.

The United States of America is in crisis. We are fracturing within because we have lost our national identity. We need to affirm again the fundamental moral values which ground what historians still call the American experiment in ordered liberty. The experiment continues, and we are the ones charged with making its promise real.

The words of the pledge we offer at public events remind us we are still, “one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”. Though we have yet to reach that place of promise we must not cease to stretch toward it.  We should use this National Holiday to reaffirm our reliance upon God and acknowledge our need for His Mercy.

The Declaration of our Independence from an unjust civil ruler was our birth certificate. It affirmed there are self-evident truths which are written on every human heart by the finger of God. It proclaimed there are inalienable rights which do not come from civil government but are endowed upon us by that same God.

We need leaders who will summon us to return to God. We have had them in the past and we need them right now. At the request of Congress, George Washington, the first President of the United States of America, issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation on October 3, 1789. The words of that proclamation cry out today:

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and-Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.

Washington did this in another time of  National crisis. The image of him bending the knee to the Almighty at Valley Forge, should be the frame through which we choose future Presidents. His words summoned our forebears to turn toward heaven and focused them on giving thanks for our blessings:

That we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favor, able interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

He was unashamed about proclaiming and leading a time of national repentance and calling a diverse people to acknowledge the One who can set all men and women free. “And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions.”

He knew that by our own power we are unable to rise to the myriad of challenges we faced, so he led us in prayer, asking God “to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually.” He knew that any human government, if it is to be just and humane, must acknowledge the government of God.

So he asked God “to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord.”

Finally, he understood there is an indispensable moral foundation to authentic freedom and he was unafraid to lead us in this plea to God “to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.”

Our first President was a great leader because he knew the source of greatness. He ended this proclamation with these words, “Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.”

That sincere reliance upon God expressed by George Washington should direct our response to the challenges we face today. We are still one Nation under God. He has not moved, we have. It is time to come back to the source of our liberties.

As Christians we have a special obligation to rise to this moment and help others who are succumbing to the fears which accompany this time of crisis.  Christians must not be numbered among those who simply curse the darkness and decry the loss of liberty. We must become the ones who relight the torch of liberty.

Thanksgiving Day reminds us there is no real separation between the secular and the spiritual. After all, God is the Creator of all and the Author of life. He is also the source of all that is good — whether He is acknowledged to be so or not. There is a difference between a secular state, a state which welcomes all religious expressions or none at all, and “secular-ism”, an oppressive anti-religious regime which seeks to censor out of the public forum the wonderful contributions of the Church, people of faith and the great ideas informed by faith which have shaped the West.

We need great leadership in this urgent hour. In 1975 an Orthodox Christian named Alexander Solzhenitsyn told the US Congress: “Very soon only too soon, your country will stand in need of not just exceptional men but of great men. Find them in your souls. Find them in your hearts; find them in depths of your country.”  We need such leaders today, both men and women. People who will bend the knee and point the way toward a future of freedom.