HOW CAN WE PRAY, with honesty and humility, for the United States of America? We asked ministers, writers, activists, and faith leaders to write prayers for our nation. Some have roots in this land that run deeper than the Declaration of Independence, others are more recent additions to the American tapestry. With words of confession, thanksgiving, and supplication, they wrote from their hearts. Some prayers ring with hope, others carry the weight of years of harm to the land and people. But all these prayers are written with love, a love willing to tell the truth, even when it hurts; a love that never fails. This is the truest form of patriotism. This is what it means to seek the peace and welfare of the land in which God has placed us (Jeremiah 29:7).

May you find in these words the power of remembrance in a culture of intentional forgetting, encouragement amid despair, and joyful connection with our Creator and with all creation beyond national boundaries.

As you read these words, what is your prayer for our nation? Email us at [email protected].

—The Editors

I am taking a break from praying,
from filling the air
with droning words,
bombarding the heavens with hail
Mary appeals,
I am taking a break from the dollar-bill
god I do not trust,
in the name of the ones
who are preyed upon daily
I am giving up the privilege of praying,
of oh saying what I see,
of instagramming shock, forwarding
photos of martyrs on WhatsApp,
I am taking up the sackcloth
and ashes of those who have perished,
my anger the measure of my anguish,
my silence a measure of my love.

Creator, we lament with the land itself—Turtle Island who holds the bones
of our ancestors, who lost their liberty in 1776—dispossession masquerading as destiny. We lament treaties broken
like promises made to trusting children.
We grieve fires extinguished, languages silenced, seeds scattered to the wind.
We mourn a nation that, 250 years on, still lies about its own founding. Hear our cry—not for a return to a greatness that never was, but for the humility to begin again: to learn, at last, how to be good relatives to the whole community of creation.

O Vahiguru (Divine), please help us
remember our origin, that we come from you, that you are the original source of us all. In remembering this,
we are reminded that we are all
interconnected, and that each of us
is divine. That to care for one another
is your worship, that to serve one another is prayer. Let us remember that you are in each and every one of us, that you reside in our hearts, and that when we can recognize this, we can live in such a way that promotes liberty and justice for all.

How haunted this stolen land.
How harrowing this story of empire.
How holy the lives and lineages of survival.
Let us pray to become an unraveling, undoing, unlearning—
a collective un-blessing of the U.S. of A.
Casting off all loyalty to its patterns of destruction, its thrones of corruption,
its deceiving stories of god, humanity, and history.

May the Spirit of Truth come like a day of reckoning.
May the people be reborn in the image of Courage.
May we rise in power-with, making sacred solidarities.
May our offerings be laid at the altar of remembrance—
communing with ghosts of lives stolen, exploited, enslaved, and sacrificed.
May the land call us home to the lost parts of ourselves.
May the Grace of Transformation
welcome the seeking.
May the Righteous Fury of Love grow more fed-up each day.
May the laborers who harbor and tend, comfort and disrupt, be praised.
And may the Power of Resurrection sustain life in the ruins, present and to come, until this cruel world order falls its inevitable fall and all the Earth’s children can begin to reach for what it will take to heal.

Sustainer of Life, who abundantly
nourishes all that breathes, teach us
to treat this land as the mother she is, trusting that it is she who produces fruit and not our extractivist ways.
Let our labor regenerate and not exploit.
Give fair wages and enough rest to the
farm worker, distribute subsidies to the ones in need, that no one will have billions while some go without shelter and food. With gratitude, accept
the offerings we bring to this land
that we may share in the joy of Christ who fed a multitude with five loaves
and two fish.

Ancient of Days, who carries the memory of all who have walked this land from the Coahuiltecan to the Tongva,
the Igbo and the Toisanese,
uproot narratives that limit belonging and protection to white Christian people. Shatter the memos that normalize the use of race, language, religion, or
line of work to enforce unjust laws.
Help us honor your image in every person, particularly those the state has deemed unworthy. May the memory of creation, where everything and everyone had a place, inform the dream of a shared future that we may embody the beloved community, where all needs are met, and no one is afraid.

Jesus Child, you who were carried
into foreign lands to be saved, grant
that we may receive those who seek
refuge in this land and that we tear down the laws that turn them away.
Embolden us to confront the cruelty inflicted upon them as you confronted those who defiled your law of love.
Teach us to welcome, that we may
experience the rich blessing of shared community by laying down our belief that our way is the most worthy way,
so we may know Christ who emptied
and humbled Christ’s self.

Oh God,
who works through the hands of Shiphrah and Puah,
who parts the waters and turns tables,
who beats swords into plowshares,
and who embodies a refusal
to let death have the final word,
we pray for the collapse of the U.S. empire.

We pray that empires can fall
without guns,
without bombs,
but with singing,
and with rivers,
and with ancient, unending prayers.

We pray empires can fall
in a way that does not leave rubble,
but compost.
Rotting, smelly, dirty,
but packed with possibilities
of new life yet to come.

We pray empires can fall
and when all goes dark,
we realize we can see the stars again.

We pray that when empire falls
there will be queer-led dance parties
in the street, and mutual aid potlucks overflowing with peaches and tomatoes,
that we honor the dead and tell their stories, and celebrate the ways
we kept one another alive.

We pray all this to the one
who intervenes in history
and can do infinitely more than
we can ask or imagine.
May the walls come crumbling down.
Amen.

As Christians
who have made a home
for ourselves in the United States,
we pray for your mercy, O God
of judgment and grace,
for our country has cut off aid
to hungry neighbors and
has unwelcomed the stranger,
we have plundered the wealth
of the masses to fund a war machine, and we have defunded our systems
of care, abandoning the sick
and those in prisons. In turning
our backs on our neighbors,
near and far, we’ve estranged you
from our country. Our nation has
denied your presence among us.
Save us, O God, from our sins,
while there is still time, before
this country perishes
in an eternal fire
of self-destruction.

Oh Divine, we are told the goal was liberty, but it has never been seen by many. We lament that we are told this land is your land and mine, knowing
full well it was stolen from its caregivers. Oh God, we are again asked to endure a celebration of a nation (this time its 250th) that only mandated freedom for enslaved individuals 160 years ago but still holds captive the lives of multitudes.

So, what are we celebrating? Constant war? Racism, homophobia, transphobia, and rights being quickly taken away for so many?

Lord, how can we celebrate liberty when our souls feel captivity? How do we believe in freedom when our hearts feel imprisoned? We cry out to you in despair: on our boldest days seeking a reckoning, and on our meekest days merely seeking comfort that we are not alone in the paradoxical tension of our nation’s past and future. Will there be a day when there is liberty and justice for all?

O God of Truth,
thank you for your voice that melts
the façade of U.S. exceptionalism.
O Trinity, thank you for exposing
the hypocrisy and corruption within
our three branches of government.
O Creator God, thank you for the witness of Indigenous communities who yet survive, who yet resist,
who yet wait patiently for life after whiteness to come.
O God of darkness, thank you
for walking with Black America through the fiery furnace of slavery’s afterlife.
O Jesus the alien, thank you for standing with the Latinx community behind ICE detention center bars.
O Holy Spirit the quiet one, thank you for liberating Asians from the clutches of being model minorities.
O Holy Mirror, thank you for slowly freeing White America from the burden of supremacy.
O God of All Nations, thank you for listening to the prayers of Global South Christians who have prayed against America’s supremacy for years on end.
O God, thank you for being God
all by yourself. Thank you for being no stranger to Calvary. Thank you for the women at the tomb who show us how to bury well. Thank you for the hope of life after death. Thank you, God. Amen.

“O humankind, indeed, We have created you from male and female and made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.”—Quran 49:13

God of all nations, 
You made us into many so we might become one. 
On this 250th anniversary of America, 
fulfill Your own design in us: 
Out of many, one. 
Not by erasing our differences, but by honoring them in mutual respect. 
Bless this land to be a true home for every tribe and tongue, 
and guide us always to know one another in peace. Ameen.

… whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends ...

May we meet the next days 
of this country with accountability for— 
and all possible repair toward— 
each of its previous chapters.

May we dissolve all the harmful 
structures upon which it was built.

May we create a more whole future 
in which every person and community here—and all interconnected systems 
of the Earth—may thrive.

May we serve the Holy through 
our care for one another, 
through work for collective liberation: 
through love made real. Amen.

God of the cosmos, in this moment 
of remembering, we refuse easy triumph and come instead with truth on our lips. We confess how deeply we have been formed by empire, how its logic has shaped our desires, our silences, 
and our sense of what is normal. 
There are times we have sought comfort at the expense of others’ dignity and chosen safety over solidarity. Still, you call us back. So, we lay down the ways 
we have mirrored what harms 
this world and release our grip 
on control, on fear, and on scarcity. Ground us in your mystery, a presence not contained by nation or border 
but alive in what the world calls weak. Remind us that we belong to you, 
to the land, and to one another. 
Hold us in your mercy, both those who have upheld injustice and those crushed by it. Give us clarity and humble courage. Teach us to walk in wholeness and liberation, to choose love that frees, justice that restores, and a peace rooted in truth, so that we might honor your image in this fragile, beloved world.

Loving God, 
on our 250th 
anniversary 
as a nation, 
help us to be 
just, 
loving, 
merciful, 
grateful, 
compassionate, 
and, above all, 
kind.

Help our nation mirror 
the kind of people 
we want to be.

And help us to avoid 
envy, 
cruelty, 
violence, 
boasting, 
prejudice, 
nationalism, 
scapegoating, 
and malice towards anyone

Help us to be loving, 
As you are, 
Loving God. 
Amen.