A Nation’s Day to Pray

They gathered in a chapel down the street from the ruins of the World Trade Center, where ash still flavors the air and armored vehicles patrol the streets.

With the stained-glass windows of their 300-year-old church shattered and its doors sealed off, members of Wall Street Trinity Church met in a nearby Roman Catholic chapel.

“Once we stood in the shadow of the World Trade Center,” the Rev. Samuel Johnson Howard told his Episcopal congregation. “Now we stand in the shadow of the cross.”

Millions of Americans went to church Sunday, seeking solace after days of unimaginable horror. They gathered in Manhattan congregations and in chapels hundreds and thousands of miles away.

At some religious services in places as far-flung as California and Maine, the services included screen images of exploding skyscrapers and heroic rescue workers.

In heartland churches and big-city cathedrals, people prayed and listened to sermons about forgiveness, justice and war. Pews were filled with people who hadn’t been to church in months or years--and with those seeking solace for the death of a relative or friend.

“I don’t come every week, but today I felt like I had to,” said Erica Palmer, 35, who attended services in Tacoma, Wash. “Easter is the last time I came to church. It was a reaffirmation that God is with us and grieves with us, even now.”

St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Oklahoma City, a block from the site of the 1995 federal building bombing, held special services, just as it did days after the tragedy there. In Denver, as many people attended local churches as did in the days after the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School.

At Atlanta’s Church of the Apostles, Michael Youssef, the founding vicar, asked those who knew someone missing to speak the name. Names reverberated from the balcony and across the sanctuary.

“We are a good and generous nation that has opened its doors for many,” said Youseef, a native of Egypt who became a U.S. citizen in 1984.

Youseef told his congregation to find strength in passages of the Old Testament in which God sends a “sword of justice” and a “spirit of confusion” against the forces of evil.

“Send the spirit of confusion upon these people,” he said, leading more than 2,000 people in prayer. “Father, God, I pray they will turn on each other.”

At New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, many people wept after the traditional Catholic ritual in which parishioners turn to the strangers next to them to offer a handshake or an embrace.

“Our first duty is to tend to the grieving,” Msgr. Eugene V. Clark said in his morning address. “There are going to be 5,000 funerals in the city of New York.”

New Yorkers in areas from the Bronx to Brooklyn confronted reminders of the tragedy on sidewalk corners decorated by clusters of votive candles.

At Church of St. Paul the Apostle, parishioners mourned the death of Deborah Welsh, a member of the choir who was a flight attendant on hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania. Choir members pinned pictures of Welsh to their clothing. The hymn after communion was “America the Beautiful.”

The Rev. Charles Kullmann told parishioners that “to be children of God” they must be forgiving.

“God’s love and our hatred cannot coexist in our hearts,” Kullmann said. “Jesus came to save all sinners, even terrorists.”

Those sentiments were difficult for many to embrace here, where talk of vengeance is common.

At more than one sermon, priests and ministers felt compelled to address the question many have asked themselves since Tuesday. How can a merciful God allow so many of his children to die in such a terrible way?

“Many may be angry with God this morning,” the Rev. Johnson said at the services at Trinity Church. “That anger is all right. God can handle it. God expects it. That God would permit evil is a mystery. But evil is real. If you doubt it exists, just walk up the street.”

Outside, soldiers in camouflage kept a watchful eye on passersby, and trucks rumbled past filled with the twisted beams of destroyed buildings. Soon, they will carry away the remains of thousands.

“For Christians, death does not speak the last word,” Johnson continued, echoing the sentiments of pastors at other churches here. “We are at war. But remember--only God’s justice is a perfect justice.”

As they attempted to make sense of last week’s carnage, the men and women of God who spoke Sunday found answers as widely varying as the faiths they represent.

One minister in California hinted that the events may be a sort of divine retribution for a nation in which prayer and godliness seem dying virtues.

“Truth be told, our nation had forgotten God,” said the Rev. Dudley C. Rutherford at Shepherd of the Hills in Porter Ranch. “I’m not sure we’ve been living our lives in a way that merits God’s protective covering.” He lashed out at those who oppose prayer in schools and other public places.

“Now, all of a sudden, everybody’s praying,” he said. “It’s OK to pray. They’re telling us to pray.”

In Pasadena, the Rev. Ed Bacon, rector of All Saints Episcopalian Church, denounced statements by evangelists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

“If we expect Islamic leaders to condemn the evil of terrorism . . . we Christians will, in turn, have to speak out to those who spew the bile of hate speech and hate crime,” he said.

For the most part, however, such statements took a back seat to more universal sentiments. People prayed for the missing. They feared the battles that may soon be fought in places near and distant.

At St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Santa Ana, Father Steve Sallot suggested that worshipers might find comfort in silence.

Sunday, he said, did not seem like “a day for lots of words. If you’ve watched television at all, we have been pummeled with words, battered with images . . . that strike to the core of being a human being.”

*

Times staff writers Edith Stanley in Atlanta; Julie Cart in Denver; Stephanie Simon in Manchester, Mo.; Lynn Marshall in Tacoma, Wash.; Massie Ritsch, Jessica Garrison and Janet Wilson in Los Angeles; and Times wire services contributed to this story.