Washington National Cathedral

Dean Sam Lloyd: Good morning and welcome to the Sunday Forum, our ongoing conversation week-by-week about the intersection of faith and public life. You just listened to some beautiful music that goes by Sweet Hour of Prayer and now we get to have a sweet hour of talking about prayer with our guest today. What better person to have do it than James P. Moore, who is a professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce, and most importantly for us, the author of the massive and brilliantly done book Prayer in America: A Spiritual History of Our Nation and now of the recently released The Treasury of American Prayer. And we’ve just been listening to an audio CD that’s part of his American Prayer Project launched here at the National Cathedral just a few years ago. Jim, it’s wonderful to have you here.

James P. Moore: Good morning. Thank you so much.

Dean Sam Lloyd: Just a few weeks ago, we had that rare thing for most nations, the 57th Annual National Day of Prayer. It’s hard to imagine many countries doing this. Why do you think that prayer seems to have played such a significant role in America’s story?

James P. Moore: It was extraordinary. I think we have an incredible heritage, when you think about it. The European Americans met the Native Americans who met African Americans. For all the differences that existed, the one thing that they did hold in common was a very intense prayer culture. Native Americans made sure, for example, in many instances that their teepees had their opening flap doors that would be facing the sun in the morning, so that the first thing they did when they came out of their teepees was to pray. African Americans of course found that prayer became a sustaining part of their existence during the period of slavery. And of course European Americans who came to this country for the first time had a very intense prayer culture, so it really begins there and continues on to the present day.

Dean Sam Lloyd: Now you say prayer is really part of a national DNA. Every immigrant group, every group that was here, every group that arrived here has brought a profound spirituality with them.

James P. Moore: No question about that, absolutely.

Dean Sam Lloyd: Well, in reciting your credentials today you’re a professor of business.

James P. Moore: I am.

Dean Sam Lloyd: But you’ve just written this massive study of the history of prayer in America. How does a busy business person, somebody very much involved in public affairs and government, make a turn into writing about prayer?

James P. Moore: Well, you know what’s interesting, but this was about 12 years ago. A number of years before that actually, I had begun an investment banking firm here in Washington D.C. And I began to confront some serious problems. Not only was I working incredible hours, because of course the world never sleeps, but I also was confronting some very serious problems of corruption. When I served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce I was responsible for working with businesses so that they would not violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

And here I was, now in the private sector and having to confront the very same thing myself. And so like lots of people who begin to confront some very serious concerns in their life, I decided to turn to prayer. And I was asking God for judgment, not to necessarily try to make things vanish overnight. And so I put together a prayer discipline for myself over a period of a few days. And on the last day I decided to go to church and just to ask God to please give me some judgment—try to really deal with the problems that I was facing. And I returned home early in the morning only to have my brother calling on the telephone. He practiced medicine with my father back in western Pennsylvania and wanted me to know that in the middle of the night, very quietly, very suddenly, my father had died. And so I hung up the telephone and I said, “God, how does this work? Here I have been coming to you trying to get some judgment, trying to be able to look for answers, have you guide me in dealing with a very serious problem, and you take my father away. How does that work?”

And so I began to drive back and forth between Washington and western Pennsylvania. It was in October of 1997, the trees were turning, the countryside looked beautiful, and of course I naturally was thinking of my father, I was thinking about prayer, I was thinking about the beautiful countryside. And I thought, “You know, if prayer represents the most private, innermost thoughts of individuals, that it must say something about us as a people throughout our history.” And I was convinced that there were all sorts of wonderful things that have been written on the subject and found that no greater expert then James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, was able to actually do a search to find that…They couldn’t even find a thesis or dissertation that had been written about prayer in America.

Dean Sam Lloyd: Specifically about the tradition of prayer.

James P. Moore: And the history of it, and how it played a role in the life of America. And so I didn’t intend to write a book, but I sure was curious. And so not far from my home is the Virginia Theological Seminary. And so I used its library to all of a sudden come across the prayers of people like Mary Pickford and Jackie Robinson and Tupac Shakur and Benjamin Franklin. I mean, I just thought, “My goodness if you saw how you could take the prayers of these individuals and so many others, including average Americans, it would really tell a story about America.” And so that began the process.

Dean Sam Lloyd: And so you began to tell this to me—surprising story of how imbued every step of the way prayer was for Columbus coming to America, for the founding of Jamestown, say something about those early visitors.

James P. Moore: Oh absolutely. When all of a sudden you try to convince a group of uneducated men to jump on a ship and take off because you’re convinced that the world is round but they’re convinced that the world is flat, you better have something going for you besides the science of the day. And so Christopher Columbus realized that they were only as strong as their weakest link, and so the best way to be able to approach a voyage, to find the East Indies was to make sure that people prayed.

And so prayer became really a very important part of that process of being able to endure. And that’s exactly what happened, not only with Christopher Columbus, but with some of the other explorers. And in the case of Jamestown, the leaders in Jamestown were so convinced of the need of prayer, that anybody who didn’t pray, they had a number of penalties, that if you weren’t there for daily services and you weren’t saying grace, that you literally would be penalized and goodness knows you didn’t want to be penalized three times, because there was pretty dire stuff as far as punishment.

Dean Sam Lloyd: I was impressed with this and considering it for the Cathedral.

James P. Moore: (laughter)

Dean Sam Lloyd: One miss of prayer, no rations the following day. Two misses, the lash. Three misses, six months on a seagoing ship. So be careful. That’s impressive.

James P. Moore: Yes indeed.

Dean Sam Lloyd: One of the interesting pieces of your story is as you write about our founding fathers. There’s a general sense, I think many of us pick up, that they were by and large certainly Anglican congregations, parts of traditions, but not necessarily all that committed theologically to a lot of the premises. We always think of Thomas Jefferson and his sort of deist’s approach, his trimming the New Testament down to just the morality in it, leaving the rest aside. But you find a different story that is not quite so deist and vague in its spirituality as many of the impressions suggest.

James P. Moore: Absolutely. You know, when our founding fathers gathered together for the first time in September of 1774, they had never laid eyes on one another, let alone worked together. Here were all these very diverse individuals, 13 colonies, coming to Philadelphia. And they came at a time when first they were taking on the mother country which was pretty intimidating in and of itself.

Second of all, rumors were beginning to hit Philadelphia that British troops were bombarding the homes, particularly those of the Patriots who were there in Philadelphia. And it was a man by the name of Thomas Cushing from Massachusetts who said, “You know, before we begin anything, any substance whatsoever about talking about our dilemma, we need to turn to prayer.” And it was interesting because John Jay of New York and John Rutledge of South Carolina, both very religious individuals, who had become the first and second Chief Justices of The Supreme Court, stood up and said, “Whoa, wait a minute. We’re different persuasions. Quakers, Anabaptists, Anglicans, Congregationalists.” And it was Sam Adams who was a pretty imposing figure in those days, stood up and said, “Now wait a minute.” He said, “As far as I’m concerned I’m not a bigot, a religious bigot. If there is any person who could stand up and deliver prayer who is pious, who is humble, virtuous, and loves his country, I’m all for it.” And with that everyone agreed.

And so that became, for all intents and purposes, our first public forum in which prayer was invoked. And it was absolutely true that each of these individuals—and there are a couple of outstanding exceptions—were a pretty religious lot. So that was why there wasn’t any debate that continued on after Sam Adams spoke.

Dean Sam Lloyd: Just before we walked on, you were saying that your study of the prayer of some of our great and famous leaders has shifted and your own estimation, how you look at them, and you spoke particularly about Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. What did you learn that seemed new or what new insight did you glean that told you something about two of our most famous and important leaders?

James P. Moore: You know, it’s interesting, I have spent not just months but years delving into the spirituality of those two men. And in the case of Thomas Jefferson—I had an extraordinarily high opinion of Thomas Jefferson, having visited Monticello on many, many an occasion. But it was interesting: the more I got to learn about Thomas Jefferson, the more I came to dislike the man. I came to a point—

Dean Sam Lloyd: You came to dislike him?

James P. Moore: I came to dislike him, because I found, for example, that although he was not really a prayerful man, he made it abundantly clear as we were heading into the Revolutionary War, “Hey, let’s put out some edicts to be able to call on the American people to say prayers because we really need to catalyze them and I think prayer’s going to be able to do it for them.” He really would utilize prayer, in fact he even went up to the capital one time with one of his daughters—I should say on more than one occasion—to participate in certain religious ceremonies, and the media at the time really believed that it was all showmanship on his part. And so, unfortunately, I was really kind of sorry to learn as much as I did about Thomas Jefferson. Ignorance is bliss, and I wish for my sake that Thomas Jefferson would still hold a pretty high level in my mind.

In the case of Abraham Lincoln, he was even higher than Thomas Jefferson’s reputation in my mind. And the more I got to learn about Abraham Lincoln, the more I came to love the man, and the more I came to realize how deeply spiritual he was. One could even argue that he may have evolved into perhaps the most spiritual, if not one of the most spiritual certainly, presidents we’ve ever had in office. It was rather extraordinary. You cannot read his writings particularly in the last years of his life and not come to that conclusion.

Dean Sam Lloyd: Just lying out that contrast of what you discovered along the way heightens, for me at least, one of the big questions that were in the back of my mind as I read this book, and that is the risks that go with prayer and public life. Just to say on the one hand America is by and large a religious people and has been from the beginning. So weaving that into the fabric of our life is in some ways important.

But prayer can easily manipulate, and calling on the almighty to steer the American people one way or another is a very easy thing to happen. How do you see that playing out through the book? Do you see points along the way where, as you were describing with Thomas Jefferson, presidents, other leaders are using prayer instrumentally to their own purposes? I assume in the time of the Civil War for example there had to have been some of that going on. And by and large, do you think most of our leaders manage to avoid that very appealing pit to fall into of turning our relationship with God into something to be used for more immediate political purposes?

James P. Moore: I think fortunately most presidents have been able to avoid that trap. I think that particularly for a president of the United States who’s been elected by all the American people, prayer is essentially the umbrella by which most all Americans come under no matter what faith persuasion they might be. But it’s also clear that there are those who have used prayer in improper ways. I can only imagine how many people were praying yesterday for the Preakness and who was going to come in first. You know, it is amazing to me how silly some people can be when it comes to utilizing prayer.

Prayer is an extraordinary, extraordinary tool that is at our disposal and not only to reach out to our God, but also to put life into some kind of perspective. You know this past week—and again tonight at six o’clock I understand on NBC has been this extraordinary one hour documentary on the last days and life of Farrah Fawcett. And here is an individual that people are watching who has this incredibly intense prayer life and trying to overcome all of the genuine concerns that clearly she must have regarding the fact that she is really living her last days. And so to somehow use prayer in a way that cheapens it I think is a sad situation for all of us. And certainly in the public square all of us need to be sensitive to those who are sitting and standing in that square.

Dean Sam Lloyd: One of the stories you weave through is a story basically of prayer from the trenches, people at war trying to help soldiers deal with the crisis that they’re in. I think you said General Patton issued prayer cards for the troops. Tell us a little bit about how in some of America’s armed conflicts prayer has played a role.

James P. Moore: You know, it’s interesting, but I have probably poured over hundreds and hundreds of prayers written by soldiers and not just necessarily the generals and the admirals. One prayer that I thought was rather extraordinary was the prayer of a warrior of the Lenape nation. And I have found that although the language might be a little bit more flowery 200 years ago than it is today, the prayers of soldiers and sailors are very, very much alike. This prayer from a Lenape warrior really comes from the heart and the soul in which this soldier is concerned, not just about his own mortality, but the family that he’s leaving behind before he takes off to do combat.

And it is just amazing how those prayers you can interweave from war to war. You know it was an incredible thing but when my first book first came out—the way the two books are written, the first one is really chronological history, the second one what I did was to take a number of prayers and to divide them into chapters, such as prayers for endurance, prayers for the nation, and I’m delighted to say that the Washington National Cathedral allowed me to be able to publish all the prayers of the states that are invoked in this wonderful sanctuary each week.

But I went to Rutgers University, where a wonderful book signing was held, and there were quite a few people who were purchasing the book and having me sign it and this one woman looked at me and she said, “I want to stand back and watch you sign the book of this next gentleman.” And so this older man, gray hair said, “Mr. Moore, this evening has been just extraordinary for me, thank you so much.” He said, “I love the way you talk about how General Patton had his chaplain, a man by the name of O’Neill, write a prayer, because of course Patton’s third army was on its way to Berlin, which essentially would end World War II, at least on the European front,” And he said, “I just love the way that you described it.” He said, “Because you see, I was a member of General Patton’s third army.” And he said, “And when that prayer was put on the back of a Christmas card, in which all of us were given that card, and we were asked to pray for fair weather, because our tanks and our Jeeps were just mired in mud because the weather was so bad, and then in 24 hours after we all were reading this prayer, somehow the weather seemed to clear up.” He said, “You know in 1945 when I finally came back from Europe I took that card and that prayer and I put it next to my bedside where it has never left.” And he said, “And so whenever I say to myself a miracle is not possible, all I do is look at my bed stand and I realize that it is.” Those are the kind of things on a tour like mine that really make this project such a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Dean Sam Lloyd: And you talk about business people and their life of prayer. J.C. Penney turned to prayer in time of crisis. Tell us about J.C. Penney.

James P. Moore: Well, you know, one of the things that’s amazing to me, and people don’t quite realize, if it weren’t for prayer the history of our country in so many ways would be very different than what it is today. And the case of J.C. Penney, I had heard rumors to the effect that he was ready to commit suicide one day, and it was after he had a number of business reversals. And so I found out that J.C. Penny’s last remaining daughter—in her late 80’s—was still alive. And so I called her up on the telephone and I said, “May I come and visit you?” And she said, “Sure, we’ll spend the afternoon together.” Fortunately, she lives just outside of Baltimore, and so I sat with her and she was able to confirm for me the story that he was really experiencing some real depression as a result of business reversals.

Dean Sam Lloyd: This was the 1930’s?

James P. Moore: That’s right, this was the 1930’s. And he had essentially put a great deal of money into a foundation to be able to help farmers in Florida try to farm and be able to find new ways to be able to approach agriculture. And so when things got particularly bad, he decided that he needed to be treated at a sanitarium, Kellogg’s Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. And so he went up there, and despite the fact that he was being treated by medical staff, he decided one morning that he was going to go back to his room and commit suicide. And as he was on his way he overheard this little chapel service taking place, in which a hymn, the words to a hymn were all of a sudden just floating through the air, and that was “don’t worry, God will take care of it.”

And he just kept playing and replaying and replaying that in his mind and he decided maybe that was not the way to go. And so as a result he decided not to commit suicide. And you say to yourself, had it not been for prayer at that moment how different the life of J.C. Penney would have been and how different our purchases might have been relative to the J.C. Penney retail store.

You know it’s amazing how business people have used it, for example Conrad Hilton decided, his mother had taught him that prayer was the single greatest investment that he could ever make, put aside money, prayer was where he needed to invest. And so he decided that before he purchased any single hotel property that he would pray. And if within 48 hours things weren’t gelling, he knew it wasn’t to be. And so he prayed for the Waldorf Astoria, he prayed for the Plaza, he prayed for the Mayflower, it goes on and on, and that was what he believed.

One of the things that I think is particularly admirable and something to put into focus given all that we’ve experienced over the past few months in terms of our own financial sector was how Sir John Templeton, who of course began the Templeton Prize and who essentially, was the inventor in many ways of mutual funds. He decided that with his Templeton fund that when the board of directors came together every single time, that before they began any business, they should pray. Because with their fiduciary responsibility, if you pray and you pray the right words, it reminds you real fast of who you are responsible for and it might, just might make you do the right thing.

Dean Sam Lloyd: And you name in there as well the founder of Marriott, Starbucks, quite a number of business people.

James P. Moore: Blockbusters, I mean it goes on and on.

Dean Sam Lloyd: That of course raises kind of a theological question. Whether it’s the question of prayer in times of war, the prayers for the success of a business, where do you see the line in there where concern about self can easily fill the prayer more than concern for what God’s will and God’s purpose is? There’s tricky territory in there.

James P. Moore: There is very tricky territory in there. You know, prayer is a journey. When I was a young man, you know, I’d be on my knees asking God that by Tuesday at 2:35 in the afternoon I was expecting something to be done, after all I was a good guy and I was saying this prayer. And I would find that at 2:35 on that Tuesday that somehow despite my fervent prayers and the fact that I thought I was a good guy it didn’t happen. But you know, often I have found in my life—and I think it is the prayer journey that so many of us go through—that we find that as much as we would like something to happen at a particular moment and in a particular way, that if we allow God to be essentially the judge that we find that perhaps, just perhaps, things turn out even better than we had expected.

I often remind myself that St. Teresa of Avila once said that there had been more tears shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers. And we Americans—you know, it’s interesting, I think it was Thomas Merton who wrote to J.C. Penney, and I say I think because J.C. Penney unfortunately wasn’t able to figure out exactly who it was when he was writing his memoirs but it sounds like Thomas Merton, and that is that we Americans, we want everything yesterday. When I teach international business, for example, at Georgetown, I talk about the cultures of others. And when we talk about Americans, the perception overseas is that we Americans, we sit down, we want that deal done yesterday. We are so very, very impatient. And that same sort of trait of Americanism really also comes into the realm of prayer. And if we don’t get it right away there’s this tremendous disappointment. But we’ve got to be able to hold on to this wonderful journey.

When you think about prayer, for example, the Lord’s Prayer, it certainly would have been said one way on September 10th 2001, and that same person would’ve said the Lord’s Prayer a little bit differently on September 12th 2001. It’s a wonderful thing; it’s a very personal thing. And I think we just have to understand prayer for what it is. It’s not—again—just a connection between the individual and God, it’s also the ability to put life in perspective and understand that we are really not truly the center of the universe.

Dean Sam Lloyd: You do cite in your book and spend a little time talking about the Prayer of Jabez phenomenon, this little book that sold more than 10 million copies not so many years ago—six, seven, eight years ago. Giving very specific coaching about how to claim God’s blessing, and if you ask for the blessing, you’ll get it. It’s about as narcissistic a vision of a prayer life as I could imagine. So that’s another stream of American prayer, isn’t it?

James P. Moore: And how very silly that situation was after a while. I mean that was asking for your stock portfolio to increase by 33 1/3 percent over the next 12 months. That was asking for the new Mercedes Benz with x number of options. That really, for me, is an enigma. But we can’t forget the fact that prayer has even been used for even more nefarious purposes than even the Prayer of Jabez. You know, the notion that you could have people, men mainly, in white sheets together saying a prayer before they went out to lynch African Americans in the South and the North in the past is extraordinary. The notion that the last words on the lips of the terrorists on September 11th would’ve been prayers, I mean it just shows how powerful prayer is in the mind of human beings and what it’s utility could be, but how distorted ultimately prayer can be too.

Dean Sam Lloyd: Let’s go to 9/11 which was probably the most prayerful public moment in recent American history, probably since the 2nd World War. What did you see happening in the prayers that came forward, the prayer service that took place here at the National Cathedral, you talk about that? You talked about people might have prayed the Lord’s Prayer differently the day before and the day after 9/11? What do you see to have been the impact on our prayer, or how do you see prayer reflecting what happened to us as a nation then?

James P. Moore: Well you know there were some detractors, the fact that somehow people were latter-day spiritual beings, that it took a crisis of that proportion to have people fall on their knees. But I think it was able to really allow us to reflect on our past, on who we are together. I mean that’s the—you know, I’ve been talking about African Americans, Native Americans, etc. One of the nice things is that after September 11th, at least for a while, we were not hyphenated Americans, we were all one family. And so I think that the spiritual font that all of a sudden arose as a result of September 11th was a very comforting factor in the aftermath of one of the most catastrophic moments, not only of our lives, but certainly of American history.

Dean Sam Lloyd: So, something happened to galvanize us for awhile. We became a people, we prayed maybe in different languages and ways of praying, but there was a sense of oneness there. Where do you see us now? Certainly the religious scene in America is getting more and more diverse by the day as new immigrant communities come in and bring their faiths with them. Do you see us fragmenting into more ways of prayer? Is that a source of creativity? Is it a source of concern?

James P. Moore: I think that one of the things that we should never forget, whether it deals with religion or spirituality in a broader sense—we have brought a group of people on this continent who are spiritual, religious entrepreneurs. There is really an incredible cafeteria out there of spirituality in which people are really tasked to figure out where they stand relative to their God, relative to their lives, relative to the lives of others around them.

And so I think that that spiritual ferment is going to continue for some time to come, but it takes nothing away from the fact that this country continues, despite all that we read, is a very spiritual country. We are far more religious and spiritual than any developed country in the world, including our neighbors to the north. One of the things I loved with this book was that when I started to write it, I began to say to myself, you know, we need to be able to capture this also in audio format and so I thought to be able to give voice to these various individuals throughout our history…And so I was able to grab Ben Vereen to be the voice of the slaves and I was able to get the chaplains of the House and Senate to recreate the prayers they delivered the day after September 11th and John McCain became the voice of Stonewall Jackson and General Patton and also the voice of his own voice in trying to deal with being a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and it was just an extraordinary group of people and I said to myself, you know, this American prayer experience is even larger than that. When you think of the spirituals of the slaves that really helped to create rhythm and blues, jazz, gospel. And the prayers of Appalachia really all of a sudden began to see country western music and folk music and so I realized that became very much a part of our prayer culture.

Now I was delighted that this became a mini series on PBS and then in turn will have this coming fall a series that will be video screened in every public, private, and parochial school throughout the country on the importance of prayer in American life. Prayer has been absolutely a part of our foundation. President Obama is probably going to be creating what will be known as the New Foundation, where we had with Roosevelt the New Deal. It’s interesting to all of a sudden think of these upcoming years as the New Foundation. It begs the question, “Well, what did we have before the New Foundation?” Well, the New Foundation, the old foundation, and any foundation that may arise in the future of our extraordinary country prayer will be a part of it.

Dean Sam Lloyd: We’re going to turn to questions from the audience now. If you’ll just pass your questions forward, I think Derryl may already have a few. Derryl , do you want to start us off?

Deryl Davis: Several to start with here. First is, what are some of the most popular prayers in American history?

James P. Moore: Well, I think the single two most popular prayers in American history are “Please, please, please” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” And the only reason people pray the second prayer is for the opportunity to return to the first prayer on another day, I really do believe that.

Deryl Davis: How has prayer been abused or been a devised factor in American history?

James P. Moore: Well again, the Ku Klux Klan, as I was mentioning earlier, felt that somehow prayer would somehow bless what they were about to do. The fact that terrorists believe that prayer should be uttered as the last thing that was said by them at the point that they essentially were bringing planes into the World Trade Center or our own Pentagon here. That has been a terrible way to utilize prayer, clearly.

Deryl Davis: I know that you wrote about the Todd Beamer prayer episode—

James P. Moore: I’m sorry, the what?

Deryl Davis: Todd Beamer on Flight 93.

James P. Moore: Yes. You know this was something that I was very pleased in the audio production that we were able to do with Random House. Some of you may know that on September 11th Todd Beamer was on the plane that ultimately would crash into Somerset County in Pennsylvania. And he was trying desperately on his cell phone to get his wife without any success. But he was able to get a GTE operator, a woman by the name of Lisa Jackson. And he was able to get her and he realized it was just a matter of minutes before they would go down, and he said “You know I was trying to get my wife, I can’t get her. Would you do me a favor?” She said, “Sure, anything.” He said, “First, please tell my wife how much I love her and let her know how much I love those boys. But this is not going to work; I’m not going to see them again.” And she said, “Absolutely.” And he gave the telephone number and he said, “One other thing,” he said “before I sign off would you say the Lord’s Prayer with me?” And so with that together they said the Lord’s Prayer.

And it was such a powerful moment and of course after that prayer was said there was silence on the other end and that was the end of any further radio contact between that plane and Earth. And so what we did in the audio was to be able to have a wonderful actor and actress from Hollywood join together and reading that prayer and recreating it. And I think that’s one of the highlights, spiritual highlights of that terrible, terrible day.

Deryl Davis: Who or what, perhaps we should change this to what things did you find most surprising or take you in new directions as you researched the history of prayer in America?

James P. Moore: Well you know, I was mentioning this before the Forum this morning—one of the things that I was just fascinated by someone whose music I certainly rewarded and some of what went on in his lifetime, and that was coming across a prayer simply called “God” by Tupac Shakur. And all of a sudden I realized, first of all here is a young man who almost, almost was born in jail because his mother had just left jail two weeks earlier, his father was in a federal penitentiary for having killed a man. And so all of a sudden I came across this prayer, and I’m paraphrasing it, in which he said “Dear God, you know when I found that there was no one around me and I was alone and I was scared, I realized that you were there. And when bullets were being shot around me and people were shooting themselves up and I was so scared once again I realized there was somebody there who did love me and it was you God. And so when I am asked who do I love above all others I realize that there is one voice, one person who does come above all others and it is you, God.”

It’s a beautiful prayer in the way that it’s laid out. And so I was delighted to come across this, and I thought, you know, given the circumstances of this young man and how essentially he had been raised on the streets, the streets of Baltimore in fact most of those years, I thought that this was an extraordinary thing. But I must tell you that I was in Houston speaking to a very conservative audience and was talking about Tupac Shakur and there was a woman off to the side who literally gasped when she heard that I was talking about how much I admired this prayer of Tupac Shakur’s. We were afraid we were going to have to call the medics in. And even at one point my publisher had said, “You really want to think, maybe we should take Tupac Shakur out of your book because there will be people who will react that way and you’ll be able to get more book sales if you take him out.” And it wasn’t even a matter of thinking one second, I said, “Absolutely not. This is part of America. This was clearly the cry of a young man who encountered the worse in life and indeed if we take him out we’re taking out a part of our country and who we are.” And so we kept it in.

And I must tell you that I’ve had the chance to speak to military cadets and plebes across our country at all of our academies and it’s amazing how many of those young men and women have come up to me who were just amazed that Tupac Shakur was in there and said, “You know if Tupac Shakur is in there I’m going to read the entire book.” And just a few weeks ago I had the chance to speak to literally hundreds and hundreds of our chaplains in the U.S Army. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience. And we spoke about Tupac Shakur there as well and talked about how important prayer has been in the lives of individuals who clearly are standing at God’s doorstep and trying to figure out what life is all about and dealing with their own mortality.

Deryl Davis: This question was asking about how did the conflict begin between the idea of establishment clause, I suppose it is, and free exercise in the first amendment, that according to this questioner, seems to have been very clear to our founders?

James P. Moore: Well again, this—as an establishment of church—I think is a little bit different than the establishment of prayer. I would again hearken back to that first day on September 4th, 1774, when our founding fathers got together, and despite the diversity of their various faith persuasions, decided they needed to pray collectively as a group. That is the same tradition that is continued to this day both the House of Representatives and the Senate begins many a cabinet meeting as well as the opening of the Supreme Court each day.

So I think we have to differentiate between religions. And in fact, often we talk about the letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote in regards to the separation of church and state and the wall that exists between them. But I would get back to the intent of the founding fathers by going back to Sam Adams’ own words and that is “I’m not a bigot, for anyone who has virtue and piety and is a lover of our country, I have no problems in being able to listen to his prayer.” But it also gives the person who is evoking the prayer the awesome responsibility of understanding that he indeed is speaking for all the people who are in that public square.

Dean Sam Lloyd: I have a question, have you had any—so you have had experiences being at major inter faith services, which was the service here after 9/11. Do you have any thoughts on the challenge of inter faith prayer time and worship when people come together out of their own very different faith traditions and offer prayers? Is that something that you think ought to flow pretty smoothly in America? Does that pose certain challenges when Muslims are praying with Hindus or praying with Christians or praying with Jews?

James P. Moore: Well, it does pose some problems, but I’m delighted that you asked the question, because this is the perfect time to talk about when this American prayer project that was launched was actually occurred in this wonderful, what the founders of the Washington National Cathedral, refer to as the nation’s house of prayer. Literally, at the same time the book was coming out, we had the interfaith conference annual concert that was about to take place and the decision was made, lets put this all together.

And it was an extraordinary evening in this Cathedral in which there were individuals of different faiths who participated in this interfaith concert. And so there was an individual of the Baha’i faith who actually put together an extraordinary hymn that everybody could sing and it really reflected collectively everyone’s faith. And so everybody sat here in this Cathedral, only to have the evening begin with three Muslims calling out to prayer in three different parts of the Cathedral. They had practiced for two weeks because of the acoustics of the Cathedral, so that they would waft throughout these wonderful spaces.

And so we listened to them and then finally after all that sound had died down a rabbi appeared here in the front of the sanctuary with a shofar in calling to prayer in his tradition. And so with that, the great organ began to play and all these people dressed in extraordinary, colorful habits and outfits that displayed their cultural heritages as well as their religious heritages, filed down and individually began to show everyone how they showed their own, how they worshipped, how they prayed. And then at the very end of the evening, after we had witnessed this wonderful ecumenical splendor, everyone filed out singing “Amazing Grace.” And once again, everybody had come together.

So it was showing how we are one family and at the same time how diverse we are within that one family. I think this cathedral has continued to be an incredible witness to that wonderful ecumenical movement and to being able to stir the hearts and the souls and the minds of so many individuals, how important prayer has been to our country and to all of us.

Dean Sam Lloyd: Thank you.

Deryl Davis: Is prayer a barometer of piety? And if so, does American interest in prayer suggest that we are a more pious people than some others?

James P. Moore: Well, that’s a tricky question.

Dean Sam Lloyd: There’s a difference between being pious and being holy.

James P. Moore: That’s right, absolutely. You know, I constantly have to think back to one of the gospels about who was first shall be last and who was last shall be first. I think we have to be tempered as far as the way we pray and always, again, it’s not what I want, it’s what you want. You know, Abraham Lincoln had a wonderful, wonderful line that has been used many times since, and I don’t say line a pejorative way but I think in admonishment, and that is “let us hope that God is not on our side as much as we are on God’s side.” And I think, in our prayers, we should always remember that because that is absolutely key, not only to our relationship with God in putting things into perspective, but in our own best interest.

Deryl Davis: Can we expect more attention to prayer in this time of economic recession?

James P. Moore: I think so. And I think that it’s more than the Prayer of Jabez to say that people get options on their Mercedes Benz. This is an extraordinary time that we’re undergoing. It is a scary time. We’ve witnessed some individuals who did not have the kind of faith that we would hoped that they would have had. In which we’ve had a couple of individuals here within the Washington metropolitan area who have taken their lives because things got so out of hand. I think prayer—you need to be able to pray. To, again, be able to really talk to God. To pray to be able to say you know this too shall pass. How do I handle this, how do handle this on a daily basis, how will the end of this story turn out? And I think that prayer can be a wonderful, wonderful tool. And I say that with a big T, to be able to deal with this kind of crisis.

Dean Sam Lloyd: Time for just one more question.

Deryl Davis: Are there particular times in American history when we have seen more interest in and practice in prayer than in others?

James P. Moore: Certainly during the Civil War we found that the prayer life was incredible, but it was a prayer life where the North and the South believed, you know if we pray a little bit louder and a little bit longer and a little bit stronger, we’re going to be able to out-do those weapons up in the north. And the North said, “Hey, you know, if we just pray a little bit harder, a little bit longer, a little bit etc. the same will happen with us.”

And it was amazing to see how this dynamic, in terms of prayer, existed during the war. And then when all of a sudden—you know in some ways Abraham Lincoln was the epitome of the way that you had to perceive the way prayer should be used and not used, and often wonderment as to how we had gotten to this point. And so after it was all over people were just sitting back and saying, “You know my prayer didn’t quite work the way that I wanted it to.” And so it was an interesting way to see how prayer had been so vibrant and then for a while there was just this desolation as to why all this had ultimately transpired. But it is clear that again, and I think that it’s so important.

Brandeis University just came out with a study that pretty strongly shows that close to 90% of the American people pray at least once during the day, which I find incredible. And they found that over 60%pray more than once during the day. And the notion that we as a people are so prayerful and that this is really a part of who and what we are, can’t be said for other people. And I think it’s because of our unique heritage: who we are, where we are, and where we’re going. And I think if we ever lose sight of that, which I don’t think we will, but if we ever lose sight of it we, I think, are going to change the very character that has made us so strong as a people.

Dean Sam Lloyd: This has been a wonderful conversation. We hope you’ll join us next week when we have with us Tim Schriver, who is the head of the Special Olympics, also involved in some very important education enterprises and global development enterprises. So come and join us for lively conversation. In the meantime, Jim Moore will be in the back signing books, visiting with those who would like to chat for a bit back there. And by all means join us at 11:15 for our service. Please join me in thanking Jim Moore as our guest today.