Rejecting FDR's D-Day Prayer

FDR’s highly nonsectarian prayer that he read to listening millions on the radio on D-Day 70 years ago is not typically controversial. It was a broad appeal for the Almighty’s protection of America’s sons as they were to face German machine guns on French beaches. It also braced America for the terrible losses that would follow. Men would die, FDR clearly acknowledged without euphemism, and he prayed God would receive their souls.

For several years there have been legislative attempts to add this prayer in some way to the WWII Memorial on the National Mall. Last year, Senator Rob Portman renewed the initiative. Of late, apparently the idea is now rumbling within a U.S. House subcommittee. Who knows when and whether it will ever emerge, much less become law. But the mere possibility of FDR’s prayer at a national monument bestirred an odd coalition into public opposition.