Ten years ago this fall, 26-year-old student Chris Harper-Mercer entered his writing class at the Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, and forced fellow students toward the center of the room. After shooting his teacher point-blank, the disturbed young man began asking classmates about what they believed, before shooting 16 of them — killing half of them.
Two years earlier in 2013, President Barack Obama had unsuccessfully pushed Congress to pass new legislation following the national horror over 20 children and 6 adults shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
Now facing a fresh tragedy, President Obama, clearly frustrated at the lack of further decisive action, remarked, “Our thoughts and prayers are not enough” — suggesting that without something more, they will do “nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America, next week or a couple months from now.”
A cynical pivot on prayer
This moment was a turning point for the worse in how America talks about “thoughts and prayers,” according to a Washington Post analysis of 600,000 tweets containing that phrase between 2012 and 2019. Although the phrase had been critiqued often before 2015, these researchers confirmed a doubling of critical references to “thoughts and prayers” after this press conference.
The Post also reported that the tone of relevant tweets “became angrier, more sarcastic and polarizing” — with it more likely that those publicly speaking about prayer would be “castigated” by those “demanding stronger gun laws.”
Democratic leaders have continued to echo Obama’s critique in recent years. After a 2023 mass shooting in Allen, Texas, President Joe Biden likewise stated, “Republican members of Congress cannot continue to meet this epidemic with a shrug. Tweeted thoughts and prayers are not enough.”
And this week, in the wake of the upsetting attacks on worshipping families at a Catholic School in Minneapolis, the same critique has been raised by the Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey and former Biden spokeswoman, turned political commentator, Jen Psaki on MSNBC.
In its more strident form — such as Psaki’s comment on X earlier the same day — these concerns begin to feel unnecessarily provocative and aggressive. A recent op-ed in The Hill by former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, for instance, is entitled, “No more ‘thoughts and prayers.’”
Among other things, such dismissive portrayals paper over meaningful, substantive disagreements about the best way to respond to mass shootings — diverse perspectives held by Americans equally concerned about ending mass shootings.
Such rhetoric also often seems to take for granted a deformed and fun-house mirror version of prayer. Yet 61% of American respondents say prayer is a part of their life — with 44% of them saying they pray at least once a day, according to a 2025 Pew Research Center survey.
For a practice this important to so many Americans, it shouldn’t be okay to simply mock it or pretend like those engaged in regular prayer somehow don’t also believe in taking decisive action. In fact, such derision is more likely to cloud and distract from open public comparison of competing action steps.
Writing for the Deseret News about the widening critique of “thoughts and prayers,” Menachem Wecker, editor with Jewish News Syndicate, suggests, “the implication is that prayer, once seen as a powerful way to move mountains and make the impossible possible, is nothing when compared to political action.”
But inasmuch as those from all political parties pray, to make it political does a disservice to the comforting power of prayer and, more importantly, to those who can testify of divine intervention from personal experience.
One can understand how a lack of action may prompt a mayor or a media pundit’s angry words, while also feeling disappointed to see such a personal attack on believers who pray for comfort and help.
It’s true that divine dependence may prompt passivity among some. The renowned psychologist William James cautioned in 1902 that for people of faith “there is always the danger that reliance on (higher) powers becomes a pretext for not facing our own tasks.”
Yet these are not new concerns at all. James writes in the New Testament: “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.”
Faith and works ... prayer and policy
This ancient apostle, however, is also highlighting a way forward — hinting that faith and works, or prayer and policy, rather than at odds and antithetical, can work hand-in-hand as public action becomes informed by humble entreaty to God.
It’s this same spirit that has led Gov. Spencer Cox to twice (June 2021 and June 2025) call for Utahns to join in a focused day of prayer for a state facing drought conditions and wildfire risks. These invitations have been accompanied by reminders to “conserve water by avoiding long showers, fixing leaky faucets, and planting water-wise landscapes.”
Likewise, neither the call for a “worldwide fast” during the COVID pandemic by President Russell M. Nelson, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, nor the call to prayers and fast by Pope Leo XIV were distractions from crucial action needed during various crises, as reflected in their words amidst both crises.
For instance, Pope Leo goes on to encourage people to ask God “to grant us peace and justice and to dry the tears of those who suffer because of the armed conflicts underway.”
Thus, prayer is not simply filling the air with empty words. It’s speaking from a heart that is wrestling to accept whatever wisdom is called for in the moment.
Incidentally, one of the more interesting calls to action this week, alongside the many appeals to prayer, came from First Lady Melania Trump, who encouraged more attention to “pre-emptive intervention” to identify potential shooters through common early warning signs.
The idea is intriguing, since threat and risk assessment has become best practice in protecting potential victims of domestic violence. It may hold potential for protecting children at school, especially if, as the First Lady notes, the identification of risk can begin “in our homes.”
Prayer as deep listening
If some continue to raise concern about the potential lack of meaning in appeals to prayer, let them have their say. They wouldn’t be the first. Jesus also cautioned his disciples about “empty phrases” (“vain repetitions”) among those who “think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.”
Rather than declaring “thoughts and prayers” before the world — or on social media — Jesus encouraged followers to “go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private.”
This represents another major misconception of prayer common in progressive critique of prayer today: that prayer is little more than speaking words in a kind of performative art, rather than a form of soul-deep listening.
What if a regular practice of prayer could actually help us all pause, breathe and listen more deeply, including to each other?
As the poet Mary Oliver wrote about prayer, “patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.”
Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard likewise wrote about starting to listen in worship and learning that “praying is hearing … to pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent … and waiting until God is heard.”