Ben Franklin decided he wanted to update the Lords Prayer. Why did he do that?
He had several reasons. He wrote a long commentary explaining why he did it. Essentially he thought the language was archaic, and the meaning of some of the words had changed. So he was trying to do a Good News version of the Lord’s Prayer. I was surprised to see Franklin say during the Constitutional Convention, “I have lived, sir, 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?” Franklin then asked to start each day of the Constitutional Convention with prayer. He pointed out that in the early days the Continental Congress and the Confederation Congress, in the dark days of the revolution, always began their sessions with prayer. He made this request for prayer at a particularly difficult and contentious time in the Constitutional Convention when it looked like the states might not be able to
