Prayers for Persecuted Christians, New and Very Old

Scripture tells us how to pray for Christians who suffer for their faith: “Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body” (Hebrews 13:3). We are to remember them, and to pray as we would if we were in the cell beside them.

The first church shows us what that looks like. Herod had killed James and put Peter in prison, and Luke says that “prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him” (Acts 12:5). That night an angel brought Peter out, and he went and knocked at the gate of the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, “where many were gathered together praying” (Acts 12:12). A girl named Rhoda came to answer, and “when she knew Peter’s voice, she opened not the gate for gladness, but ran in, and told how Peter stood before the gate” (Acts 12:14). So the church had been praying for one man, together in one house, and it was still praying when he knocked.

Paul counted on prayer like that from his own churches. He told the Corinthians about trouble in Asia so heavy that he “despaired even of life”, and then said that God had “delivered us from so great a death” and “will yet deliver us; Ye also helping together by prayer for us” (2 Corinthians 1:8–11).

We can ask for what the prisoners themselves asked for. Paul wrote to the Ephesians as “an ambassador in bonds”, and the prayer he wanted from them was “that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly” (Ephesians 6:19–20). The church in Jerusalem asked for the same thing when it was threatened: “grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word” (Acts 4:29). Paul also asked for a way out, and told the Thessalonians to pray “that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men” (2 Thessalonians 3:2). So we ask for both, courage for as long as the trouble lasts and deliverance from it soon. And sometimes Paul asked only to be kept in mind, as he does at the end of Colossians, where the last verse is in his own hand and says, “Remember my bonds” (Colossians 4:18).

Then there is the hardest prayer, which Jesus gave us himself. “Love your enemies,” he said, and “pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44), and on the cross he did it: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Stephen prayed the same way while he was being stoned, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” (Acts 7:60), and the very next verse says, “And Saul was consenting unto his death” (Acts 8:1). Later that Saul was on the road to Damascus and heard a voice say, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4), and he became the Paul who wrote “Remember my bonds”. So when we pray for the people who persecute the church, we are praying for the kind of man God has turned round before.

The believers in Mary’s house were praying for Peter, a man they knew, and we can pray for people by name too. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom keeps a list of people held for their beliefs, the Frank R. Wolf Freedom of Religion or Belief Victims List, and on our page of Christians in prison you can pray for one of them by name. The commission’s 2026 report names, among others, Pastors Kiflu Gebremeskel and Haile Naizghe, both associated with the Full Gospel Church of Eritrea, who were arrested in May 2004, and the Reverend Gebremedhin Gebregergis of the Eritrean Orthodox Church, who has been held since 2004. All three were still in prison in 2025, twenty-one years on, and we can say their names to God tonight.

The six prayers that follow are ours, one for each need, so that you can come back to the one you want. After them come prayers the churches have prayed for prisoners and captives since the first century, in their own words. If the person on your heart is in prison for some other reason, we have prayers for someone in jail or prison as well.

Lord Jesus Christ, we pray for our brothers and sisters who are in prison tonight because they belong to you. We cannot visit them, and most of them we cannot name. Go to them where we cannot go. Stand with them and strengthen them, above all the ones who have nobody else standing with them.

Give them sleep tonight, and enough to eat, and their health, and a guard who is kind. Where they have no Bible, bring back to them the verses they learned, and when they are questioned, give them the words to say. When they are beaten, be near them. When they are alone, be their company. When they are pressed to deny you, hold on to them, and if any of them have given way, forgive them and set them on their feet again.

Hear them when they sigh, Lord. Open the doors and bring them home. And for as long as the doors stay shut, give them a song at midnight that the other prisoners can hear. Amen.

Father, we pray for the families of those who have been taken, for wives and husbands, for mothers and fathers, and for the children. They wait for news that does not come, and some of them have waited for years. Be to them “a father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows”. Be near the child who asks when his father is coming home, and near the one who has to find an answer.

Give them their rent and their daily bread. Keep them from being punished too. Send them friends who are not afraid to be seen at their door. Let letters get through and let visits be allowed. Do not let the children grow bitter, and let them see for themselves that you are worth what their family has paid.

And bring the day when the knock at the gate is the one they have been praying for, and they are almost too glad to open it. Amen.

Lord Jesus, we pray for your people who have to meet in secret, a few at a time, behind shut doors, and who sing quietly so that no one outside will hear. When they are afraid, come and stand in the midst of them as you did on the first Easter evening, and say to them, “Peace be unto you.” Be there as you promised, “where two or three are gathered together in my name”, and let them know it.

Give their pastors wisdom to know whom they can trust. Keep Bibles in their hands, and where they have none, keep your word in their memory. Give their children teachers. Guard them from those who would inform on them, and let the people who are sent to watch them hear the gospel and believe it. Give them boldness to speak your word.

Bring the day when they can open the doors and sing as loudly as they like. Amen.

Lord Jesus, who were carried into Egypt by night as a child, we pray for our brothers and sisters who have had to leave their homes because they bear your name. They have lost house and land, church and language, and they do not know what comes next. Go with them on the road.

Give them a welcome among strangers. Give them a roof, and work, and a school for their children, and the papers they need. Heal what they have seen. Lead them to a church that takes them in as its own, and make us that church when they come to us, for you said, “I was a stranger, and ye took me in.”

Let those who are scattered carry your word with them wherever they go. And if it is your will, bring them home in peace. Amen.

Father, we pray for those who persecute your people, for the officer who makes the arrest, the neighbour who informs, the judge who passes sentence and the guard who turns the key. We do not find this easy, and we ask it because your Son asked it first: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

Stay their hands and turn their hearts. Meet them as you met Saul on the road. Let the patience of the people they hurt stay with them when they go home at night, until they ask where it comes from. Give those who govern a love of justice and mercy, so that all their people may live in peace.

And keep us from hatred. We were your enemies once, and you loved us. Teach us to bless and not to curse, and to want for those who persecute the church what we want for ourselves, that they should know you. Amen.

If it is someone who has wronged you yourself, we have more prayers for your enemies, to bless them and to forgive them.

Lord, you told us to remember them, and we forget. We read about them and we are moved, and by evening we are thinking about something else. Forgive us.

You have joined us to them in one body, and you have told us, “whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it.” Let us feel it. Bring them to mind when we sit down to eat, when we walk into a church whose doors stand open, and when we open a Bible that nobody is going to take from us.

If the day comes when we must bear what they bear, make us ready for it. Until then, remember them, Lord, and make us remember. Amen.

Many churches keep a Sunday in November for it, the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. The World Evangelical Alliance, which organises the day, puts it this way: “For 30 years, churches around the world have set aside a Sunday to pray for brothers and sisters who suffer for following Jesus.” In 2026 the Sundays were 1 and 8 November.

The older churches also pray for prisoners all through the year, because the prayer is written into their services, and any of us can pray it with them.

“Release our prisoners”: the prayer of the church at Rome

The church at Rome once wrote to the church at Corinth because the believers there had fallen out with one another, and we still have the letter, which we call First Clement. It was written about the year 96, perhaps earlier. Near the end, in the fifty-ninth of its sixty-five chapters, the Roman Christians turn from the Corinthians to God and begin to pray, and this is part of their prayer in J. B. Lightfoot’s translation:

“We beseech Thee, Lord and Master, to be our help and succor. Save those among us who are in tribulation; have mercy on the lowly; lift up the fallen; show Thyself unto the needy; heal the ungodly; convert the wanderers of Thy people; feed the hungry; release our prisoners; raise up the weak; comfort the fainthearted. Let all the Gentiles know that Thou art the God alone, and Jesus Christ is Thy Son, and we are Thy people and the sheep of Thy pasture.”

The Romans say “our prisoners”, so these were people the church counted as its own, and it asked God to release them in the same breath in which it asked him to feed the hungry.

“Our brethren in captivity”: the old liturgies of Jerusalem and Alexandria

The churches of Jerusalem and Alexandria have old liturgies of their own, though scholars do not agree on how old either is in the form we have, and both pray for prisoners. The Liturgy of Saint James, which is the liturgy of the church of Jerusalem, prays:

“Remember, O Lord, Christians sailing, travelling, sojourning in strange lands; our fathers and brethren, who are in bonds, prison, captivity, and exile; who are in mines, and under torture, and in bitter slavery.”

Hebrews tells us to remember them that are in bonds, and here the church turns and asks God to remember them. The Liturgy of Saint Mark, which is the liturgy of the church of Alexandria, prays for the same people and then goes one step further:

“Have mercy on all who are in prison, or in mines, or on trial, or condemned, or in exile, or crushed by cruel bondage or tribute. Deliver them, O Lord, for Thou art our God, who settest the captives free.”

“Be mindful, O Lord, of our brethren in captivity. Grant that they may find mercy and compassion with those who have led them captive.”

That last petition asks God to work on the captors’ hearts for the captives’ sake, so that a guard who is kind or an official who shows mercy would be an answer to it. Both prayers are given here as the Ante-Nicene Fathers translates them.

The Orthodox litany for those in captivity

In the Orthodox Church the petition comes in the Great Litany, which is prayed at Great Vespers, at Matins and at the Divine Liturgy, and the choir answers each line with “Lord, have mercy.” It is given here from Isabel Hapgood’s Service Book of 1906, which she translated from the Church Slavonic service books of the Russian Church:

“For those who travel by sea or by land; for the sick and the suffering; for those who are in captivity, and for their salvation: let us pray to the Lord.”

The same book closes the night office of Grand Compline with a prayer that begins with our enemies and comes round to the prisoners, and again the word is “remember”:

“Forgive, O Lord who lovest man, those who hate us, and those who have wronged us.”

“Remember, O Lord, our brethren who are in captivity, and release them from all the difficulties which beset them.”

The Litany of the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer

The 1928 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church in the United States has a Litany with two petitions we can pray one after the other, the first for the prisoners and the second for those who put them there. The people answer each with “We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.”

“That it may please thee to preserve all who travel by land, by water, or by air, all women in child-birth, all sick persons, and young children; and to show thy pity upon all prisoners and captives;”

“That it may please thee to forgive our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers, and to turn their hearts;”

Near its end the same Litany asks that the evils worked against us “may, by thy good providence, be brought to nought; that we thy servants, being hurt by no persecutions, may evermore give thanks unto thee in thy holy Church”.

“Open prisons, break chains”: the Roman prayer of Good Friday

Catholics have prayed for prisoners on Good Friday, in the long series of prayers for the whole world that follows the reading of the Passion. One of them is for everyone in trouble:

“Let us pray, most dearly beloved brethren, to God the Father almighty, that he would purge the world of all errors, cure diseases, drive away famine, open prisons, break chains, grant a safe return to travellers, health to the sick, and a secure harbour to such as are at sea.”

“O almighty and eternal God, the comfort of the afflicted, and the strength of those that labour; let the prayers of all such as call upon thee in tribulation, come to thee; that all, with joy, may find the effects of thy mercy in their necessities.”

That is the prayer as Abbot Guéranger printed it in The Liturgical Year, where he writes that the Church has offered these prayers on Good Friday “from the earliest ages”.

From Rome in the first century to a prayer book of 1928, the churches have kept asking God for the same thing, that he would remember the prisoners, have pity on them and set them free. Not all of those prison doors are open yet, and Kiflu Gebremeskel, Haile Naizghe and Gebremedhin Gebregergis were still being held in 2025. So we go on asking with the psalm: “Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee; according to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to die” (Psalm 79:11).

Some prisoners are held because of their faith. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom keeps a list of them by name, and you can pray for one of the Christians on it today.

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• Hebrews 13:3, “Remember them that are in bonds”: what the verse asks of us
• Where Christians are persecuted today, and who says so
• Prayers for someone in jail or prison, and for the family waiting outside
• Prayers for your enemies: to bless them and forgive them
• The 21 martyrs of Libya, killed at Sirte in 2015
• What intercessory prayer is