“We pray especially, our Father, for the President of the United States, thy servant who so recently addressed us from this stand, and with whose remarks and sentiments and the truths that he uttered our hearts were so powerfully impressed and our minds illumined. We desire, with all our hearts, that his life may be spared, that thou wilt deliver him from the sickness that now afflicts him, that thou wilt rebuke the destroyer in his behalf and raise him up to continue the mighty work unto which thou hast called him. We pray thee, O God, to touch him with a healing touch, to let the peace and light and power of the Holy Spirit rest upon him. give him the faith to be healed. Bless those about him with faith and with the full command of all their knowledge and skill and judgment and wisdom, that they may render to him the assistance of which he stands in need; and all that is done for him, may it have thy blessing upon it to this end, that he may be spared to continue the work which thou hast given him to do.”
– Orson F. Whitney, praying for U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, in 1919 general conference
I never know quite what to think about Wilson. My history classes back in school led me to think of him as one of the great presidents, who only reluctantly went to war and worked for peace. More recently, I can also see him as a Virginia segregationist who was so enthusiastically racist that the Klan came back.
All that said, a prayer for the president to enjoy the “peace and light and power of the Holy Spirit” can only be good, regardless of the personal failings or strengths of the person in office. Its effectively a prayer for the president to do good, for the good of the nation.
All through high school I remember Wilson being lionized, especially for his prescient vision for a League of Nations. Subsequently I learned about the dark side, and some of the wierd things that took him off the pedestal. A president who could run on an anti-war platform, “too proud to fight,” who nonetheless could respond with a war message after lesser provocations in his second term, a president so racist he, in my estimation, singlehandedly undid reconstruction, a president who ran around in circles with his fingers in his ears because he didn’t want to listen to an advisor, a president whose Chief of Staff and wife could act for a good year in his stead without anyone being the wiser. I am appalled by how little I knew.
I no longer keep Wilson in my pantheon of the great. He is not alone in that either. So many of them fall to earth if you study the history. Others rise a bit, thank goodness.
It is natural enough to want to think the best of our nation’s leaders, but we have to recognize they were men of their times, and just as flawed as those we have today. All the greater a reason to pray for them.