The last few school shootings have left Americans rightfully demanding some action on how to prevent these horrific crimes in the future, but are statements like, “We need more than prayer!” helpful?

Writing for the Federalist, Stephen Roberts, who serves as a chaplain in the U.S. Army, cited a quote from Texas Governor Greg Abbot made after the Santa Fe High School shootings last week that left 10 people dead.

“We need to do more than just pray for the victims and the families…[but] step up and make sure this tragedy is never repeated,” the governor said.

Abbot isn’t the only one saying that “we need more than prayer.” Everyone from students to civil authorities to Hollywood stars are saying the same thing. In fact, there’s even a #Morethanprayer hashtag on Twitter. Is this attitude really helpful and what does it say about the American mindset?

While this rhetoric is understandable because it reflects the profundity of the grief we share and the need to do something about these incidents, “I respectfully suggest such rhetoric is unhelpful, even harmful, for a number of reasons,” Roberts writes.

First, prayer is not the problem, nor is it meant to be the solution.

Violence is the problem, not prayer. “The tragedy did not occur because too many people were praying, or even using prayer as an excuse of inaction. This is a red herring, meant to distract people from the complexities of such issues that don’t lend themselves to decisive rhetoric and straightforward solutions,” Roberts writes.

Nor is prayer a solution to the nation’s ills. “Prayer will not undo these tragedies. Proponents of prayer do not claim that it will.”

But tragedies such as school shootings, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, all call for something more meaningful than just cries for action. Sometimes what is needed is real change, the kind that can only come about through honest self-reflection, the kind that is found in moments of quiet prayer and reflection.

Unfortunately, “in the Information Age, where words alone are valued no matter how frivolous, such respectful silences are no longer respected,” Roberts laments.

Instead, it is being replaced by comments such as “We won’t stop until the problem is eliminated once and for all” or “one incident is too many” – all of which reflects utopian thinking that is not helpful because of how often it obscures modest but more tangible avenues of reform.

“It replaces practical help with less-helpful activism. Instead, prayer recognizes that utopian solutions are not within man’s power. We cannot arrest the waves, lock the tectonic plates in place, or remove every means of malice. We cannot wipe tragedies from the face of the earth,” he states.

While prayer does not negate action, it “recognizes that suffering extends beyond the scope of human efforts at control.”

Finally, the “more than prayer” movement belies the fact that “Americans don’t believe in the power of prayer but the power of the people,” he writes.

Roberts sees a Marxist quality to this impulse which “replaces spiritual concepts with materialistic ones. It reduces sin to mental, sociological, or political defects, thus taking away personal responsibility.”

When we say no to prayer, we’re saying no to God and to our need for a savior.

“Instead, we entrust the keys of human destiny to the same race that crashed the thing in the first place. Talk about wishful thinking and naive cop-outs.”

We don’t suffer from an abundance of prayer, he concludes, but a lack of it. We worship millions of little gods instead of the one true God.

“Self-deification makes for great flattery—and that’s it. Instead of creating secular saviors who are all doomed to fail, let’s seek out the real thing, and with him, a sober reassessing of our broken nature, modest efforts at temporal change, and heavenly hope.”

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