A sign outside Trinity Church in New York City is shown inviting worshipers to "come in and pray for Allied victory" during the invasion of Normandy on D-Day on June 6, 1944. (FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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In his D-Day prayer to America, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.”
“… I ask that our people devote themselves into a continuance of prayer … And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade.”
Historian Stephen Ambrose wrote in his book, “D-Day, June 6, 1944: the Climactic Battle of World War II”:
“Across the United States and Canada church bells rang….Special services were held in every church and synagogue in the land. Pews were jammed with worshippers.”
- Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York City hosted an impromptu prayer service on D-Day before a crowd estimated as large as 50,000 people in Madison Square Park in Manhattan.
- The bells of the historic Old North Church in Boston rang that morning, while schoolchildren “recited the Lord’s Prayer in every classroom in Massachusetts,” The Boston Herald reported that day.
- The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia rang for the first time in 109 years, among countless other chimes of support across the nation. “Philadelphia Mayor Bernard Samuel tapped the bell … sending its voice throughout the country,” Ambrose wrote. “Then he offered a prayer.”
An enormous crowd gathered in Madison Square Park on D-Day in New York City on June 6, 1944. (FSA/Interim Archives/Getty Images)
Churches and synagogues opened around the clock…
It’s notable that D-Day was a Tuesday, not a typical day of church services, and the date of the invasion was a carefully guarded secret. Still, Americans awoke that morning, heard the news and reflexively rallied around their faith.
“Led by President Roosevelt, the entire country joined in solemn prayer yesterday for the success of the United Nations armies of liberation,” wrote reporter Laurence Resner in a front-page story on The New York Times on June 7, 1944.
The New York Times editorial board, led by Arthur Hays Sulzberger, great-grandfather of the outlet’s current chairman, A.G. Sulzberger, wrote on June 7:
“This nation was born in the only revolution in history made in the name of God. It was born of the conception that the rights of man … are given him by God as the inalienable birthright of the human being.”
The editorial appeared under the headline, “Let Us Pray.”
It continued: “We pray for the boys…we pray for our country…the cause prays for itself, for it is the cause of the God who created men free and equal.”
Excerpted from a June 6, 2022 FoxNews report.
