The National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance that was live-streamed on Wednesday morning from Washington, D.C.’s Museum of the Bible is a reminder of the eternal verities forming the foundation of the American Republic.
Co-founded by Dr. Jim Garlow, CEO of Well Versed, a ministry to members of the U.S. Congress, and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC), the concept began developing in November 2022. Explained Garlow:
In November of 2022, I called Tony Perkins, and Congressman Mike Johnson, so see what their thoughts were about calling government and faith leaders together to pray for repentance.
They both agreed that this was needed.
The National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance is not a prayer breakfast. This is a “no-breakfast prayer.” The prayers are about repentance. For personal sins. For sin in the church. For America’s sins. We focus on the vertical, that is, God. We don’t applaud for people.
We only applaud for God … at the end. We don’t have speeches or sermons, except designated persons, who take seven or eight minutes, to call us to serious repentance.
We don’t even introduce people. The spotlight is on God. People lead in prayer. To Him. For one minute. Sincere heartfelt prayer. Intense prayer. As if the nation depends on it.
Because it does.
Those “designated persons” scarcely needed any introduction. Congressman Mike Johnson is now the Speaker of the House. Others included former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Messianic Jewish Rabbi Jonathan Cahn.
And Tony Perkins:
Our nation needs God. Now.
Our Founding Fathers understood that our strength and unity were found in our commitment to Him and to His righteousness.
We think America is strong, yet a long train of events reveals weakness on every front and historic level of division.
We assume America will always be. It will not.
“Under God” must become more than a part of our Pledge of Allegiance. “In God we trust” must be more than our national motto on our currency.
America needs God. While some may refuse to accept that reality, we readily acknowledge that America truly does need God. It is for that reason that we come together at the National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance to repent of sin.
The Museum of the Bible, located just two blocks from Washington’s National Mall, was established in 2010 by David Green, the founder of Hobby Lobby. It was an extension of how Green and his family continue to run the 1,000-store chain today: “Honoring the Lord in all we do by operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical principles.”
It is those principles that undergird the American republic. As John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
That was expanded upon by Robert Winthrop, Speaker of the House in the 18th Congress from 1847 to 1849:
All societies of men must be governed in some way or other.
The less they may have of stringent State Government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint.
Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet.
It may do for other countries and other governments to talk about the State supporting religion. Here, under our own free institutions, it is Religion which must support the State.
James Madison, author of the Constitution, said that that sacred document requires “sufficient virtue among men for self-government.” Otherwise, “nothing less that the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.”
Princeton Professor and Constitutional scholar Robert George posited how readily a nation without those internal restraints informed by a meaningful religious commitment would give up its liberties to secure temporal safety as well as other men’s goods:
People lacking in virtue could be counted on to trade liberty for protection, for financial or personal security, for comfort … for having their problems solved quickly.
And there will always be people occupying or standing for public office who will be happy to offer [them] the deal.
Mark Martin, dean of the School of Law at the Robertson Center for Constitutional Law, opined that the greatest threat to the American Republic is the failure to pass that need for religious virtue on to the next generation:
The biggest threat to our constitutional order is not a string of non-originalist decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court. It is instead, as our Founders warned, the failure to pass to subsequent generations the character, virtue, and knowledge required to protect the constitutional safeguards.
Victories in court will be hollow and ephemeral if we fail to instill in future generations the virtues upon which our nation was founded.
The decisions of the Supreme Court and, ultimately, the preservation of the Constitution itself rest downstream from culture. Preserving the Constitution requires maintaining the virtuous culture it was designed to serve.
Gatherings such as the one that took place this morning remind one of the necessity to pass that religious commitment and heritage on to the next generation.
