Lots of people are praying for Election 2016
.jpg&w=1920&q=75)
(left to right) Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Archbishop of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump and his wife Melania pray as they attend the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner to benefit Catholic charities in New York, on October 20, 2016.
With passion, prayers, and some outrage too, “Religious Twitter” joined much of the rest of America by getting caught up with election day fever.
Jesuit priest James Martin, who’s also the editor-at-large of "America," The National Catholic Review magazine, was one of many clergy members offering an election day prayer on Tuesday.
“God, I know that I don’t have to get angry,” Martin’s prayer begins. “I don't have to get worked up. I don’t have to get depressed. I just have to use my conscience and vote.”
Martin went on to call for peace after all the votes are counted. “When I meet people voting for someone else, help me to take a deep breath and give them the benefit of the doubt, because they are following their consciences, too.”
But some Catholic leaders told people of the faith to vote against the Democratic Party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton, because she supports abortion rights.
On Sunday, one Catholic priest from a group called Priests for Life even put an aborted fetus on an altar in a dramatic gesture of support for the GOP’s candidate, Donald Trump.
Many Christian leaders, however, took to social media to emphasize the importance of participating in American democracy by getting out to vote. Michael Curry, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, has said that voting is “a Christian obligation.”
Muslim Americans went to the polls with a new sense of urgency, thanks to Trump’s calls to ban Muslims from entering the United States, with some eagerly joining the hashtag campaign #MyMuslimVote.
Qasim Rashid, the national spokesman for the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, posted a short video about voting with his wife on Tuesday.
In Texas, Simran Jeet Singh dedicated his vote for Clinton to some of his detractors.
And in Brooklyn, Yosef Rapaport tweeted about his personal motivation for getting out to vote.
The evangelical theologian and Southern Baptist Convention leader Russell Moore — who went against many of his fellow evangelical Christian preachers by denouncing Trump’s candidacy — was probably speaking for many Americans when he tweeted about looking forward to Election 2016 finally coming to an end.