Prayer For Religious Liberty
God of Liberty and Justice for all,
We have set this day as a day of celebration for a gift you have given us through the hard-won wisdom of those who have gone before in this land, indeed for a founding idea within this land.
We celebrate our freedom to stand before you on our own footing uncompelled and uncoerced, freely chosen, freely choosing the mode, content and object of our worship.
We give you thanks for religious liberty.
Our prayers this day are for those who know not this most basic form of human dignity to be their own arbiter of belief and practice.
We know there are powers still which have not discovered the beauty of diversity and out of fear compel those under their influence by threat or by overbearing culture to a single, static religious experience.
We pray for a change of heart and for a change of policy among those.
While the slow arch of redemption is still in work, though, we pray for those suffering such oppression to be able to find a sort of reformation within, a recognition of your magnitude and presence beyond the structures they've been given, which will light the inner places of their hearts and thereby the world around them.
We pray, too, for those parts of the world that have established religious liberty, which finds threat of one kind or another.
For those who would try to force unanimity of spirit or consistency of expression, we pray you would alleviate the fear that drives them and replace it with the peace that comes from tolerant and cooperative diversity.
For those whose consideration isn't for faithfulness at all, but find in religious liberty a convenient, powerful tool with which to manipulate and gain more power, we pray you remind them of the ground we've already covered the mistakes of human history and may the weight of those days gone by inspire in them a vision of a better world before us and the will to lead in that direction.
In gratitude and with great joy we raise our voices on this day of celebration.
Amen.
O God our Creator,
from your provident hand we have received
our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
You have called us as your people and given us
the right and the duty to worship you, the only true God,
and your Son, Jesus Christ.
Through the power and working of your Holy Spirit,
you call us to live out our faith in the midst of the world,
bringing the light and the saving truth of the Gospel
to every corner of society.
We ask you to bless us
in our vigilance for the gift of religious liberty.
Give us the strength of mind and heart
to readily defend our freedoms when they are threatened;
give us courage in making our voices heard
on behalf of the rights of your Church
and the freedom of conscience of all people of faith.
Grant, we pray, O heavenly Father,
a clear and united voice to all your sons and daughters
gathered in your Church
in this decisive hour in the history of our nation,
so that, with every trial withstood
and every danger overcome
for the sake of our children, our grandchildren,
and all who come after us
this great land will always be one nation, under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.