The American Prayer Project
The American Prayer project, committed to highlighting the impact of prayer in the life of America, began almost a decade ago. The unusual circumstances under which it was launched and the exceptional team of individuals and organizations who have come together to bring the project to life have been rather extraordinary. James P. Moore, Jr., its creator, offers some perspective into the unfolding story of Prayer in America. A slideshow of photos from the project tour can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/9801660@N03/.
Long before Moses parted the Red Sea, Buddha described the path toward nirvana, Christ died on the cross, and Muhammad revealed the message of the Koran, there was prayer.
- From One Nation Under God: The History of Prayer in America
At the Beginning ….
Life seems to throw curve balls at us when we least expect it. It’s what we do with them that often defines who and what we are.
It was a major curve ball came my way on October 13, 1997.
Having had a fulfilling background as U.S. Assistant Secretary, among other government positions, I had begun my own investment banking firm with operations in such far flung capitals as Moscow, Doha, Caracas, and Guatemala City. While I enjoyed the work, I was confronting corruption it seemed at every turn while I also was working around the clock. One of my responsibilities in government had been to work with U.S. businesses to avoid running afoul of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Now that I was in the private sector, I couldn’t imagine a more untenable position.
Confronting my dilemma, I decide to do what I had always done since I was a boy — turn to God for guidance. And so, in the tradition of my Catholic faith, I decided to pray a novena. On the ninth and final day of the novena, Columbus Day, I went to Mass early in the morning. When I returned home, I could hear the telephone ringing as I was turning the key. On the other end of the line was my brother, Terry, who practiced family medicine with my father in Ford City, not far from Pittsburgh, the town where I had grown up. He called to let me know that very quietly and very unexpectedly our father had died in the middle of the night.
I got off the phone and sat that there thinking, “God, how could this happen? I came to you over the past nine days to ask for your help, and on the last day you take my father away from me? How does that work?”
In the coming months I drove back and forth between Washington and Ford City to be with my mother and brothers, driving over the majestic Appalachian Mountains. I could not help but think of my father as I looked out at that spectacular American landscape. And then I began to think again about prayer, and it dawned on me, “If prayer represents the most private, innermost thoughts of an individual as it did for me, then it must say something about us as a people throughout our history.”