Biden's proclamation of National Day of Prayer omits the word 'God'

When the Biden presidency does something odd, it is impossible to read the event the same way the actions of previous presidents could be examined. We never know if a doddering mediocrity has once again misspoken or if some nameless handler is implementing a plan that is part of the transformation of America being foisted upon us with a bare majority in Congress.

At least we know that yesterday's official Proclamation on National Day of Prayer was not a Biden verbal gaffe of the sort we are already well accustomed to. In its 470 words, not once did the word "God" appear, something that might be somewhat understandable in a spontaneous speech. The proclamation was a document drafted by some staffer, even though it is signed at the bottom "Joseph R. Biden." (Not only is that normal for presidents, but Biden has a long history of claiming others' words as his own.)

Franklin Graham, one of many religious leaders to take disapproving note, "speculated that the proclamation might have been written by a staffer and not even reviewed by Biden, saying 'I don't think Joe Biden would approve that one.'" He might well be correct that Biden didn't bother reading it. My take on the man is that he spends his time resting and husbanding his energies, not endlessly reviewing documents and editing them to improve them. But that raises the question of who did write it, and why omit naming the Deity to whom one prays?

But do all who pray direct their prayers to God? We hope those who exercise power at the highest level of government do worship The Lord, but my confidence in that proposition has waned of late.

'Omitting God is a dangerous thing. He is who we as individuals and as a nation need to call on for help,' Graham wrote in a Facebook post. 'Prayers to anyone or anything else are to no avail.'

The U.K. Daily Mail's account of the kerfuffle includes this troublesome assertion:

Biden, a devout Catholic, typically ends his public remarks with the phrase 'May God bless you all, and God protect our troops' — but his proclamation for Thursday's Day of Prayer contained no such acknowledgement of a higher power.

Also it has been pointed out that even President Trump and VP Pence omitted chastising passages in the 2017 proclamation, empasizing our asking for God’s help but not asking for repentance.

June 12, 1775, The Continental Congress, under President John Hancock, declared:

Congress … considering the present critical, alarming and calamitous state … do earnestly recommend, that Thursday, the 12th of July next, be observed by the inhabitants of all the English colonies on this Continent, as a Day of Public Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer, that we may with united hearts and voices, unfeignedly confess and deplore our many sins and offer up our joint supplications to the all-wise, omnipotent and merciful disposer of all events, humbly beseeching Him to forgive our iniquities.

And on March 30, 1863 (first Day of Prayer) Abraham Lincoln made clear what Biden and his handlers try to forget:
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and 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. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

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