The horrific shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis last month, where two precious children lost their lives during Mass and another 17 people were injured, should have united us in grief and solidarity. Instead, it sparked something far more troubling: A coordinated assault on the very concept of prayer itself.
Within hours of the tragedy, prominent politicians and media figures launched vitriolic attacks against those offering “thoughts and prayers.” Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) used profanity to dismiss prayer entirely. MSNBC’s Jen Psaki called it “nonsense” and “a lie.” CNN’s Dana Bash echoed Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s rage against prayer, while other Democratic lawmakers uniformly dismissed the role of faith in responding to tragedy.
The attack on “thoughts and prayers” by liberal leaders in our country seems to reflect a deeper crisis plaguing Western society: The systematic attempt to remove God from public life. Mocking prayer is rejecting the very foundation of moral society itself and the bedrock that the United States was founded upon. One just needs to check a dollar bill to see how highly valued God was to our founding fathers.
Humans have turned to prayer in times of crisis for millennia because they understood a fundamental truth: We are not alone in this universe, nor are we entirely in control of our destiny. Prayer acknowledges that there is a higher power who governs the world, and that we are called to be His partners in healing and repair.
This partnership doesn’t diminish human responsibility; as many of the pundits claimed, rather, it elevates it. When we pray, we don’t retreat from action; we prepare ourselves for divinely inspired action. We align ourselves with a moral purpose that transcends political calculation.
As Jews, we have experienced this truth throughout our darkest hours. On Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists unleashed unprecedented horror upon southern Israeli communities, prayer sustained us through the unthinkable. Shortly after that devastating attack, I helped orchestrate a prayer session on the rooftop of our Jerusalem campus of Aish with families of kidnap victims, relatives of those who fell in the attack and Israel’s chief rabbis. In that moment of communal supplication, broken hearts found comfort and strength no political speech or policy proposal could provide.
Prayer wasn’t our substitute for action; it was our preparation for the difficult work ahead.
The politicians and journalists attacking prayer operate from a fundamentally flawed premise, that human beings can solve the world’s problems without acknowledging the source of moral authority that makes their solutions meaningful. They want to control outcomes while rejecting the divine framework that gives those outcomes moral weight.
This godless worldview has catastrophic consequences. When we abandon Divine morality, we abandon the foundation that makes commandments like “Thou shalt not kill” more than mere suggestions. Without God, moral precepts become arbitrary human constructs, subject to political whim and cultural fashion.
History offers a stark warning about societies that attempt to eradicate God from public consciousness. The Soviet Union spent decades and countless resources trying to root out religious faith, murdering millions in the process. The result wasn’t utopia but moral collapse on an unprecedented scale.
The casual dismissal of prayer represents a similar, if less violent, attempt to create a world without Divine accountability. When we tell people that their prayers are meaningless, we’re telling them that their deepest spiritual instincts are lies, that their search for transcendent meaning is foolishness and that moral authority derives solely from government power.
This spiritual vandalism has practical consequences. A society that rejects God inevitably rejects the moral framework that restrains human evil. When young people grow up believing they are accountable only to themselves and their immediate desires, should we be surprised when some choose unspeakable violence?
The founder of Aish HaTorah, Rabbi Noah Weinberg, often encountered people who rejected God because they imagined Him as hateful and vengeful. His response was transformative: “I don’t believe in that God either. I believe in a God of love, a God who loves you more than anything in the world.” When people heard this truth, their hearts melted and they discovered that faith wasn’t the enemy of human dignity but its greatest champion.
The God we pray to in moments of crisis is not a distant deity indifferent to human suffering, but a loving father who weeps with us in our pain and empowers us to heal a broken world.
Families in Minneapolis should turn to prayer after this tragedy. Prayer is not a meaningless ritual; it allows humans facing a disaster so big that there is no rational response, such as losing a child in a senseless act of violence, to connect with the source of all comfort, the wellspring of moral courage, and the foundation of hope that transcends even death itself. Prayer creates ripples of spiritual energy that touch hearts, inspire action and ultimately help prevent future tragedies through the moral transformation of society.
Politicians mocking these prayers reveal their own spiritual poverty in attempting to score political points while trashing God’s place in the world. But what can they offer? Where grieving families need divine comfort, do they offer government programming? Where hearts are broken and require transcendent hope, would they offer political solutions and bureaucratic action?
We can and must pursue practical measures to protect our children, such as better security, improved mental-health resources, and yes, sensible policies that keep weapons from those who would abuse them. But these efforts will ultimately fail if we don’t address the spiritual crisis that makes such violence conceivable in the first place.
For too long, Western society has treated faith as a private matter irrelevant to public policy. This false separation has created a moral vacuum that evil is eager to fill. We’ve removed prayer from schools, banished religious symbols from public spaces and treated Divine wisdom as an unwelcome intrusion into enlightened discourse. The result is a generation growing up without moral anchors, transcendent purpose and the spiritual resources that make civilized society possible.
If we truly want to prevent future school shootings, then we must do more than pass laws; we must restore the moral foundation that makes those laws meaningful. We must put God back into the picture of American life, not as a political tool but as the source of the love, compassion and moral clarity our nation desperately needs.
Until we do, our thoughts and prayers will remain not just appropriate responses to tragedy, but essential acts of spiritual resistance against a culture determined to forget the Divine image in every human being.
