Related articles and links |  1 of 3

There's nothing like a crisis to stir Americans to pray, and with the technological advances of the Internet, united prayer has risen to a new level as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Individual Christians are joining their prayers in loosely aligned online networks. They believe their prayers, joined with those of other people, can affect both the direction of the nation and the world. They are not the only ones who think this way. In March both Houses of Congress passed resolutions urging President Bush to proclaim a national day of prayer and fasting.

Prayer walks, all-night prayer vigils, and round-the-clock prayer chains are more popular than ever. Three movements in particular are galvanizing hundreds of thousands of evangelicals to pray in this time of crisis. They are also raising questions about the interface between spiritual warfare in the heavenlies and physical warfare on earthly battlefields.

For those in authority nothing has galvanized the praying populace as much as the Internet-based Presidential Prayer Team (www.presidentialprayerteam.org), which formed a week after the terrorist strikes in 2001. The nonpartisan PPT has signed up 1.6 million people to pray daily for President Bush and members of his Cabinet on a rotating basis.

Within a week after the war in Iraq began, 600,000 people committed to pray daily in PPT's "Adopt Our Troops" campaign. At the same time, the campaign received 120,000 names to pray for, whether from soldiers themselves or from family members. The two-fold goal of the PPT campaign is to make sure all military personnel and their families receive prayer, and to show support for the troops.

The Tucson-based PPT has a $6 million annual budget supported by individual contributions. It has no faith criteria for those who pray. Executive Director John Lind says the organization has a goal to enlist 2.8 million people, 1 percent of the U.S. population, to pray. "As long as we have a president, we will be in business," Lind says.

Information provided online, based on the President's public schedule, provides specific guidance. Those who adopt a soldier through PPT receive a certificate bearing the military person's name. PPT also provides a window decal as a continuous reminder to uphold the President in prayer. In addition, PPT sells mugs, caps, and T-shirts.

Ted Haggard, senior pastor of the 9,200-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, leads another concerted prayer effort. His church is the largest congregation in the Centennial State, and has long promoted unified prayer. Haggard opened the $5.5 million World Prayer Center (www.worldprayerteam.org) on New Life's grounds in 1998. Members of the independent, charismatic church paid for most of the construction themselves.

Here, under the flags of 54 nations, as many as 5,000 Presbyterians, Nazarenes, Baptists, Pentecostals, and others have gathered simultaneously for prayer, engaging in what they call spiritual warfare over a wide variety of issues related to world evangelization. Christians who hold to this paradigm, portrayed in Frank Peretti's novel This Present Darkness, see prayer as a weapon to bind the activities of Satan and demons on the earth. To participate at the World Prayer Center, those praying must simply adhere to the National Association of Evangelicals' statement of faith.

The more extensive work of the center is done via computer, video streaming, and fax machine. The facility has more than six miles of wiring and conduit to allow Christians to convey and respond to all kinds of prayer requests. When the World Prayer Center opened, leaders called it the "spiritual NORAD" of the AD2000 and Beyond world evangelization movement.

next page... |  1 of 3

May 2003, Vol. 47, No. 5