The Founding Fathers' National Days of Prayer

Here's an interesting little primer on the Founding Fathers'  views about calling the national to prayer:

[Calling a national day of fasting and prayer] was an old practice that went back to the Continental Congress. They proclaimed thanksgivings and days of fasting and humiliation twice a year from at least 1776 to 1783. The state governments did it constantly. Jefferson, when he was governor of Virginia also proclaimed a day. He didn't do that as President, however.

Washington proclaimed one, too. He was requested by Congress to proclaim a thanksgiving at the end of the first session of Federal Congress in 1789....

Ben Franklin decided he wanted to update the Lord's Prayer. Why did he do that?
He had several reasons. He wrote a long commentary explaining why he did it. Essentially he thought the language was archaic, and the meaning of some of the words had changed. So he was trying to do a Good News version of the Lord's Prayer.

...Franklin [said] during the Constitutional Convention, "I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?" Franklin then asked to start each day of the Constitutional Convention with prayer.

He pointed out that in the early days the Continental Congress and the Confederation Congress, in the dark days of the revolution, always began their sessions with prayer. He made this request for prayer at a particularly difficult and contentious time in the Constitutional Convention when it looked like the states might not be able to agree on anything and dissolve themselves. So the Convention was in some danger of dissolving. So Franklin asked for prayer every day.