The terrorist attacks on Washington and New York brought calls for a religious revival Wednesday from evangelical Christian clergy, some of whom took the devastation as a sign of an evil power.
The Rev. James Merritt, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, called the destruction ``Satan's handiwork'' and urged the denomination's 15.9-million members to pray for the victims.
``Our SBC family has been reminded again that the only hope for this world is the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,'' Merritt said. ``I pray ... that believers everywhere would sense a new urgency to bring people to a saving knowledge of God's son.''
Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson said America needs a ``prayer shield.''
``I'm asking this nation, the Christians of America particularly, to pray for revival in America,'' Robertson said.
Eddie Smith, a director of the evangelical Christian U.S. Prayer Center in Houston, said that as he prayed for a revival four years ago, he felt God told him that he would send one. But it would be ``served to you on a platter of ruin,'' he said.
Watching the planes crash into the World Trade Center, and the fire burn at the Pentagon, Smith wondered if this devastation was the sign.
In a prayer meeting held Tuesday, Oral Roberts University president Richard Roberts called the student body to prayer and urged Americans to repent and accept Jesus as their savior. The Prayer Tower, a building in the middle of campus where people pray around the clock, was flooded with calls from people seeking salvation, spokeswoman Jessica Hill said.
Religious leaders from other faiths also encouraged Americans to seek solace in worship.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of ``When Bad Things Happen to Good People,'' said tragedies gain religious meaning only in how people respond to them.
``We should do what can to help the afflicted,'' Kushner said. ``We pray for the strength not to give up on the world.''
The Rev. Michael Baxter, a professor of Roman Catholic moral theology at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., hoped people would take time to reflect as the country recovers from the attack.
``God is acting in all human events, somehow mysteriously, and is acting in this, maybe to bring about a kind of national repentance,'' Baxter said.
Jamal Badawi, professor of Islam at St. Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, sympathized with those trying to make sense of the loss.
``It's just like any tragedy that happens without full explanation. Why do people have accidents? Why do children die?'' he said. ``The issue of existence of evil in the world is intriguing and complex. There is no one simplistic answer.''
AP-NY-09-12-01 1840EDT
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.