At 7:30 last Friday morning, 1,200 people filled the Coral Ballroom at the Hilton Hawaiian Village to pray.
They had come for the Prayer Breakfast Hawai‘i, now in its 47th year. Governor Josh Green and Maui Mayor Richard Bissen were in the room. So were Senate President Ron Kouchi and Representative Elijah Pierick. They sit on opposite sides of the aisle the rest of the week.
The keynote speaker was Tony Dungy, the Super Bowl champion player and coach. He first came to the Islands in 1977 to play in the Hula Bowl. Dungy traced his life as a series of providential turns. A draft snub landed him on the Pittsburgh Steelers, where he joined Bible studies with future hall-of-famers like Donnie Shell. He met his wife through a church and later won a Lombardi Trophy in Indianapolis. Dungy saw God’s providence at work in his wife, Lauren Harris. She had once taught a Pittsburgh sixth-grader named Josh Green.
Around Dungy’s testimony, prayer after prayer rose for Hawai‘i’s leaders.
A prayer breakfast for politicians may strike outsiders as odd. Why pray for the people in charge?
Because Scripture commands it. In 1 Timothy 2, Paul urges Christians to offer supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for everyone in high positions. This is no New Testament novelty. Even in exile, God told his people to seek Babylon’s welfare and to pray for it (Jeremiah 29:7). They were to pray for Nebuchadnezzar, so the command does not turn on the ruler’s character. Jesus pressed the point further: pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:44).
The diehard Democrat may struggle to pray for Donald Trump. The diehard Republican may struggle to pray for Josh Green. Man is sinful, and only grace bends him to pray for his enemies. If a Christian refuses to pray for his leaders, he has a sin to repent of.
The host invoked 2 Chronicles 7:14, and Dungy returned to it: “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
Good politics, on this view, is not the fruit of clever strategy. It is the fruit of God’s blessing on a humbled people. The claim sounds shocking to a secular ear. The American Founders took it for granted. So did the chiefs and people of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
This is the ground the national press now patrols under the scarequoted label “Christian nationalism.” The label implies theofascism, but the framing fails on contact with the thing itself. The Christian nationalist loves God. He trusts that God blesses nations primarily through the gospel of Christ. Christ is a light to the nations, not a cudgel against them. But the Psalmist also foretells a day of judgment. Rebellious nations will be broken like pottery by a rod of iron.
The Prayer Breakfast has been gathering for 47 years. Christ has been a light to the Hawaiian nation for more than 200. Kauikeaouli took the throne as Kamehameha III in 1825. In his first speech, he gave his kingdom to God and committed his rule to literacy. Fifteen years later he issued Hawai‘i’s first written constitution. It opened with a Declaration of Rights drawn from Acts 17:26: “God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the earth.” The Hawaiian kingdom asked God for protection and prosperity, knowing it could not secure either alone.
Where the gospel takes root, justice and mercy and ordered liberty follow. They are not side effects. They are signs of the kingdom.
So why would 1,200 people give up a Friday morning to pray for governors and mayors and senators and representatives? Because their Lord told them to:
“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
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Author Sterling Higa can be reached at hello@sterlinghiga.com.
