NUCLEAR PRAYER DAY
AUGUST 6, 2023
Click HERE to find out how you can participate!
You are invited – you, your group, your congregation, and your organization - to join with others around the world on August 6th to say a prayer about nuclear weapons. For the second straight year we will say prayers as a global community on this day.
One year later, the threats of first use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine still remain, and the potential for capricious escalation stir us in the deepest parts of our souls, and inspire us to pray that this planet might be saved from the more than 13,000 warheads which are aimed and ready!
What kind of nuclear prayer? You are invited to create your own – a prayer, an intention, a meditation, about hope, or regret (that these weapons exist), or anything else that comes to your heart. Our group, Voices for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons, has begun our monthly meetings for 15 years praying the same nuclear prayer. Perhaps THIS prayer of ours might help stimulate your own prayer.
People of our group who have said this prayer include a former Secretary of State, George Shultz; a former Secretary of Defense, William Perry; a former Ambassador Thomas Graham; physicist Sidney Drell; international lawyer Jonathan Granoff; and several others. These are people who have devoted their lives to disarmament and the abolition of nuclear weapons. People of action – and also people of prayer!
Why pray?
1. When people all over the world join together on one day to raise their deepest concerns to the Highest Power, then hope and solidarity replace the feeling of nuclear helplessness;
2. It stops us from thinking that nine nuclear-powered presidents are the final authorities of life on this planet;
3. It sets us in search of leaders who will deliver us from nuclear self-destruction.
Hundreds of people around the world joined us in prayer last year. We already have pledges from people worldwide who will be making their nuclear prayers on August 6th this year too; a global community of prayer has already begun. We hope that you will join us and them. If you do, please let us know by clicking the "Yes, I'll pray too" button below, so that an ever greater number of such prayers can be recognized, celebrated, and grow in strength.
HIGHTLIGHTS FROM LAST YEAR'S NUCLEAR PRAYER DAY
On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Since then, the potential for nuclear catastrophe has grown to an unimaginable scale. On the 77th anniversary of that horrific tragedy, Voices members and co-hosts inaugurated the 1st annual Nuclear Prayer Day at 8:15 AM PST on August 6, 2022. This inaugural video and its message of urgency, the power of prayer, and our shared hope for peace, spread beyond the Facebook live stream and was a part of many Nuclear Prayer Day events, including the NPT review at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
People all over the world united in prayer for a world free of nuclear weapons. It was a truly moving event that reached well over 100,000 people. We hope the global reach of our prayers continues to grow with each annual Nuclear Prayer Day. We welcome your prayer submissions all year long. Please email us at contact@voices-uri.org to send us your own Nuclear Prayer and stay tuned for details on next year's event.
If you participated in Nuclear Prayer Day 2022, we'd like to hear about your experience. Click HERE to share your Nuclear Prayer Day story with us and to add your pin to the map below. You can see what others did on this day by exploring the map and by following us on Facebook. On our YouTube channel you can also access a playlist of the pre-interviews and events as well as the Nuclear Prayer Day prayers we received from participants.