House Speaker Mike Johnson sparked an unusual religion controversy last week when he recited a prayer in front of Congress after being reelected as speaker of the House.
The problem, at least according to some scholars, wasn’t that he prayed in the U.S. Capitol. It was that he claimed to be quoting former President Thomas Jefferson.
The prayer is “a reminder of what our third President and the primary author of the Declaration of Independence thought was so important that it should be a daily recitation,” Johnson said before he read his “prayer for the nation.”
He claimed that Jefferson prayed the words he was about to share every day of his presidency and every day after he left the White House until his death.
The prayer that Johnson read is a prayer of gratitude and a request for help. It asks God to guide leaders toward peace and to endow them with the spirit of wisdom.
“Save us from violence, discord and confusion, from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way,” the prayer reads, in part.
The prayer is familiar to Jefferson scholars, but many question whether it was actually written or recited by the former president.
The Jefferson Foundation calls out the prayer on its website, noting that, although it’s often associated with Jefferson, it’s unlikely he was the true source of the words.
“Ultimately, it seems unlikely that Jefferson would have composed or delivered a public prayer of this sort. He considered religion a private matter, and when asked to recommend a national day of fasting and prayer, replied, ‘I consider the government of the US. as interdicted by the constitution from intermedling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises,’” the Foundation’s website says.
The website notes that the prayer seems to have first emerged in historical documents in the early 20th century, long after Jefferson died.
As the Jefferson Foundation’s website makes clear, Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, is far from the first person to associate that prayer for the nation with Jefferson.
But he still faced pushback on social media and in news reports for repeating the challenged backstory.
“Dear Speaker Johnson, Please don’t make stuff up. The prayer that you read in the House Chamber today was not written by Thomas Jefferson and your claim that he recited it ‘every day’ is false,” wrote Rep. Jared Huffman, D-California, on X.
The House speaker did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post about lingering confusion over the source of the prayer.
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