Inside the Conservative Prayer Circle: “Lord, Please Don’t Let the Shooter Be One of Us”

Every time America wakes up to another shooting, the same whispered plea rises from the pews of conservative America. It’s goes like this:

Lord, we come before you today, humbly, nervously, fingers crossed behind our backs, to ask just one thing of you: please don’t let him be white, conservative, Christian, or straight.

We know the odds, Lord. We know the receipts. We know that if you lined up every mass shooter, every domestic terrorist, every guy who wears camouflage, the room would look like a MAGA rally at Bass Pro Shops. But we’re asking, O Lord, that you to overlook the statistics just this once.

Throw us a bone, Lord.

Give us a culprit we can point at with righteous indignation. Give us a scapegoat that fits neatly into the Fox News chyron.

We know most shooters are ours, but please, not this one. Not another guy in Oakleys and a Punisher T-shirt or a pair of Converse sneakers. Not another church deacon who stockpiles ammo “for the rapture.”

Give us a leftist! An anarchist! An Antifa. A Muslin. Give us a Black Lives Matter activist. Give us a trans boogeyman. Hell, toss us a vegan with a nose ring and a tote bag full of zines. We’ll take anything that isn’t one of ours, Lord.

And if, Lord, in your infinite wisdom, you decide that the shooter must be conservative, we pray for your swift guidance in the art of spin.

Teach our tongues to form the sacred words of absolution: “He was troubled.” “He was bullied.” “He was a lone wolf.”

Let us reach for the hymnal and turn to page 45: The Ballad of the Lone Gunman Who Absolutely Does Not Represent Us. Let the chorus rise: he was mentally ill, he slipped through the cracks, he liked video games too much. Let us never say “radicalized.” Let us never say “white supremacist.” Let us never, under any circumstances, let the words “domestic terrorism” cross our lips when the suspect looks like our husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, and nephews.

Lord, we also ask for your strength in managing the optics.

Guide the news producers as they rifle through family photo albums, that they may choose the yearbook picture instead of the mugshot, the football jersey instead of the prison jumpsuit.

Let the anchors speak softly about how he once mowed a neighbor’s lawn, about how he loved his grandma, about how he was “quiet but polite.”

Let every swastika tattoo be framed as “edgy doodles.” Let every manifesto be summarized as “online postings.”

Wash him clean in the baptismal waters of mainstream media, Lord, so that we may emerge spotless while the nation squints and asks, “Really? That nice boy?”

Grant us the quick reflexes to redirect blame. When the story breaks, help us point fingers at TikTok, at video games, at rap lyrics, at absentee fathers in neighborhoods we’ve never set foot in.

If a conservative pulls the trigger, Lord, let us say the real trigger was a drag queen story hour three states over. Remind us to clutch pearls at marijuana dispensaries, to faint at gender-neutral bathrooms, to scream about CRT like it’s the Book of Revelation. Anything to move the spotlight off the white man holding the smoking gun.

Oh Lord, we also ask for patience with our liberal enemies, for they will gloat. They will screenshot our hypocrisy, pull up our tweets about “thugs” and “terrorists” and “radical leftists” from the last time a Black suspect sneezed near a crime scene. Arm us, O Lord, with the holy shield of selective amnesia. Help us to forget every word we said about Black Lives Matter being violent, every sermon we preached about the left hating America. Let our hypocrisy flow like sweet wine, and let our base drink deep without asking questions.

Lord, if it turns out the shooter is white and conservative and Christian and straight, as it so often does, grant us the courage to say, “This is not who we are,” even though we know damn well it is exactly who we are. Teach us to sing that refrain with the conviction of a choir that never once rehearsed the verse about accountability.

If he wore camo or a tee-shirt with an American flag on it, Lord, let us call it patriotism. If he posted memes about civil war, let us call it “just jokes.” If he had a manifesto quoting Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes, let us call it “random ramblings.” If he screamed “hey fascists catch” while pulling the trigger, let us insist he was just bad at directions. Lord, cloak every crime in plausible deniability. Turn every red hat into a halo.

And when the funerals come, Lord, help us to grieve loudly and selectively. Let us weep on camera, let us pound podiums about law and order, let us demand tighter borders and looser gun laws. Let our tears water the roots of hypocrisy until it blooms in full color on the campaign trails.

Lord, we pray for stamina, because we know another one is coming. We know it’s only a matter of time before the next guy with a don’t-tread-on-me bumper sticker and a YouTube subscription to Ben Shapiro decides it’s his turn to be a martyr. Give us the energy to feign shock once again. Strengthen our voices to say, “Who could have seen this coming?” even though we’ve all seen it coming for decades.

Forgive us, Lord, for our short attention spans. We will say “never again” on Monday and “thoughts and prayers” by Tuesday. By Friday we’ll be back to selling AR-15 raffle tickets at the church fundraiser. Remind us, Lord, not to dwell on the body count. The only number that matters to us is poll numbers.

And Lord, above all, remind us that no matter how many shooters are ours, no matter how many times the receipts stack up, we are never to admit that conservatism and whiteness has a violence problem. Remind us that our brand depends on innocence, on being perpetual victims, on being the ones under attack. For if we ever confess, if we ever say out loud that the monster is homegrown, we might have to change. And Lord, change is the one thing we will never do.

So we pray again, with trembling voices and desperate hearts: please don’t let him be white, conservative, Christian, and straight. Please let it be anyone else. Please let it be the leftist boogeyman we invented. Please let it be a shadowy Antifa cell that exists only in our fever dreams. Please let it be a Muslim, a Mexican, a Black, a trans kid. Please let it be anyone we can demonize with ease.

Spare us from the shame of looking in the mirror. Spare us from accountability. Spare us from the truth.

In Jesus’s name, we spin.

Amen.

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