According to recent research, 44 percent of American adults already pray daily. But the America Prays initiative is something a bit more pointed, more thoroughgoing in its aims to further catechize an American public that is purportedly increasingly religious. … Teach, I pray thee, my hands to war, and my fingers to fight in the defense of America, and the rights and liberties of it! The final entry documents George Bush’s remarks on the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, delivered just two days after 9/11. We see our national character in rescuers working past exhaustion … in thousands of citizens who have asked to work and serve in any way possible.