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Courthouse prayer rallies set for 9/11
Cry Out America: '17% of Americans attend Sunday church'

Founding Father John Adams once said, "The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity," but an organization says now only 17 percent of Americans attend church on any given Sunday.

Can that be changed, and if so how?

One possible answer is coming up soon: A prayer outreach called Cry Out America assembled by the Awakening America Alliance that calls for Christians to meet for prayer at a time when a spokesman says the greatest need in the United States is not more money, health care or other physical conditions.

Spokesman Billy Wilson said the hope is that there is an awakening in the nation, "to issue a new spiritual wakeup call to help Americans understand the greatest need in America is … spiritual."

Wilson said Jonathan Edwards, a key figure from an earlier spiritual awakening in America, contended "that any true awakening starts with believers gathering together in unity … and prayer."

"What we're trying to do is answer the biblical injunction that when calamity surrounds the nation, financial disasters have happened, when people are confused, when crops have failed so to speak, the nation is in despair, the right response for the people of God is what Joel 1:14 says: call a sacred assembly, declare a holy fast and cry out to the Lord," Wilson said.

The prayer event scheduled for Sept. 11, 2009, already has lined up coordinators for 23 of the 25 most populous counties in America, 35 of 38 counties in America with populations more than a million people each and well over 700 of the nation's 3,141 overall counties.

The organization cites America as the third-largest mission field in the world, behind China and India, "which means that other countries are sending Christian missionaries to America because they are witnessing such great moral and spiritual decline in America," officials said.

Wilson noted that some African nations to which American churches dispatched missionaries 50 years ago or more now are sending missionaries into the U.S.

The work will being with a team prayer gathering at Ground Zero at 11 a.m. Among the participants will be Mariano Rivera from the New York Yankees; Sujo John, a 9/11 survivor and evangelist; Luis Cortes, president of Esperanza; Ron Luce, president of Teen Mania; Mark Rutland, president of Oral Roberts University and David Cerullo, president of INSP TV Network.

Other events are at county courthouses from noon until 1 p.m.

The Awakening America Alliance is a non-partisan, broad coalition of denominations, nationally prominent Christian leaders, churches, ministries, parachurch ministries, and Godly men and women from every walk of life "who have united for this time in history to pray and take action because of their concern about the spiritual condition of America, the next generation and what they are facing as Christians in the quickly advancing sexual culture, culture of depravity."

http://www.awakeningamerica.us/