Several persons, with placards bearing photographs of murdered children, participate in a protest march condemning violence against children along Hope Road in Kingston yesterday. The march, which was co-ordinated by the Child Development Agency (CDA) and lobby group Hear the Children's Cry, ended with a vigil at Emancipation Park also in the capital city. (Photo: Lionel Rookwood)

HUNDREDS of Christians across Jamaica will this evening pray for the island's children at three specially arranged prayer meetings in Kingston, Mandeville and Montego Bay.

Event organiser Reverend Al Miller said prayer warriors, church leaders and other committed Christians will gather at the Karram-Speid Auditorium at the Merl Grove High School in Kingston, Fellowship Tabernacle Church at Ward Avenue in Mandeville, Manchester, and The Meeting Place at Howard Cooke Boulevard in Montego Bay for the prayer meetings.

"This is an urgent call to church leaders and Christians to pray for the nation because what is happening requires urgent response and we require everyone's support," Reverend Miller said, adding that church leaders outside of the three parishes are also being asked to gather their members to participate in the event.

Miller said the event is a call for the nation to face the fact that a spiritual war is on in Jamaica. The nation, he said, is at war with itself, against evil, lawlessness and injustice and as such Christians must stand up and fight in a united way.

"We must take the fight to the negative elements of society, both physical and spiritual," he said, adding that the spiritual battle to be a fought requires a "now action" or else the country will be overtaken.

Reverend Miller said the call is also going out to church leaders across the island to move from within the four walls of their churches and start addressing the needs of the communities in which they exist.

"The war is not within the four walls, and so we need to serve the people and love upon them to challenge them to new ways and principles," he said.

Last week, Betty Ann Blaine, convener of Hear the Children's Cry, made a similar plea to church leaders, asking them to close their church doors for the next six months and allow their members to go into the inner-city communities.

Blaine made the call during an address to mourners at the funeral service for 11-year-old Ananda Dean who was abducted and brutally murdered in September.

Reverend Miller, in the meantime said today's prayer meetings will also seek answers to the impact of the global financial crisis on Jamaica's economy. He also issued a challenge to political leaders to commit to a united approach in dealing with the crisis affecting the country.

"We want a governance of national unity to mend us as one nation in tackling social, moral and economic crises," he said.

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