National Day of Prayer

On Thursday at noon, our family joined a group of about 50 people gathered at Wasilla City Hall to pray for various concerns in observance of the National Day of Prayer. This was the first time I had taken part in anything like this, and I confess I attended partly out of curiosity. But the primary reason I went was in response to an invitation from a friend who is the youth pastor at a church down the road from ours.

Different pastors and others led in reading Scripture and prayer, and we spent time in small groups praying for matters such as the government, churches, and families.

I was glad I went. I am pro-prayer, and I believe that Christians are clearly commanded by the Scripture to offer prayer for the governing authorities (1 Tim. 2:1, 2). So, I am certainly in favor of the principle of a time of intercession for these concerns.

But, I did feel a certain amount of ambivalence about the event. I'm generally wary of expressions of a generic civic religion that are characteristic of something like a call for a National Day of Prayer. For example, one woman present read a proclamation from the Governor of Alaska calling for Alaskans to participate in the National Day of Prayer. Everyone there (probably all Christians) applauded after it was read, but I'm not sure why. The statement was so broad and inclusive as to endorse virtually any kind of "spiritual" activity: prayer, meditation, peace activism, promotion of social justice, or "another form of contemplative action." In other words, it was no clarion call for specifically Christian prayer. In fact, it was no clarion call for even theistic prayer - the word "God" was conspicuously absent in the proclamation.

Just by virtue of who was present, it was a Christian prayer meeting. No one was asked to not pray in Jesus name. However, my discomfort stems from a fear that Christians, though certainly well-meaning in their participation and support of these sorts of events, may be unwittingly led to compromise what is the most vital thing of all for Christians: belief that God can only be approached through His Son Jesus Christ (John 14:6). It is faith in Christ as the only way to the Father that makes Christians Christians, and therefore for a Christian to take part in any service of worship or prayer that is not Christ-centered is a serious mistake at best. Yet civic religion demands just that (unless, of course, all who show up happen to be Christian, as seemed to be the case on Thursday).

Again, I am glad Christians are praying for the nation and the local churches. At the end of the day, however, the only hope for a world perishing in sin is the good news of the death and resurrection of Christ. If the church loses this message, she has lost her gift to the world, and all the prayer and "contemplative action" in the world will not help.