Search Results for: Peter Bebergal

Praying For Prayer's SakeOn the National Day of Prayer

Posted on by

by Scott Korb

Listen to Scott, contributing editor to The Revealer, talk about the National Day of Prayer on BBC4’s “Sunday.”

As defenders of the National Day of Prayer will tell you, George Washington called for our first day of prayer in 1789: “That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war.” These same people will also point out that Abraham Lincoln proclaimed three such days during the Civil War, most famously on April 30, 1863, to mark what he called a necessary “Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer,” because “we have forgotten God.” Victories in Gettysburg and Vicksburg the following summer occasioned the 1864 proclamation; 1865’s National Day of Prayer was held June 1, in Lincoln’s memory. Continue Reading →

2007 Favorite Books

Posted on by

By Jeff Sharlet

The British New Statesman asked me to contribute to their round-up of best books of the year. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand the word count, and as a result only a 1/3 of my picks made it. (See the rest of the picks, from Amit Chaudhuri, Billy Bragg, Michela Wrong, and others, here.) Such lists, by anyone but the most devoted (and fulltime) critic, are a little silly — my list of recent books that I want to read is much longer than what follows, as is the list of books new to me that I read this year and loved, books I should have read a long time ago. (Wuthering Heights! Middlemarch!) But that won’t stop me from singing the praises of the new books I found especially interesting in light of my work for The Revealer… Continue Reading →