WASHINGTON – As the tourists stroll the National Mall around the Washington Monument, one by one they notice the tent.
The white plastic, lit by the glow of a color-changing bulb like a disco dance, stands out against the grassy expanse and stone memorials. And wait – they move closer – is that music?
The people inside David’s Tent are just waiting for those tourists to draw back the flap and step in.
Inside, at any hour of the day or night, they’ll find songful prayer.
The tent was pitched seven months ago by a nondenominational Christian nonprofit group committed to performing nonstop worship music on the National Mall for 14 months, from last Sept. 11 to November’s Election Day. This week, the group reached the halfway point.
In seven months, they’ve met seekers of every age and faith, looking for a bit of peace or a shoulder to cry on or just a place to rest their feet before resuming their sightseeing. They’ve handed out free Bibles and tiny do-it-yourself communion kits and earplugs for anyone who can’t take the amplified hymns. They’ve heard “Amazing Grace” played on God knows how many instruments.
And their prayers, they say, are changing the nation. “The moral compass of our country is off,” said Jason Hershey.
Hershey, the founder of David’s Tent, says there’s no political agenda behind the vigil despite its significant start and end dates and its striking location right in the heart of the Mall – just below the Washington Monument, directly south of the White House, with views of the World War II and Jefferson memorials from inside its clear plastic walls.
“Is this intercession for a certain political party? Not at all. But election season creates a conversation about the direction of our country like no other season does, and in the midst of that conversation, we want to lift up Jesus above all other names,” Hershey said, the walls of the tent billowing around him.
He refuses to endorse a candidate, although he does say he wouldn’t recommend Bernie Sanders since he wants a president who believes in Jesus. Many who enter the tent bring up politics, and staff members consistently steer the conversation to another topic.
Hershey, 40, came up with the idea of a tent devoted to constant worship music years ago, when his deep concern over a lack of civility in American daily life drove him to take time off from his job in a D.C. ministry.
So Hershey decided to do the same, near the seat of American power. He obtained a permit for a worship tent on the White House Ellipse for 40 days leading up to the 2012 presidential election.
In 2013, he did it again for 42 days, so he could say his continuous worship service was 1,000 hours long. Then 50 days in 2014, in order to pray for each state for one day.
David’s Tent became a 501(c)(3), with a board of directors and a staff of 40. And this year, the organization is in the midst of its largest project by far.
By Election Day, the people in the tent will have been making music for 10,000 hours, playing in front of three rows of folding chairs in a plastic box about 30 feet long on each side.
Michael Litterst, a spokesman for the National Park Service, said anyone can obtain a permit for up to four months for a demonstration on the Mall, and can renew it indefinitely. David’s Tent currently has permits on file through July, he said, and is nowhere near the longest vigil – there’s been a group at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial continuously since 1985, among others. Permit applications cost at least $120 and ask questions about the users’ activities on the Mall.
On Monday, the halfway point of David’s Tent’s planned 14-month vigil, the Park Service asked David’s Tent to move to a new spot near the World War II Memorial so the grass below its old spot can be renovated.
Hershey said it costs $25,000 a month to run the tent, funded by donations. The multi-denominational staff that works there full-time, in shifts that ensure that at least five people are always on duty, does not earn salaries, but their housing and food are mostly paid for by the organization.
The staff who have chosen to put their lives on hold while they pray for months on end, often in the middle of the night, are a diverse group, from a 17-year-old just out of high school to a 75-year-old.
Most nights, the tent is calm, bathed in colored light and filled with prayerful song. And sometimes something remarkable might happen. Hershey said a woman came in one night, clearly distraught. Staff members sat down to pray with her. And only as morning was starting to dawn did she show them the journal she carried with her, where she had written that she planned to commit suicide that night.
She wouldn’t do it, now that they had affirmed over and over that Jesus loved her, she said. “She walked out of here with purpose. Jesus that night literally saved,” Hershey said.
In that moment, he said, he saw the meaning of his project.
“That’ll change you, when you see the God of the Bible walking off the pages onto the National Mall.”
