“Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers [sic] does not end school shootings. prayers [sic] do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers,” erupted Joe Biden’s former White House Press Secretary and current MSNBC host Jen Psaki following last week’s attack on Annunciation Catholic Church’s Pre-K through eighth grade school in Minneapolis by a crazed gender dysphoric individual.

Minneapolis Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey expressed similar sentiments. “You cannot put into words the gravity, tragedy, or absolute pain of the situation,” he said. “Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying.”

Florida Democrat Representative Maxwell Frost also weighed in with an expletive-laced posting on X: “These children were probably praying when they were shot to death at catholic [sic] school. Don’t give us your f***ing thoughts and prayers.”

These were merely a few examples from anti-Second Amendment leftists and Democrats across the country expressing their outrage at another school attack. It was also another exhibitionist effort to immediately jump on an atrocity that took the lives of two young children and wounded 17 others in order to push the left-wing political agenda.

The ridicule of prayer has sadly become part and parcel to their politicized response.

The apparent reason is that they believe prayer to be little more than an expression of fruitless sentimentalities that produces no change. Worse, they think, it acts as a sort of salve to prevent any direct action toward their policy ambitions — namely, the elimination of private ownership of firearms.

While in this instance the issue was another atrocity committed against a school, the Democrat Party has increasingly become the anti-God party.

Back in 2012, the Democratic National Committee had an embarrassing moment when it, for the first time in its history, proposed an official party platform wherein there was no mention of “God.” At the time, Barack Obama objected, and a reference to God was once again included.

In 2024, a similar episode occurred, in which the DNC’s draft copy of the party platform failed to mention God. Nor did it include such terms as “Lord” or “the Almighty.” This was eventually “corrected” and the following reference to “God” was included: “We remain committed to fighting poverty and enabling all Americans to live up to their God-given potential.”

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee has maintained repeated references to God in its official party platform, as well as concerns for defending Christianity and religious liberty.

What does this say about the Democrats’ political views? At the very least, there is a sizable faction of their party that wants nothing to do with God. And it would appear from a governmental perspective that Democrats as a party have grown to embrace statism for their governing worldview.

Statism eschews that which would put the people’s loyalty in something other than the government. And fundamentally, the biggest threat to statists is a population that puts its faith and trust in God over and above that of human government.

In this light, prayer is not merely viewed as an expression of feckless sentimentalism. Rather, it’s viewed as a threat to government authority and its power. If people look to God first and foremost, they are more likely to oppose the state’s increasing governing power. They are less likely to trust the state with more power and the solutions to social problems that the state may impose.

Americans’ recent experience throughout the COVID pandemic opened the eyes of many to the threat that governmental authorities, high on their own hubris, may inflict the masses with draconian laws that infringe on individual rights and liberties, and all in the name of “helping” for the “good of society.”

Ironically, prayer to God Almighty is the most effective response from anyone when tragedy strikes. Fundamentally, prayer is at its core a recognition that ultimately we are not in control, but that God is in control. He is the One who is sovereign over all His creation and events of history.

Furthermore, Christians pray not simply to make requests of God (though that is a component), but we pray as an expression of our submission to and communion with our Heavenly Father. Prayer at its root is an expression of faith.

And prayer is powerful, not because of the one who prays but because of the One to whom that prayer is made, God Almighty. In prayer, we are lifting our minds from the temporal to the eternal. We are reminding ourselves that this current reality is not all there is, but rather a part of a greater reality — the spiritual reality that God is present.

Yes, those children who were attacked in Minneapolis may have indeed been in the midst of prayer. But at the time of the attack, there truly would be no better place or action for them to have been engaged in than to be communing with God Almighty. As difficult as it is for us on this side of eternity to appreciate, those two children who were killed may have literally been in conversation with their Heavenly Father one moment, only to find themselves suddenly standing before Him face to face.

Our first president, George Washington, understood that trust in God was paramount to our nation’s success. As he stated in his prayer for the nation, “I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have the United States in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Devine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation. Amen”

Eschewing prayer is as un-American as it is foolish.