West Virginia’s Democrat Congressman Nick Joe Rahall addressed the U.S. House of Representatives, August 11, 1992:
“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce a House joint resolution calling for the designation of Thanksgiving week as ‘America’s Christian Heritage Week’ …
One of the first things we, our parents before us, and our children after us, learned in school was that the settlement of America came about because of the desire of oppressed peoples to have the freedom to worship as they please …
And while we watch … emerging democracies … turn from the long held atheism of communism to true religious freedoms, we find ourselves, with heavy hearts, watching our own Government succumb to pressures to distant itself from God and religion …
It was not … mere chance that placed the freedom to worship according to individual conscience among the first freedoms specified in the Bill of Rights …
When Abraham Lincoln sat apart a day for national prayer and humiliation, he cried out: ‘We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God …'”