Christian Leaders Call for ‘Mayday’ Prayer

Organizers of May Day 2010 are calling on Christians to
repent and seek God “for His mercy
instead of the judgment our many sins deserve.” The 30-member
host committee includes Christian and conservative leaders ranging from Focus
on the Family founder James Dobson to prayer leaders Mike and Cindy Jacobs to
Republican Rep. Randy Forbes of Virginia.

“Our
nation faces what is perhaps the most serious moral crisis since the civil war,
as we’ve turned our backs on God and have clearly displeased Him,” Dobson said in a statement.
“May Day 2010 is a time to come together and proclaim what God has done in the
past, to pray for forgiveness and to plead for God’s mercy on all of us.”

Many of the leaders involved in the event say the nation’s moral state worsened
this week with the passage of the health care overhaul, which many pro-life
groups believe will subsidize abortion despite an executive order President Obama
signed Wednesday prohibiting federal funding for elective abortions.

“On
Sunday, America’s crisis reached the catastrophic state,” wrote May Day organizer Janet Porter, president of the advocacy group Faith2Action, in a
WorldNet Daily column Tuesday. “With the government takeovers so far, we are
now a small step from a communist dictatorship. That is why we are calling for
a 40-day fast for our nation in crisis-beginning today until May the 1st.

“This [May Day] event is not ‘business as usual,'” she
added. “We’re going to gather for a solemn assembly that begins with
repentance.”

May Day 2010 is inspired in part by a proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln issued March 30, 1863, calling the nation to a day of
prayer and fasting. It reads in part: “Whereas, it is the duty of nations as
well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to
confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow yet with assured hope
that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the
sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history: that
those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.”

“In
1863, Abraham Lincoln lamented that America had ‘become too self-sufficient to
feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the
God that made us,'” said Republican Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona. “As our nation faces many grave challenges, I
hope Americans will heed Lincoln’s challenge and come together in prayer at
this important event.”

Other participants in the May Day event include Colorado minister
Dutch Sheets; Chuck
Pierce of Glory of Zion International; Mathew
Staver, founder of the Christian legal group Liberty Counsel; and Republican Reps. Louie Gohmert of Texas, Steve King of Iowa
and Cliff Stearns of Florida.

Since the beginning of the year, Cindy Jacobs’ ministry has
been leading a Root 52 prayer campaign across the nation to restore each
state’s “covenantal roots,” a reference to the acknowledgments of God included
in many state constitutions and founding documents. During
May Day 2010, state prayer leaders affiliated with Jacobs’ Reformation
Prayer Network will read the preambles to their state
constitutions, repent and “invite God back into their state.”

Jacobs said during times of “great trouble” it is biblical for
Christians to humble themselves in prayer before God.

“This nation was changed by ordinary people that heard
that the nation had to be protected,” Jacobs told Porter during a radio interview earlier
this year. “I just feel that that spirit still is in us as Americans today. … I
just feel there’s hundreds of thousands of people today that are saying, ‘I
will not let this happen to my nation without falling on my face.'”