World Religions News

(RNS) — As part of the “Rededicate 250” event in Washington, D.C., on Sunday (May 17), organizers are inviting Americans to submit prayers for the nation through a public online “prayer wall” on the affiliated America Prays website. While the so-called rededication of the United States as “One Nation Under God” is drawing a great deal of attention for its fusion of politics, theology and nationalism, the prayer wall itself has received little scrutiny.

A close look at the words found on the site — where Americans are exhorted to “share what’s on your heart” in the verbal formulation of contemporary American evangelicalism — offers a rare opportunity to watch what looks like real Christian nationalism. It appears not merely as political rhetoric from movement leaders, but as lived devotional language among the posted prayers, which seem, not surprisingly, to be entirely Christian in their orientation.

The prayers on the wall are divided by categories like “Country,” “Military,” “Family,” “Healing” and “Peace.” Since there is a form that must be filled out by anyone wishing to contribute a prayer, it is reasonable to assume not all the prayers shared with the government through the website are posted publicly. 

Many of the prayers are deeply personal. For example: “I am believing God for a new vehicle, furniture and beds for our place. Thank you.” –Texas, May 13. Or “Pray for daughter in law to get help for bipolar schizophrenia. . .My heart aches, I know God is in control.” — California, May 12. Another person says they are going through a “bad divorce,” but knows “God is my lawyer and he will make things right.”

Taken together, these anguished personal prayers reveal a portrait of a nation in pain.

The prayers use colloquial grammar and spelling, and appear to be written by real people – with real names and actual problems like ALS, joblessness and loneliness. In this way, the prayer wall provides a strikingly authentic contrast to the “Voices of Liberty” quotations elsewhere on the Freedom 250 website, which purport to be the words of “real Americans” explaining “what freedom means to them” but which appear to be AI-generated fakes.

But in Prayer Wall sections dedicated to “Country” and “Military,” the devotional language of Christian nationalism emerges clearly. Here is one example from Missouri, May 11: “Lord Jesus, King Jesus dawn our nation from the festering pit we have fallen into the past decades. Destroy our enemies physical and spiritual. Allow us to be the city on the hill you desired us to be. Allow us to discipline ourselves and other nations for your glory alone. We love you and rededicate ourselves now in your holy mighty name Jesus, Amen”

The prayer includes vivid language about personal devotion, national decline, spiritual warfare, American exceptionalism and fantasies of political restoration. To this person, the nation itself has become a sacred object: fallen, endangered, chosen and in need of purification and recommitment. But the nation is, at the same time, a weapon that can be used to “discipline other nations for your glory alone.”

Another prayer in the “Country” section (from Arizona, May 14) reads: “Lord Jesus please hear our cries for this nation and the world. You and only You can truly fight this battle we are in. This spitiritual [sic] battle against evil. I pray for our leaders to seek You in all they do, trust You and Your plans for this nation. That You would protect them and their families as they believe and trust in You. I pray Psalm 91 over this nation, especially verse 11: ‘For He will give His angels orders concerning you, to protect you in all your ways.'”

Again and again, the prayers on the site return to similar themes: America as a divinely chosen nation that has drifted from God; enemies both internal and external; fears of moral collapse; hopes for restoration; calls for repentance; and requests for divine protection over the country and its leaders.

The prayer wall, taken as a whole, is especially striking for the way in which these grand national and religious narratives coexist alongside deeply ordinary personal anxieties. The result is an emotional public theology in which private suffering, national identity, religious symbolism and political longing are deeply intertwined.

The fusion of the theological and the political has long been part of American religious life. Historians have noted the persistence of providential language in American politics from the Puritans onward — the belief that the U.S. possesses a unique divine mission and stands in a covenantal relationship with God. But the prayers collected on the Freedom 250 site reveal how intensely devotional that language remains for many Americans. The nation is imagined as more than a political entity, but as a spiritual project whose fortunes rise and fall according to both divine favor and satanic power.

The language of spiritual warfare appears repeatedly on the prayer wall, across all categories. Participants pray against “darkness,” “evil forces” and enemies “physical and spiritual,” as well as attacks on Christianity itself. In many cases, the boundaries between political opponents, cultural change, demonic influence and national decline are impossible to separate.

The prayers also reveal the continuing emotional power of older forms of American civil religion. References to the U.S. as a “city on a hill,” to national chosenness and to America’s divine purpose appear constantly throughout the submissions. What emerges is a vision of the nation not as a democratic republic governed by the people or of a constitutional order governed by laws, but as a sacred community whose religious identity is in need of urgent restoration and defense.

While the speeches that will be made on the National Mall by religious and governmental leaders like Speaker Mike Johnson, the Rev. Franklin Graham and Bishop Robert Barron will be important to analyze and contextualize, the prayer wall may actually tell us more about the emotional and spiritual structure of contemporary Christian nationalism than the speeches ever could. The Freedom 250 prayer wall offers a glimpse into how Christian nationalist ideas operate not only as political arguments or propaganda being imposed from above, but as useful and powerful frameworks through which many Americans interpret their own suffering, hope, fear and national identity.

(Karen E. Park, a historian of American Christianity, is co-editor of “American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism.” She writes on Substack at Ex Voto. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

(The Conversation) — I teach writing and rhetoric, but my college students and I often overlook a surprisingly complicated question: What is writing?

And can artificial intelligence really do it?

Many people think of “writing” as putting words on a page. However, even from very early on, writers have seen their craft as something more. From Enheduanna, the first named author on record, to Plato and Aristotle, writing has been portrayed and defined in ways that suggest AI may not be “writing” at all.

If not, what should we call AI text? ChatGPT and I have an idea.

Praising and pleading

Enheduanna, who lived around 2,300 B.C.E., was a powerful princess, priestess and poet of the Akkadian Empire, in what is now Iraq. She has been celebrated as the earliest known writer, though the authorship of her poems and hymns is debated.

One of her poems, “The Exaltation of Inanna,” reveals a sense of what writing is and does – portraying it as a living medium that expresses experience and shapes the future.

First, the poem praises the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Inanna, who was associated with fertility and war, among other powers. “My Lady, you are the guardian / Of all greatness,” Enheduanna says, in a translation by Jane Hirschfield.

A tablet in the Penn Museum in Philadelphia inscribed with a copy of Enheduanna’s ‘Exaltation of Inanna.’
Masha Stoyanova/Flickr via Wikimedia Commons

That praise may be strategic. It is followed by Enheduanna’s plea to overthrow Lugal-Ane, a rebel king who she describes exiling her and taking her post at the temple of Ur. “Now I have been cast out / To the place of lepers,” she writes, describing her suffering. “Day comes, / And the brightness / Is hidden around me.”

Grieving, Enheduanna writes a new destiny. In a translation by Sophus Helle, the priestess envisions Inanna coming to her aid and “tear[ing] off this fate, Lugale-Ane.” And her pleading seems to be successful: The end of the poem depicts Enheduanna restored to her post.

In Enheduanna’s poetry, writing does not simply communicate information. It interacts with the present and changes the future. The priestess’s pleas please the goddess, move her heart, and she restore Enheduanna to her post – though historians have little evidence of whether an exile and return really happened.

But her poetry did have real-world influence, helping to create religious and political unity in the world’s first empire. For example, her writing merged the Sumerian goddess Inanna with the Akkadian goddess Ishtar, describing a single “Queen of Heaven.”

AI writing can be used to try to create change, such as by swaying someone’s political opinion. But it lacks the human emotions that make experiences like praise, gratitude and suffering possible – the emotions and motivations that make writing a living medium with real-world effects.

Transforming over informing

Two thousand years after Enheduanna, Plato and his student Aristotle offered another influential view of writing – one that complements hers.

In the “Phaedrus,” which discusses the relationship between love and rhetoric, Plato famously defines writing as a poor copy of speech. Speech’s job is to represent thoughts; thoughts, in turn, represent knowledge and truth. Similarly, Aristotle writes, “Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words.”

A relief of Plato and his student Aristotle by Italian Renaissance sculptor Luca della Robbia.
sailko/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Even that definition marks a sharp contrast with AI, which lacks thoughts and mental experiences. Its output proceeds from data aggregation and text generation.

To understand what writing is, we also need to look at what it does. Although Plato elevates speech over writing, he suggests in “Phaedrus” that good writing may lead a learner toward truth and knowledge. Similar to Enheduanna, he employs writing as a tool for change, both inside and outside the text.

In Plato’s dialogues, characters often radically change their opinions. And today, almost 2,500 years after his death, the philosopher’s real-world impact is clear. For instance, universities and colleges today are collectively called the “Academy” because that was the name of Plato’s group, the first institution of higher learning in the West. English scholar Alfred North Whitehead famously wrote that all Western philosophy is “a series of footnotes to Plato.”

Aristotle’s voluminous works, too, show writing’s purpose transcends communication. In “Rhetoric,” for instance, he details ways to make writing persuasive. Aristotle defines rhetoric as a way of “moving souls,” not just exchanging knowledge.

For both of the Greek philosophers, then, writing is more about transformation than information.

This second-century papyrus of Plato’s ‘Phaedrus,’ found in modern-day Egypt, was reconstructed from several fragments.
Oxyrhynchus Papyri Collection/Oxford’s Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library via Wikimedia Commons

Today, however, AI tools’ popularity may make writing less dynamic and less moving. Use of AI risks a “blandification” of writing, according to a study led by computer science professor Natasha Jaques. In other words, much AI writing today lacks distinct voices, making it sound the same – which could make people’s thinking more similar, too.

‘Generwriting’

Overall, these three ancient authors agree that writing emerges from thoughts and experiences – a process that strives to create change. Enheduanna, Plato and Aristotle also agree that writing’s essence transcends the simple summaries and information transmission common to AI output today.

Although AI can generate creative texts, its writing may not “move souls” the way human writing does. Several studies show a “pro-human attribution bias” or an “AI penalty,” meaning that people prefer human writing even when AI writing is stylistically similar. People want to read what other people write, not what an algorithm pumps out.

Perhaps we need a different word for AI’s output. Common terms today include “generative content” and “synthetic text,” but I wondered if I could land on something simpler – and involve AI itself. After prompting and tweaking ChatGPT over and over, I settled on one word: “generwrite.”

Though AI is here to stay, new words may help distinguish types of text. And as Enheduanna, Plato and Aristotle remind us, there are elements of writing that may always be unique to embodied, thinking beings striving to move souls.

(Ryan Leack, Assistant Professor of Writing, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quietly visited the United Arab Emirates during the Israeli-U.S. war with Iran, his office said Wednesday. The UAE later denied any secret visit had occurred.

Netanyahu met with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in a gathering that “resulted in a historic breakthrough in relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates,” according to the Israeli statement. The Gulf nation normalized relations with Israel in 2020.

The UAE’s official WAM news agency later posted an article denying “reports circulating” about a Netanyahu visit. According to WAM, the country’s relations with Israel “are public and conducted within the framework of the well-known and officially declared Abraham Accords, and are not based on non-transparent or unofficial arrangements.”

The Emirati report also denied any Israeli military delegation was received in the UAE.

Israel’s announcement came a day after U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee revealed that Israel had sent Iron Dome air-defense weapons and personnel to operate them to the UAE.

The UAE has faced Iranian missile and drone fire even after the ceasefire was reached last month. It has been trying to signal to nervous investors that it remains open for business and safe.

Last week, WAM reported that Netanyahu was among the leaders who called the Emirati president to condemn Iranian attacks and express their solidarity with the Gulf federation.

It was rare public acknowledgment of direct talks between the countries that normalized relations in the 2020 Abraham Accords and have strengthened their ties during the Iran war.

Iran has criticized that agreement and has repeatedly suggested over the years that Israel maintained a military and intelligence presence in the Emirates.

Israeli leaders have made occasional visits to the UAE in recent years after normalizing relations.

Iran demands Kuwait release detainees

Iran’s foreign minister accused Kuwait of attempting to “sow discord” by detaining four Iranians that the Gulf Arab country accuses of being Revolutionary Guard operatives.

In a post Wednesday on X, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi demanded the Iranians’ immediate release and said Iran reserved the right to respond.

“This illegal act took place near an island used by the U.S. to attack Iran,” Araghchi wrote.

A day earlier, Kuwait said four men were detained and two escaped while trying to infiltrate Bubiyan Island in the northwest corner of the Persian Gulf on May 1.

Bubiyan Island is home to Mubarak Al Kabeer Port, which is under construction as part of a Chinese plan to build infrastructure across the world. It also came under Iranian attack during the war.

Iranian human rights lawyer released

Prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been released from prison more than a month after being detained, a rights group and her daughter said Wednesday.

Sotoudeh, who is known for defending activists, opposition politicians and women prosecuted for removing their headscarves, was detained by Iranian intelligence agents at her house in Tehran in April.

Her release comes as U.S. President Donald Trump arrived in China for a long-anticipated visit that is expected to touch on the war in Iran.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which closely tracks developments in Iran, said that Sotoudeh was released on bail from Tehran’s Evin Prison.

Her daughter, Mehraveh Khandan, posted on social media that Sotoudeh was released on temporary custody. Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency also reported Sotoudeh release.

Sotoudeh has been imprisoned multiple times. Her activist husband, Reza Khandan, has been imprisoned in the same prison as his wife.

Nobel Peace laureate needs long-term care

Doctors who examined Nobel Peace laureate and activist Narges Mohammadi more than a week after she collapsed at a prison in Iran said she needs months of treatment, according to her foundation.

Mohammadi, 53, was urgently transferred from prison to a hospital in northwestern Iran on May 1 after she fell unconscious. She was released on bail nearly 10 days later and transferred to a hospital in Tehran where her specialists examined her.

The doctors said her vascular disease has worsened since she was last checked in 2024 and recommended eight months of treatment.

She was awarded the Nobel in 2023 while in prison and has been jailed repeatedly throughout her career. Her latest imprisonment began in December when she was arrested in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad.

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Schreck reported from Dubai. Associated Press reporter John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed to this report.