Who We Are
The Prayers for Peace Alliance was started by Palestinian Christians in Philadelphia in November of 2023. Initially its main activity was to bring local Muslims and Jews to Christian churches, to invite the congregations to pray with them for the children of Gaza and for a ceasefire.
The initial efforts yielded transformative contacts between the local Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities around a minimal mission of prayerfully addressing the current conflict and praying for a just peace with reconciliation, freedom and equality for all.
The response prompted a desire to expand the initiative and form a national movement to harness the power of prayer and spirituality in a highly contentious political situation, where the compassion for all God’s children would trump the narrow political and nationalistic affiliations.
Our Mission
We believe in the power of prayer and the spiritual value of seeking nonviolent alternatives for addressing grievances. While this initiative was started by Christian Palestinians and is aimed primarily at churches, we also recognize the need to engage Jewish and Muslim organized religious communities as well as secular people in this interfaith project.
Principles
We believe in the power of united prayer to bring together Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and secular communities to heal grievances and imagine a shared future based upon peace, justice, and equal rights for all people in the Holy Land.
We believe in the spiritual value of nonviolence to build a shared sense of humanity & dignity in ourselves and our neighbors and to overcome systems of ethnic-based discrimination and separation.
We believe it is our responsibility in the United States to cease our financial and diplomatic support for the current violence being committed against Palestinian civilians and seek an end to the violence of Israel’s military occupation and unequal treatment of Palestinians.
We believe it is the responsibility of communities of faith in this country to reject atrocities, whether committed against Palestinians or Israelis, and to speak out in favor of safety and democracy.
