Prayers are personal – Donald Trump is sullying the practice with his loud, public calls for help

Christmas is the season for peace, love and goodwill – a time when we might actually pay a visit to a church, sing familiar carols and mumble a few prayers.

Praying isn’t something ordinary people talk about much, because – unless you are a committed loud and proud Christian – it seems a bit embarrassing. People are surprised when I (reluctantly) admit I pray, and believe in God. Like most people, I rarely go to church unless it is to admire the architecture. There’s so much I can’t stomach about the Church of England – the lack of support for married gay clergy, the well-meaning but ineffectual Archbishop of Canterbury with his mealy-mouthed concern for Prince Andrew and those twee curates stating the bleeding obvious on Radio 4’s Thought for the Day.

The act of praying is useful, no matter whatever your faith. Reciting a mantra, an old prayer or using a rosary is a special process, a way of calming yourself, stripping the day down to the essentials. The agenda is not something we need to reveal in detail, and when I pray I have no hope of any results. The point of prayer is to establish a dialogue, to put ourselves in someone else’s hands, and to accede to their will.

Now the pure and healing act of prayer is being hijacked and corrupted by people like President Donald Trump, who will stoop to any depths to justify his manic perception of the world and promote his warped values to his ardent followers. The process of impeaching him will achieve very little other than cause even more social division because there is no ebb and flow between the opposing political camps in the USA. There’s no free exchange of views, or being receptive and respectful to your neighbour in a society that claims to be more Christian than the UK.

This week, Trump tweeted his followers asking them to pray for him just before the House of Representatives announced they would be proceeding with the impeachment process. He stormed: “This should never happen to another President again. Say a PRAYER! ... THIS IS AN ASSAULT ON AMERICA, AND AN ASSAULT ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY!!!!” Using a stream of capitals to scream your desire seems to go against the whole notion of prayer as a quiet, beseeching process. Anyway in this instance, God was not listening or available and the president is still being impeached. The way religion is hijacked by powerful men and women to further their own aims is repellent.

We can pray for all sorts of things, but surely those prayers should be kept private. This week, a Radio 4 afternoon play was a box-ticking seasonal-savvy exercise in which a Jewish dad fell out with his wife over celebrating Christmas. Angry that his small child was attending an Anglican school (the best in the area) and had been given a small part in the nativity play, he stupidly decided to tell the girl that Father Christmas didn’t exist. His wife subsequently kicked him out, and Jewish dad stood at a bus stop in the pouring rain, desperately praying for the last bus to arrive. It did, but drove past without stopping. Eventually misery dad was helped by a local priest, who took him back home. What really angered me about this corny tale was the “praying” element – reducing religion and personal belief to the level of choosing a shower gel or a new pair of pants.

In Californa, a devout Christian couple have called on members of their church to “resurrect” their daughter by praying together. Andrew and Kalley Heiligenthal were distraught when their two-year-old daughter Olive Alayne suddenly stopped breathing and was pronounced dead by emergency medics. Their Bethel Church has controversially set up a GoFundMe page with the goal of raising $100,000 for the family and their supporters – and has already achieved a third of the amount. Kalley posted this message on her social media page, asking for “bold, unified prayers ... for the global church to stand united with us in the belief that He will raise this little girl back to life…her time is not done”. That page has been liked over 150,000 times. No matter how possibly hopeless the mission, you can only respect this couple’s belief in the power of prayer.

This week we learnt that UN Peacekeepers – sent to help the stricken population in Haiti after a devastating earthquake – allegedly traded food for sex, resulting in apparent widespread child abuse and what is believed to be hundreds of pregnancies. Children are now being raised by young women in utter poverty after these “peace-keeper” men returned home at the end of their term of duty. This Christmas we can’t bring Olive back to life, but we can use prayer to try to make the world a fairer place.

Sadly – just like “prayer” – the word “peace” has been hijacked by men with power to suit their own tawdry needs. Things don’t get much worse.