In the United States, thoughts and prayers is a phrase often used when offering condolences, particularly after any publicly notable event such as a deadly natural disaster. The phrase has received criticism for its repeated usage in the context of gun violence or terrorism, with critics claiming "thoughts and prayers" are offered as substitutes for actions they believe would be corrective, like gun control or counterterrorism.
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Usage history
The phrase thoughts and prayers has been deployed in the wake of numerous mass shootings, including the Columbine High School massacre (1999), the November 2015 Paris attacks, the Orlando nightclub shooting, and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. In addition, "thoughts and prayers" are also offered to victims of natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina (2005), the 2017 Central Mexico earthquake, and Hurricane Maria (2017).
Following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018, Slate noted that several Republican politicians who had previously used the idiom (including President Donald Trump and senators Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey) avoided using the specific phrase "thoughts and prayers" in responding to the shooting. Trump, for example, instead offered "prayers and condolences" via Twitter.
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After a natural or human-caused disaster, people may be urged to "go beyond thoughts and prayers," by donating blood or sending aid or money to help the victims. After the Las Vegas shooting, authorities said that although thoughts and prayers are appreciated, the most effective way to help is to give blood.
Criticism
As "thoughts and prayers" became associated with post-tragedy condolences, commentators have criticized the phrase as a form of civilian or political slacktivism.
After the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, called on politicians to "move beyond thoughts and prayers". In her post, vanden Heuvel referred to a press release by Paul Helmke, then-president of the Brady Campaign, who offered his thoughts and prayers and stated "it is long overdue for us to take some common-sense actions to prevent tragedies like this from continuing to occur."
On December 2, 2015, in the wake of the San Bernardino mass shooting, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted his frustration with the phrase "thoughts and prayers", a sentiment echoed by the cover of the New York Daily News, which included tweets from senators and representatives the newspaper characterized as "meaningless platitudes".
Following the Orlando nightclub shooting, Phil Plait wrote that while it was "natural and very human" to "send their thoughts and express their grief ... it's cynically hypocritical when politicians do it and nothing else", later noting it was "particularly galling" to see "all the NRA-funded lawmakers tweeting their 'thoughts and prayers'". An accompanying Slate post provided a selected list of members of Congress who had tweeted "thoughts and prayers" along with the amount of campaign contributions they had received from gun rights groups, based on research provided by Igor Volsky of the Center for American Progress.
Some critics of the phrase "thoughts and prayers" point to the Epistle of James in the Christian New Testament to argue that action is needed in addition to expressions of faith. Verses commonly cited to back up this argument include:
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
Defense
Laura Coward, a writer for The Huffington Post, defended the use of the phrase "thoughts and prayers", acknowledging the inadequacy of not taking actions, but arguing that prayer "jolts us and disrupts us, removing us from our comfort zones [... it] takes us to uncomfortable places - spiritually, physically and emotionally - and asks us to do the hard work of accepting more than one perspective." Kimberly Ross, a writer for RedState, asks that victims should "not [be] used as pawns in another political debate about guns" since "[w]e shouldn't blame anyone but the perpetrator for crimes committed, [...] that means we can do nothing on our own - in that moment - apart from submitting thoughts and prayers."
In media
In 2016, a web-based video game was published to demonstrate the effect that thoughts and prayers have had on saving lives in the context of mass shootings.
The fifth episode of the fourth season of animated series BoJack Horseman, titled "Thoughts and Prayers", presents a real-life shooting that delays the opening of a new movie featuring gun violence.
In June 2017, the air date for an episode of The Carmichael Show entitled "Shoot-up-able", which showed the main character surviving a mass shooting, was postponed by two weeks so that it did not air 14 June, the same night as the shooting at which Representative Scalise and three others were shot, or the UPS shooting in San Francisco, where three were killed by a shooter who later committed suicide.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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