On Monday, April 28, three people knelt in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol to pray. Among them was Rev. Dr. William Barber—pastor, teacher, and tireless advocate for the poor. They weren’t shouting. They weren’t armed. They weren’t vandalizing sacred symbols of democracy. They were praying—crying out to God against proposed budget cuts to Medicaid and other programs that literally keep people alive. They chanted, “Against the conspiracy of cruelty, we plead the power of your mercy.”

For this act of holy protest, they were handcuffed and arrested.

Let that sit with you.

This is the same nation where lawmakers who champion Christian nationalism routinely call for public prayer in schools, at football games, in courthouses, and at flagpoles. They insist that prayer must be protected in every public square. But apparently not that kind of prayer. Not the kind that laments injustice. Not the kind that confronts cruelty. Not the kind that draws a straight line from biblical prophets to policy critiques.

No, that kind of prayer threatens power. And in America, the cuffs come out when prayer stops serving the empire and starts challenging it.

That’s why I keep saying: Jesus didn’t die for our country—he died because of it.

Prophetic prayer has always been dangerous. The kind of prayer that doesn’t just seek peace but demands justice. The kind that doesn’t just bless the flag but weeps for the bodies beneath it.

Monotheism and the Machinery of Empire

To understand how we got here—where prayer can be both idolized and criminalized—we need to go back to the machinery of theological imperialism. In the 1600s, Henry More of the Cambridge Platonists coined the term monotheism. But it wasn’t just a theological category—it was a ladder, and at the top were white Western Christians. Everyone else—Indigenous people, African spiritualists, Asian religious traditions—were labeled polytheists, pagans, or primitives.

More’s framework created a hierarchy of belief, justifying colonial expansion as a civilizing mission. If your religion didn’t resemble European monotheism, you weren’t just different; you were wrong. In need of conquest. Conversion. Control.

That theological ladder eventually became a scaffold. On it, empires hung the identities, cultures, and lives of millions—claiming it was all for their own good. “Saving souls” became the PR spin for stealing land, erasing languages, and baptizing genocide.

And this same logic still runs deep in American Christianity today. It shows up when people claim the U.S. is a Christian nation but can’t stomach a Christianity that critiques its policies. It shows up when pastors get arrested for prayer, but insurrectionists get presidential pardons.

Christian Nationalism’s Two-Faced God

The great irony of American Christian nationalism is this: it wants God in the public square, but only the God that blesses its guns, grins at its greed and turns a blind eye to its racism.

Christian nationalism loves public prayer—as long as it’s the right kind of prayer. The patriotic kind. The sanitized kind. The type that opens a Trump rally with tears for the flag and a flourish of “In Jesus’ name.” But bring a cane, a robe, and a prayer of lament against a budget designed to hurt the poor—and you’ll be ushered out by dozens of police, doors slammed behind you.

Now compare that to January 6, 2021.

When the U.S. Capitol was overrun by white supremacists and Christian nationalists waving flags that said, “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president,” they prayed inside the Senate chamber. They erected wooden gallows outside and chanted, “hang Mike Pence!” They smashed windows, beat police officers, smeared feces on the walls—and all of them were eventually pardoned by Trump and supported by the very people who call themselves defenders of “law and order.”

Some of those rioters even live-streamed their “prayers” as they desecrated the seat of American governance, all while claiming God’s blessing on their actions.

No handcuffs. No door slamming. No press ejected. Just chaos wrapped in piety and later excused as “tourism” by sympathetic politicians.

But let a Black preacher with a limp pray in protest against a cruel budget, and he’s treated like a threat to national security.

That’s America’s two-faced god: one who blesses the powerful and punishes the poor, who protects the empire but prosecutes prophets.

Praying While Black, Preaching While Poor

That’s why Barber’s arrest is not just about prayer. It’s about who defines what counts as holy and who gets punished when holiness becomes disruptive. Barber wasn’t just praying—he was doing theology in public. He declared that the God of Scripture stands with the oppressed, not the oppressor. That God hears the cry of the widow and the orphan—not the demands of CEOs and lobbyists.

And that kind of theology, in the halls of American power, is apparently more dangerous than a mob.

This is why the state executed Jesus. Not because he was too spiritual. But because he challenged political and religious systems that crushed the vulnerable while enriching the elite. He flipped tables. He told parables that condemned the rich. He said the last shall be first. And the first? Well, they won’t like the ending.

If we follow that Jesus, we shouldn’t be surprised when we’re met with handcuffs instead of handshakes.

Bearing a Cross, Not Waving a Flag

Rev. Barber’s prayer was a reminder that faith is not passive, it’s political. It is not partisan but deeply political because it names the real conditions of human suffering and demands change. It’s the kind of faith that gets arrested. That disturbs the peace so that it might bring justice. That refuses to bow to the false gods of nationalism, capitalism, and white supremacy.

So, when we say Jesus died for our sins, let’s remember among those sins are the very ones Barber was protesting systems that ignore the sick, marginalize the poor, and criminalize compassion.

Jesus didn’t die to preserve the status quo. He died because he threatened it.

So, we pray, protest, and preach. Even when it gets us locked out or locked up.

Because authentic Christianity doesn’t seek permission from power—it challenges it. It doesn’t serve the empire—it calls it to repent.

And it doesn’t wait for safe spaces to speak truth. It risks everything—just like Rev. Barber did—for the sake of the least of these.

Amen, and may we be found praying, even when the doors close.

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