In Face­book Groups employ­ing the fea­ture, mem­bers can use it to ral­ly prayer pow­er for upcom­ing job inter­views, ill­ness­es and oth­er per­son­al chal­lenges big and small. After they cre­ate a post, oth­er users can tap an “I prayed” but­ton, respond with a “like” or oth­er reac­tion, leave a com­ment or send a direct mes­sage.

Face­book began test­ing it in the U.S. in Decem­ber as part of an ongo­ing effort to sup­port faith com­mu­ni­ties, accord­ing to a state­ment attrib­uted to a com­pa­ny spokesper­son.

“Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic we’ve seen many faith and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties using our ser­vices to con­nect, so we’re start­ing to explore new tools to sup­port them,” it said.

The Rev. Robert Jef­fress of First Bap­tist Church in Dal­las, a South­ern Bap­tist megachurch, was among the pas­tors enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly wel­com­ing of the prayer fea­ture.

“Face­book and oth­er social media plat­forms con­tin­ue to be tremen­dous tools to spread the Gospel of Christ and con­nect believ­ers with one anoth­er — espe­cial­ly dur­ing this pan­dem­ic,” he said. “While any tool can be mis­used, I sup­port any effort like this that encour­ages peo­ple to turn to the one true God in our time of need.”

Adeel Zeb, a Mus­lim chap­lain at The Clare­mont Col­leges in Cal­i­for­nia, also was upbeat.

“As long as these com­pa­nies ini­ti­ate prop­er pre­cau­tions and pro­to­cols to ensure the safe­ty of reli­gious­ly mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties, peo­ple of faith should jump on board sup­port­ing this vital ini­tia­tive,” he said.

Under its data pol­i­cy, Face­book uses the infor­ma­tion it gath­ers in a vari­ety of ways, includ­ing to per­son­al­ize adver­tise­ments. But the com­pa­ny says adver­tis­ers are not able to use a per­son­’s prayer posts to tar­get ads.

The Rev. Bob Stec, pas­tor of St. Ambrose Catholic Parish in Brunswick, Ohio, said via email that on one hand, he sees the new fea­ture as a pos­i­tive affir­ma­tion of peo­ple’s need for an “authen­tic com­mu­ni­ty” of prayer, sup­port and wor­ship.

But “even while this is a ‘good thing,’ it is not nec­es­sary the deeply authen­tic com­mu­ni­ty that we need,” he said. “We need to join our voic­es and hands in prayer. We need to stand shoul­der to shoul­der with each oth­er and walk through great moments and chal­lenges togeth­er.”

Stec also wor­ried about pri­va­cy con­cerns sur­round­ing the shar­ing of deeply per­son­al trau­mas.

“Is it wise to post every­thing about every­one for the whole world to see?” he said. “On a good day we would all be reflec­tive and make wise choic­es. When we are under stress or dis­tress or in a dif­fi­cult moment, it’s almost too easy to reach out on Face­book to every­one.”

How­ev­er, Jac­ki King, the min­is­ter to women at Sec­ond Bap­tist Con­way, a South­ern Bap­tist con­gre­ga­tion in Con­way, Arkansas, sees a poten­tial ben­e­fit for peo­ple who are iso­lat­ed amid the pan­dem­ic and strug­gling with men­tal health, finances and oth­er issues.

“They’re much more like­ly to get on and make a com­ment than they are to walk into a church right now,” King said. “It opens a line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

Bish­op Paul Egen­stein­er of the Evan­gel­i­cal Luther­an Church in Amer­i­ca’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York Syn­od said he has been dis­mayed by some aspects of Face­book but wel­comes the fea­ture, which bears sim­i­lar­i­ties to a dig­i­tal prayer request already used by the syn­od’s church­es.

“I hope this is a gen­uine effort from Face­book to help reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions advance their mis­sion,” Egen­stein­er said. “I also pray that Face­book will con­tin­ue improv­ing its prac­tices to stop mis­in­for­ma­tion on social media, which is also affect­ing our reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties and efforts.”

The Rev. Thomas McKen­zie, who leads Church of the Redeemer, an Angli­can con­gre­ga­tion in Nashville, Ten­nessee, said he want­ed to hate the fea­ture — he views Face­book as will­ing to exploit any­thing for mon­ey, even peo­ple’s faith.

But he thinks it could be encour­ag­ing to those will­ing to use it: “Face­book’s evil moti­va­tions might have actu­al­ly pro­vid­ed a tool that can be for good.”

His chief con­cern with any Inter­net tech­nol­o­gy, he added, is that it can encour­age peo­ple to stay phys­i­cal­ly apart even when it is unnec­es­sary.

“You can­not par­tic­i­pate ful­ly in the body of Christ online. It’s not pos­si­ble,” McKen­zie said. “But these tools may give peo­ple the impres­sion that it’s pos­si­ble.”

Rab­bi Rick Jacobs, pres­i­dent of the Union of Reform Judaism, said he under­stood why some peo­ple would view the ini­tia­tive skep­ti­cal­ly.

“But in the moment we’re in, I don’t know many peo­ple who don’t have a big part of their prayer life online,” he said. “We’ve all been using the chat func­tion for some­thing like this — shar­ing who we are pray­ing for.”

Cross­roads Com­mu­ni­ty Church, a non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al con­gre­ga­tion in Van­cou­ver, Wash­ing­ton, saw the func­tion go live about 10 weeks ago in its Face­book Group, which has rough­ly 2,500 mem­bers.

About 20 to 30 prayer requests are post­ed each day, elic­it­ing 30 to 40 respons­es apiece, accord­ing to Gabe Moreno, exec­u­tive pas­tor of min­istries. Each time some­one responds, the ini­tial poster gets a noti­fi­ca­tion.

Deniece Flip­pen, a mod­er­a­tor for the group, turns off the alerts for her posts, know­ing that when she checks back she will be greet­ed with a flood of sup­port.

Flip­pen said that unlike with in-per­son group prayer, she does­n’t feel the Holy Spir­it or the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions she calls the “holy goose­bumps.” But the vir­tu­al expe­ri­ence is ful­fill­ing nonethe­less.

“It’s com­fort­ing to see that they’re always there for me and we’re always there for each oth­er,” Flip­pen said.

Mem­bers are asked on Fri­days to share which requests got answered, and some get shoutouts in the Sun­day morn­ing livestreamed ser­vices.

Moreno said he knows Face­book is not act­ing out of pure­ly self­less moti­va­tion — it wants more user engage­ment with the plat­form. But his church’s approach to it is the­o­log­i­cal­ly based, and they are try­ing to fol­low Jesus’ exam­ple.

“We should go where the peo­ple are,” Moreno said. “The peo­ple are on Face­book. So we’re going to go there.”

___

AP video jour­nal­ist Emi­ly Lesh­n­er con­tributed.

___

Asso­ci­at­ed Press reli­gion cov­er­age receives sup­port from the Lil­ly Endow­ment through The Con­ver­sa­tion U.S. The AP is sole­ly respon­si­ble for this con­tent.