(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.)