{"id":648,"date":"2009-01-18T17:47:52","date_gmt":"2009-01-18T17:47:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/why-did-fdr-start-having-praye.html"},"modified":"2009-01-18T17:47:52","modified_gmt":"2009-01-18T17:47:52","slug":"why-did-fdr-start-having-praye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/why-did-fdr-start-having-praye.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Did FDR Start Having Prayers at Inaugurals?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/imgs\/fdr%20second%20inaugural.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"fdr second inaugural.gif\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/128\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/01\/fdr second inaugural-thumb-500x342-2876.gif\" width=\"500\" height=\"342\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center;margin: 0 auto 20px\" \/><\/a><\/span>As I&#8217;ve been foraging through the history of inaugural prayers, one question has remained a mystery: why, in 1937, did Franklin Roosevelt start the tradition?<br \/>\nProfessor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiritual-politics.org\/2009\/01\/why_fdr_did_it.html#more\">Mark Silk has come up with an interesting and plausible theory. <\/a><br \/>\nPrior to 1937, the vice presidents were sworn in by their predecessor in the Senate chamber.  A prayer was said after the swearing in.  Roosevelt decided to have the vice presidential swearing in be part of the main event. Not wanting to deprive the Senate chaplain of his prayer role, he moved to the big stage too.<br \/>\nIn addition, Silk argues, Roosevelt undoubtedly saw a political opportunity so he created a second clergy slot and gave it to  Msgr. John A. Ryan &#8212; who was a major Catholic supporter of the New Deal.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiritual-politics.org\/2009\/01\/why_fdr_did_it.html#more\">Read Silk&#8217;s full theory and description of Ryan&#8217;s fascinating role as a FDR ally.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I&#8217;ve been foraging through the history of inaugural prayers, one question has remained a mystery: why, in 1937, did Franklin Roosevelt start the tradition? Professor Mark Silk has come up with an interesting and plausible theory. Prior to 1937, the vice presidents were sworn in by their predecessor in the Senate chamber. A prayer&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why Did FDR Start Having Prayers at Inaugurals? - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/why-did-fdr-start-having-praye.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Did FDR Start Having Prayers at Inaugurals? - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As I&#8217;ve been foraging through the history of inaugural prayers, one question has remained a mystery: why, in 1937, did Franklin Roosevelt start the tradition? Professor Mark Silk has come up with an interesting and plausible theory. Prior to 1937, the vice presidents were sworn in by their predecessor in the Senate chamber. A prayer&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/why-did-fdr-start-having-praye.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-18T17:47:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Why Did FDR Start Having Prayers at Inaugurals? - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/why-did-fdr-start-having-praye.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why Did FDR Start Having Prayers at Inaugurals? - Steven Waldman","og_description":"As I&#8217;ve been foraging through the history of inaugural prayers, one question has remained a mystery: why, in 1937, did Franklin Roosevelt start the tradition? Professor Mark Silk has come up with an interesting and plausible theory. Prior to 1937, the vice presidents were sworn in by their predecessor in the Senate chamber. A prayer&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/why-did-fdr-start-having-praye.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2009-01-18T17:47:52+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/why-did-fdr-start-having-praye.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/why-did-fdr-start-having-praye.html","name":"Why Did FDR Start Having Prayers at Inaugurals? - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-01-18T17:47:52+00:00","dateModified":"2009-01-18T17:47:52+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/why-did-fdr-start-having-praye.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/why-did-fdr-start-having-praye.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/why-did-fdr-start-having-praye.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Why Did FDR Start Having Prayers at Inaugurals?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}