House Speaker Mike Johnson declared during the 75th annual National Day of Prayer that Americans’ rights “do not come from government” but from God, calling the Declaration of Independence “our national statement of faith.”
Speaking inside Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol, Johnson said prayer has shaped America “since the very beginning,” adding, “we are a praying nation.” He pointed to moments from Plymouth to Bunker Hill as evidence that American history has been “charted by the prayers of God-fearing people.”
Looking ahead to America’s 250th anniversary, Johnson urged the nation to remember what he called its “great moral inheritance.” Quoting the Declaration of Independence, he said America was founded on the belief that God “endowed us with our inalienable rights,” including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Johnson argued that this belief became “the foundation” for America becoming “the most free, most successful, most powerful and most benevolent nation in the history of the planet.”
