Tens of thousands of Christians gathered at the National Mall on Saturday for “A Million Women” — an eight-hour prayer and fast for America’s salvation.

The event called for “those hungry to see the Lord’s hand cover this nation” to “fast and pray in unity as a Last Stand moment for America.”  It intentionally coincided with Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which celebrates Moses’ intercession for Israel before God after the people worshipped a Golden Calf.

 “A Million Women” took a similarly repentant posture, calling on attendants to intercede for America before God. One of its five key prayer topics, repentance, clarified the event’s intention to, “[take] the corporate posture of humility as we pray and believe as one body for God to save our nation.”  

Pastors Lou Engle and Jennifer Donnelly created “A Million Women” over a shared spiritual calling to empower women and mothers to speak out for the Kingdom of God. Another of the event’s prayer topics, reformation, aspires for women to “take their place as women and mothers for the benefit of future generations.”

Donnelly encouraged mothers Saturday to fight on behalf of children trapped by sexual sin and gender ideology and killed by abortion.

Thousands of members of Donnelly’s initiative, #Don’tMessWithOurKids, came to the National Mall on Saturday to show their support. The group mobilizes moms against abortion and gender ideology in schools.

Donnelly and Engle referenced another episode of biblical intercession — the story of Esther — as a template for women at “A Million Women” to aspire to. Esther risked death to intercede on behalf of the Jews in front of the King of Persia. Her prayerful courage saved countless lives and changed the arc of history. In turn, “A Million Women” called men to be like Esther’s uncle, Mordecai — prayerful leaders who support, contribute and catalyze “Esther moments” when they come.

In addition to biblical themes of atonement and intercession, “A Million Women” demonstrated an unfailing belief in the power of prayer as an instrument of petition. The event’s website references the book of Joel:

As we read in Joel 2, when there is no hope for a nation in crisis, where there is no remedy in the natural, God still has a holy prescription: ‘Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a Solemn Assembly, call a fast and gather the peoples.’

And gather they did. As many as 250,000 attended “A Million Women,” including people from Australia, Israel, Taiwan, Brazil and South Korea.

Legacy media outlets like NBC quickly dismissed the event as a political gathering of extreme, anti-LGBTQ conservatives.

But besides the fact that “A Million Women” contains no reference to politics or even denominations, the event’s emphasis on empowering women puts it squarely outside the stereotypical “extreme conservative” box NBC tried to shove it into.

Perhaps that’s why the outlet failed to mention Donnelly and her work at all, attributing the event’s founding solely to Engle.

The skepticism and lies propagated by such stories don’t take away from the event’s success. By all accounts, “A Million Women” achieved its mission — to gather women and their families in humble petition for God to save America.

You need not have attended “A Million Women” in person to take its message to heart — humble and sincere prayers are powerful weapons. We can best begin to emulate Esther and Mordecai by taking prayer seriously.