Thoughts and Gratitude on this Memorial Day

Plus, a prayer for healthcare in Montana

On May 17th, Montana hosted MONTANA PRAYS at the State Capitol in conjunction with the national REDEDICATE 250 gathering at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. President Donald Trump stated that the event will “rededicate America as one nation under God.”

I was honored to have been asked to speak at the event, with the purpose of praying over healthcare and medicine in Montana.

I thought I would share my preamble and prayer:

My name is Erin Laws, and I am the founder and Executive Director of the Montana Medical Freedom Alliance. I formed this organization in 2023 because I was grieved by the direction that health care has taken and felt called to act. I appreciate being asked to speak today regarding the state of healthcare on this National Day of Rededication of our Nation to the Lord.

We have lost our moral compass and strayed far from the origins of medicine. In Biblical times, hospitals and health care were often formed by Christian monasteries or the Church. St. Benedict, in the 6th century, believed that “the care of the sick is to be placed above and before every other duty.” Catholic nuns were precursors of nurses today, providing not only physical but spiritual healing as well. The outcasts of society; the lepers, the deformed, the mentally handicapped, the unwanted children; were shown love and acceptance by these early healers. They saw their intrinsic value.

Jesus Himself was considered “the Great Physician.”

But medicine became hostile to religion starting in the 1970s. Medical ethics was overtaken by secular philosophers rather than theologians. To remain relevant in the field, even theologians stripped most Biblical perspectives from their work. It was full steam ahead for an irreligious health care system.

This is portrayed by the trajectory of the Hippocratic Oath. With its origin in ancient Greece, it became more commonplace in American medical schools in the early 1900s. After witnessing the ethical horrors of World War II, nearly all medical schools’ graduation ceremonies had some type of oath ceremony. However, the more widespread the Oath became, the more secular and meaningless it was.

As with the removal of faith from public schools, government, and all other public squares, the irreligious influence on medicine has resulted in practices that must make our Heavenly Father grieve. These practices include abortion, physician-assisted suicide, destroying God’s perfect plan for our children’s gender, designer babies through IVF, disregarding parental rights in our children’s medical decisions, unethical experimentation, medical mandates that disregard personal autonomy, and the censorship of medical treatments or information deemed “misinformation” by the government.

If we want God’s blessing and provision on our nation, state, and families, what better time than on our great nation’s 250th birthday to repent for our wrongdoings, seek forgiveness, and forge a way forward that honors our rich heritage of God guiding the ethical structure of health care?

Please join me in prayer:

Our Heavenly Father, we come before You humbled by Your continued mercy and graciousness despite our failures. Those of us in health care repent of wrongdoing, whether deliberate or unintentional, and ask for Your forgiveness.

As Proverbs 31:8-9 says, let us “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,” and help us to advocate for the unborn, the cognitively impaired, the dying, and the disabled.

Genesis 1:27 tells us, “So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them,” and Psalm 139:13-14 says, “For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb,” which tell us that no child is a mistake or was born in the wrong body. It is impossible for God Almighty to make a mistake.

Help us, Father, to speak with truth and transparency, as instructed by Ephesians 4:25: “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor,” and Proverbs 11:3: “The integrity of the upright guides them.”

Lastly, God, Your Word in 1 Corinthians 6:19 tells us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, so let us honor what we put into our bodies as well as our patients’ bodies. Fill us with wisdom and discernment as we give recommendations to patients.

In closing, let us pray to return medicine to Imago Dei, the image of God. This doctrine teaches that every human being possesses inherent worth and dignity because we all reflect God in some meaningful way. Let us also restore the true intent of the ancient Hippocratic Oath, where we will do no harm or injustice and we will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing.

In this we pray,

Amen

I was reflecting more on this topic this morning, while watching the Memorial Day Tribute in East Helena. Prior to the event, I had heard statistics of the mental health struggles and increasing suicide rates of our country’s veterans.

In Montana, we lost 48 veterans to suicide in 2023. Our veteran suicide rate was 53.9 per 100,000, compared with 35.2 per 100,000 nationally.

The reason for this is multifactorial and complex, I’m sure. But I wonder if one small element could be our removal of faith and holistic care from medicine and mental health treatment. Moral injury is prevalent in Service members, particularly those who have seen combat. Having the ability to provide spiritual care alongside other treatment modalities might be quite beneficial. Again, the removal of God and faith from the practice of medicine and mental health has left a vacuum in the spiritual healing of our veterans.

Blessings to all on this Memorial Day 2026. Let us pause, remember, and honor our fallen service members and their families.

And Happy 250th Birthday to our One Nation Under God.