(RNS) — As the nation awaits the results of Election Day, some houses of worship are opening their doors for prayer and faith leaders are gathering in online prayer sessions.
In the nation’s capital and far beyond it, people across faith traditions and across the political aisle are gathering for prayer this week as Americans head to the ballot box for the 2024 presidential election after a long campaign season that saw bitter partisan battles and revealed a closely divided electorate.
“We are such a nation divided, and this division and this polarization is even more than the political differences,” said the Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, canon theologian for Washington National Cathedral, in an interview on Saturday (Nov. 2). “People have begun to see the other as the other, and that’s not who we’re supposed to be.”
The cathedral, which has espoused an initiative it calls “A Better Way” to help Americans listen to and learn from each other, is hosting services on Election Day and the next day that can be accessed online and in person.
“We’ve seen the violence of words, we’ve seen the violence of people demonizing one another, and the inhumanity of it all,” said Douglas. “And so I think it is important to use all of our resources and to be a better people. And one of the resources of the church is prayer.”
While the cathedral opened especially for Election Day prayer in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and also had prayer services to mark the 2016 election, some faith organizations decided to start their observances this year over the weekend or on Monday.
RELATED: As Election Day looms, Wisconsin clergy pray and stress that every vote is sacred
Some pre-Election Day gatherings reflected support for one party or another, sometimes without naming names.
Washington Interfaith Network held a “Reservoirs of Hope” gathering on Sunday evening, and its executive director noted that the gathering was a “brave space” rather than a safe one because people were coming together despite their religious, ethnic and cultural differences.
“In our country there are voices that are encouraging discrimination, that are encouraging bigotry, that are encouraging and uplifting violence rather than a world of justice,” said the Rev. Alison Dunn-Almaguer at the interfaith service held at Christ United Methodist Church in D.C. “With WIN, we are nonpartisan but what we have been saying as well is that we are not nonpartisan about violence. And we know that one thing is for sure right now — is that there is a candidate that is running who is encouraging violence.”
During the service, Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders spoke and sang “We Shall Not Be Moved.”
Washington National Cathedral opened specially in 2020 to host a polling place on Election Day in November. Photo courtesy of Kevin Eckstrom
Also on Sunday, Mark Driscoll, a pastor who resigned from his Mars Hill Church in Seattle amid scandal a decade ago and now runs Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, hosted an event titled “What Every Christian Needs to Do November 5th.” The gathering, which was hosted at Trinity and also livestreamed, was a collaboration with Sean Feucht, a conservative Christian activist and musician who garnered a following after staging concerts protesting pandemic restrictions in 2020.
Midway through the service, Driscoll and Feucht sat down for a question-and-answer session with U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake of Arizona, conservative activist Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA and former NFL player Jack Brewer.
“Our whole prayer and goal is to encourage God’s people to get out and vote, and to bring friends with them, and to vote according to our biblical and Christian convictions,” Driscoll said during the broadcast. Driscoll, who attended a Donald Trump faith event last week and met with the former president backstage, has said he hopes the businessman will be the next president and called the churches and Christian denominations that Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, belong to “synagogues of Satan.”
On Monday evening, dozens of houses of worship gathered people in front of their buildings along Washington’s 16th Street, sometimes dubbed the city’s “corridor of faith,” with candles, flashlights (traditional or via cellphones) and cardboard signs that reflected their hopes and prayers for the country.
“This is a positive, non-partisan vigil, so please only bring respectful signs that do not promote or oppose any candidate or party,” the announcement stated.
Earlier on Monday, more than 90 people joined Faith in Public Life’s midday election eve gathering for prayers by leaders of Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist faiths.
Jeanné Lewis, Faith in Public Life CEO. Photo courtesy of Lewis
“We pray for a peaceful election season,” said Jeanné Lewis, CEO of the multiracial and multifaith coalition, as she opened the session. “We pray for an outcome of this election, that we choose leaders through our democratic process who hold care and concern for all of us in their hearts, who are going to seek wisdom and make decisions out of that wisdom, and who lead from their values and from a sense of service and from a sense of care for all of us.”
After Lewis spoke, she sang a litany of saints, calling on saintly figures from “Holy Mary Mother of God” to St. Francis to St. Martin de Porres to pray for those gathered online.
Other leaders who prayed during the event noted the need for courage and compassion during the wait for election outcomes.
“Grant us humility in victory and grace in defeat and remind us that our ultimate loyalty is to justice, peace and the well-being of all,” prayed Imam Makram El-Amin from Minneapolis in a prayer to “Allah, the Creator.”
At an in-person and livestreamed Monday event, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser gathered interfaith leaders at a prayer service at the city’s Shiloh Baptist Church, noting the uncertainty ahead but saying it should be faced with conviction.
“We may be living through challenging times now, but we have never relinquished our faith and that God is bigger than our challenges,” said the mayor. “We have hope and faith that no matter what happens in the coming days, weeks or months, we will have the courage to hold firm in our values and our Constitution. And I know this: When we wake up on Nov. 6th or 7th or 9th or however long it takes, we will still be Washington, D.C. We will still be a city that stands shoulder to shoulder.”
On Election Day and beyond, some churches have decided to focus on contemplation and relaxation after months of political debate.
An Episcopal church in the swing state of Pennsylvania has been holding a weekly “Contemplative Citizenship” series — with deep breathing and subdued lighting — that will include a vigil on election night.
“The theme of the vigil will be All our trust on God is founded, Whether we win or lose, live or die, we are the Lord’s possession,” reads the announcement from St. James Episcopal Church in Lancaster.
New York’s Riverside Church is offering nontraditional activities that aim to increase calm during the hours of waiting and wondering on Election Day — and possibly after.
On Tuesday, it is offering in-person registrants a “comfort food dinner,” followed by offers of chair massages, arts activities and hymn singing — even as the election returns are available for participants to watch together. The next evening the church will hold its monthly “Space for Grace” service online, with dinner ahead of time for those who join in person.
“We wanted to create an evening centered on community, reflection and hope, no matter the outcome of the vote,” said Natalie Graves Tucker, the church’s director of communications and development.
“These activities reflect our goal of addressing both the physical and spiritual need for comfort and peace in a time of high stress.”
Jack Jenkins contributed to this report.
RELATED: Faith groups use election scenarios to prepare spiritually, mentally for what’s next