“The Baptists are praying for you,” my Jewish mother said to me with enthusiasm the day before the cancer surgery that saved my life. A widow for many years, she lived alone in an apartment complex and had been gathering prayers for me from her neighbors. I was moved that she was taking solace and prayers from people of different religions. Could prayers from people of a different religion, people who prayed in a different language, even people whose politics she disagreed with, could their prayers make a difference? And my mother prayed and the Baptists prayed and friends of friends, who didn’t even know me, prayed.