Through themes of freedom, unity, truth-telling, and hope, this series invites Christians to model a way of life rooted not in political power or cultural division, but in the reconciling hope of Christ.
June 7: Prayers for Our Country: Reclaiming Our Dual Identity
Christians are exiles and pilgrims in every earthly nation, called to love and serve the city without dominating it. Augustine's two cities/kingdoms framework sets up everything that follows. This series will take America seriously but not supremely. That Christians hold dual citizenship, and those two citizenships make different demands is actually more challenging than it first sounds. It unsettles both the Christian nationalist instinct to fully baptize America and the progressive instinct to make the church primarily a political reform movement.
Texts: Philippians 3: 17-21 and Romans 13: 1-7
June 14: Prayers for Our Country: What Freedom is For
American culture tends to define freedom as freedom from constraint. Scripture offers a different vision: freedom for love, service, and covenant relationship.
Texts: Galatians 5:1, 13-15; John 8:31-38.
June 21: Prayers for Our Country: Finding Unity Again
"Out of many, one" is a civic aspiration that mirrors Paul's vision of the body of Christ. Our congregation, like the nation, contains real differences. We’ll explore what genuine unity (not uniformity) asks of us.
Texts: Romans 12:1-8, Ephesians 4:1-6.
June 28: Prayers for Our Country: That We Might Love Our Prophets - Hannah Day Donoghue preaching
From the Founding-era clergy to abolitionists to the civil rights movement, American history is full of moments when the church called the nation to live up to its own ideals. Because the church owes ultimate allegiance elsewhere, it has the freedom, and the obligation, to speak truthfully to earthly power.
Texts: Jeremiah 29:1-7, Acts 5:25-39.
July 5: Prayers for Our Country: Remembering Where Our Hope Lies
We’ll close with a forward-looking charge rooted in the series' opening frame: as citizens of the heavenly city living in the earthly one, the church's particular vocation is to model what the world can't manufacture on its own: communities where people who genuinely disagree still break bread together.
Texts: Matthew 5:1-16, Revelation 21:1-5.