Pastor James E. Ward Jr., the pastor for Jacob Blake’s mother, Julia Jackson, told President Donald Trump on Tuesday in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that the nation needed a revival of “spiritual law” and prayer to come back together after recent divisions.
Pastor Ward and his wife, Sharon, who is also a pastor, met with the president and local leaders at a community roundtable in Kenosha after the president toured the damage from local riots last week.
The president asked Pastor Ward to offer a prayer, which he did:
Father, we come to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we thank You for this time that You divinely ordained. Father, we ask You to forgive us all where we’ve strayed from Your ways, and where we’ve not acknowledged Your Word. We ask that You continue to cause this nation to be one nation under God, that You are alone on the one who can make us individual, indivisible. And by being indivisible, there will be liberty and justice for all. We simply pray that You would bring our nation back to You, that Your word will be dominant, that You would cause us to walk in love, to live in love, restore empathy and compassion, kindness, concern for each other. Lord, I pray for our president. As Your Word says, that You would strengthen him and continue to give him the wisdom and the heart to lead during this time, as well as all the leaders that are here. We give ourselves to You and we ask You for Your good hand to be upon us. In the name of Jesus our Lord we pray. Amen.
His wife, Pastor Sharon, then told the president that it was important to ask people to pray for the country, and that “it’s important to have black people at the table to help solve the problem,” offering her help.
Mr. Ward then continued:
There are three types of law that govern a society. There’s spiritual law, moral law, and civil law. Most of the conversation here today has been about civil law, but until we can really focus on spiritual and moral law and change the hearts of people, we’ll have to continue to build bigger jails and bigger prisons until we can bring our nation back to the place of spiritual and the moral law. We want to be of service to you and to our nation of having these conversations, of how do we rebuild the foundations of spirituality and morality, which gives us the context of love. If you give a righteous, good moral man the launch codes to our nuclear arsenal, everyone will be safe because he’s a good man, but if you give a malicious man who is immoral an ink pen, you have to fear for your life. I just want to say that we’re here to be of service to you and to our country to bring unity. We believe that we can help to listen with empathy and compassion to the real pain that hurts black Americans, but we want to be of service to you and to our nation to do whatever we can to bring true healing, true peace, and to really see God’s very best in our nation. We’re here, we’re available any time you would call upon us.
“I think you’re an incredible couple,” the president replied. He offered his regards to Blake’s mother.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.