‘In times of great adversity’: 7 Thanksgiving proclamations issued during national crises

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Thursday, November 26, 2020

1979

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter takes questions from the media during a news conference about his recent cancer diagnosis and treatment plans, at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia August 20, 2015. | Reuters/John Amis

By the end of the 1970s, the United States was experiencing a major economic downturn in large part because of the gas crisis, as Middle Eastern oil imports dramatically declined.

In his proclamation that October, President Jimmy Carter explained that Thanksgiving “was first celebrated in this land not in a moment of unbridled triumph, but in times of great adversity.”

“Like those who came before us, we come to give thanks for our singular deliverances and blessings, in a time of both danger and great promise,” he stated.

“May we be thankful in proportion to that which we have received, trusting not in our wealth and comforts, but in the strength of our purpose, that all nations might be similarly blessed with liberty and abundance and live in peace.”