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Saying Prayer is the Answer to Violence is Offensive — Here’s Why

The days conservative Christians long for were filled with violence. They were the perps

Tim Wise
5 min readJul 9, 2022
Image: Everett Collection, Shutterstock, Standard license, purchased by author

You’ll hear it every time something tragic happens.

School shooting? Check.

Supermarket massacre by a vicious racist? Check.

Mass killing spree during a July 4th celebration? Absolutely.

Every time, you can count down the minutes until someone offers up some version of it: namely, that although no gun regulations could have prevented such evil, there is one thing that could have.

And what is it?

Why, prayer, of course.

That, and a return to the Godliness that presumably once animated America but from which we have supposedly turned.

If we just restored prayer in schools, posted the Ten Commandments in every government building, or said “Merry Christmas” instead of the “Happy Holidays” preferred by Godless heathens, such things wouldn’t happen.

After all, does anyone remember mass shootings before the feminists, gays, and assorted liberals removed the Almighty from the public square?

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Tim Wise
Tim Wise

Written by Tim Wise

Senior Fellow, African American Policy Forum, critical race theorist, and author of 9 books on racism and racial inequity in the U.S.

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