Prayer Before Public Meetings Is Common, but Practice Has Its Critics

TheLedger.com: On Sept. 7, 1774, at the request of Benjamin Franklin, the Continental Congress asked an Episcopal rector, the Rev. Jacob Duché, to give an invocation. Duché prayed for the success of the independence effort, that God would ‘unnerve’ the hands of British soldiers and concluded with the words, ‘All this we ask in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ, thy Son and our Savior.’”