Why would Adams have asked for days of prayer and fasting?
There was what they called a quasi-war with France. The U.S. came close to having a war with France and that was alarming to Adams. Ben Franklin decided he wanted to update the Lord’s 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 revolut
