A SAMPLING FROM Conversations With God: Two Centuries of Prayer By African-Americans (1994), ed. James Melvin Washington. Harper Collins: New York.

All prayers are reproduced below as published in Mr. Washington’s anthology, a collection of more than 190 prayers spanning 235 years and a wide variety of sources and voices. Slaves, ministers, activists, and authors all bring their voices in. However, these six have been chosen to show the range of expression and emotion in the African-American Christian experience, and how voices from centuries ago can still speak for us today.

A PRAYER FOR PURIFICATION
MARIA W. STEWART (1831)

O Thou King eternal, immortal, invisible, and only wise God, before whom angels bow and seraphs veil their faces, crying holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty. True and righteous are thy ways, thou King of saints. Help me, thy poor unworthy creature, humbly to prostrate myself before thee, and implore that mercy which my sins have justly forfeited.

O God I know that I am not worthy of a place at thy footstool; but to whom shall I go but unto thee? Thou alone hast the words of eternal life. Send me not away without a blessing, I beseech thee; but enable me to wrestle like Jacob, and to prevail like Israel. Be graciously pleased, O God, to pardon all that thou hast seen amiss in me this day, and enable me to live more to thine honor and glory for the time to come. Bless the church to which I belong, and grant that when thou makest up thy jewels, not one soul shall be found missing.

Bless him in whom thou hast set over us as a watchman in Zion. Let not his soul be discouraged. May he not fail to declare the whole counsel of God, whether sinners will hear or forbear.

And now, Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in thee. Do more for me than I can possibly ask or think, and finally receive me to thyself.

PRAYER FOR POWER
ORRIN STONE (1889)

O Lawd, gib dy sarvint, dis Sunday mawnin’, de eye of an eagle dat he may see sin f’om afar. Put his han’s to de gospel pulpit; glue his ears to de gospel telefoam an’ conneck him wid de Glory in de skies. ‘Luminate his brow wid a holy light dat will make de fiahs of hell look like a tallah candle. Bow his head down in humility, in dat lonesome valley wheah de pearl of truth is much needed to be said. Grease his lips wid possum ‘ile to make it easy fo’ love to slip outen his mouth…

Turpentine his ‘magination; ‘lectrify his brain wid de powah of the Word. Put ‘petual motion in his arms. Fill him full of de dynamite of Dy awful powah; ‘noint him all ovah wid de kerosene of Dy salvation, an’ den, O Laws, sot him on fah wid de sperrit of de Holy Ghos’.

GOD OF OUR WEARY YEARS
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1921)

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou hast brought us thus far on the way.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land!

RETURN, O LORD
CHARLES ERIC LINCOLN (1944)

Dear Lord, I am bewildered by the angry world.
I do not know the meaning of the flags unfurled.
The noisy skies, the tortured seas;
What sayest Thou, O Lord, to These?

I hear the strident call to arms; above the scenes
Of men in desperate debate; their war machines
Defile the skies, pollute the earth.
How much, O Lord, can peace be worth?

Hast Thou in merited disgust turned back from man
Who recklessly has broken trust and sinned again?
Forgive our selfish lust for power
And save us in this dreadful hour.

Return, O Lord, return and save this wretched race,
Save us, not by Thy justice, Lord, but grace,
Forgive our foolish, pompous way,
And save us from ourselves, we pray.

A PASTORAL PRAYER
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (1956)

O God, our Heavenly Father, we thank thee for this golden privilege to worship thee, the only true God of the universe.

We come to thee today, grateful that thou has kept us through the long night of the past and ushered us into the challenge of the present and the bright hope of the future. We are mindful, O God, that man cannot save himself, for man is not the measure of things and humanity is not God. Bound by our chains of sins and finiteness, we know we need a Savior.

We thank thee, O God, for the spiritual nature of man. We are in nature, but we live above nature. Help us never to let anybody or any condition pull us so slow as to cause us to hate. Give us strength to love our enemies and to do good to those who despitefully use us and persecute us. We thank thee for thy Church, founded upon thy Word, that challenges us to do more than sing and pray, but to go out and work as though the very answer to our prayers depended on us and not upon thee.

Then finally, help us to realize that man was created to shine like stars and live on through all eternity. Keep us, we pray, in perfect peace, help us to walk together, pray together, sing together, and live together until that day when all God’s children, Black, White, Red, Yellow will rejoice in one common band of humanity in the kingdom of our Lord and of our God. We pray. Amen.

THANK YOU FOR EACH ONE OF THEM
WILLIAM TOWNSEND CRUTCHER (1984)

Our Father in Heaven, we come at this hour to express our sincere thanks for another year. We are thankful that you have spared these lives, and that you have brought them all the way through another year.

We pray that, as they conclude this old year and begin a new one, they will find joy, that they will find happiness, that they will find grace sufficient to take care of their needs. Our Father, we thank you for each one of them.

We thank you that they are still here, that they can still hear, that they are still able to feel, that they are still able to walk, and that they are still able to talk. We just want to thank you for these blessings as well as others.

Oh God, bless them. Bless their homes that they may continue to live in your light. Bless each one here this morning, as well as those who were unable to come. Enable us to do the things that you would have us to do.

And oh God, great God, we just thank you! We thank you Jesus! You have been so good to us! You have brought us such a long way. You lifted us up when we were down! You healed our sick bodies! You brought us a very long way. We want to thank you for it. You have fed us, and kept us from being hungry. You have opened doors that were closed in our face. We want to thank you for it this morning.

And, oh God, we don’t know whether we will be here another year or not! We can’t depend on that. But we know that wherever we are, that where you are, everything will be all right! We want to thank you this morning, our Father. Take our hands and lead us on.

We ask in your name. Amen.

MARIA W. STEWART (1803-1879) –A famous abolitionist speaker and Baptist who lectured on spiritual topics.
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ORRIN STONE (?-?) –A minister in South Carolina, whose prayer was taken from the book Encyclopedia of Black Folklore and Humor (1990) by Henry Fielding.
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JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1871-1938) – the son of an African Methodist Episcopal minister who became prominent in the black literary revival of the Harlem Renaissance in the ‘20s and ‘30s. His tireless work and skill as a reigning savant of African-American culture…often eclipsed his deep sensitivity to the spirituality of his forebears. He was always more critical of institutional religion than of African-American spirituality per se.  His famous depiction of African-American folk sermons in God’s Trombones (1927) blessed his spiritual roots and gave focus to the African-American sermon as a significant literary genre.
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CHARLES ERIC LINCOLN (1924-) is a distinguished professor of religion and culture emeritus at Duke University. He is author of numerous books including The Black Muslims in America (1961), The Black Church Since Frazier (1974)…and co-author, with Lawrence H. Mamiya, of the much acclaimed study The Black Church in the African American Experience (1990).
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MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (1929-1968), the martyred prophet of the Civil Rights movement, reluctantly accepted leadership of the Montgomery Improvement Association in December 1955 in its efforts to desegregate public transportation. King stubbornly advocated and embraced nonviolent resistance as the best way to depose white supremacy. His spiritual struggles and insights fired the imagination of America. For the only book-length selection of his publications, see James Melvin Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1986).
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WILLIAM TOWNSEND CRUTCHER, JR. (1905-1989) was born in Stevenson, Alabama, and between 1935 and 1989 he seved as pastor of the Mount Olive Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was the major civil rights leader in Knoxville and the focus of Merrill Proudfoot’s Diary of a Sit-in. He wrote a pamphlet called A Bus Ministry Manual: A Guide for National Baptist Churches (1976).
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© 1994 by James Melvin Washington. All rights reserved.