Prayers for Peace Across Faiths: Six Traditions, Each in Its Own Words
When the news is heavy, many people reach for the same small word: peace. Almost every faith tradition has been reaching for it, in its own language and way, for a very long time.
This anthology keeps the traditions deliberately separate. Each prayer below belongs to one tradition, presented in its own terms, not blended with the others. Merging them into one composite prayer would flatten exactly what makes each worth hearing. Read them one at a time, the way their communities do.
Christianity: the Prayer of St. Francis
Christianity's most beloved peace prayer begins with a request to be made useful:
"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy."
An honest note about its history: although it is known everywhere as the Prayer of St. Francis, it does not appear in Francis's own writings; scholars trace its earliest known printing to a French magazine in 1912. It became attached to his name afterward because its spirit matched how Francis was remembered — reconciled with enemies, nature, even death itself. Christians pray it today as what it is: a modern prayer in a Franciscan spirit, asking not to be comforted so much as to become a comforter.
Judaism: Oseh Shalom
Jewish prayer returns to peace again and again, and few lines are sung more often than Oseh Shalom. It closes the Kaddish and ends the Amidah, the central standing prayer. In Hebrew transliteration:
"Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu, v'al kol Yisrael, v'imru: Amen."
Traditionally rendered: "May the One who makes peace in the heavens make peace for us and for all Israel; and let us say: Amen." The image is worth sitting with: peace is something God makes in the high places, and the prayer asks that the same peace be made down here — many modern prayer books extend the wish to all who dwell on earth. Said several times a day, it is less a wish than a refrain that shapes the community saying it.
Islam: inclining to peace
Islamic prayer for peace takes many forms, and one of its most direct expressions is in the Qur'an itself — an instruction for when conflict begins to soften:
And if they incline to peace, incline thou also to it
Qur'an 8:61 (Pickthall)
The verse continues with a call to trust in God, and it sits in a passage about war — precisely why generations of Muslim readers have treasured it. Even there, an opening toward peace is to be met, not met with suspicion.
Beyond the verse, Muslims make personal supplication — dua — in their own words, and prayers for peace over family, community, and the world are a common form of it. Even the everyday greeting, as-salamu alaykum, "peace be upon you," shares its root with As-Salam, the Source of Peace, one of the names of God. Peace here is no abstraction; it is pronounced over people, by name, daily.
Hinduism: Om Shanti
In Hindu practice, peace is invoked by one word repeated three times: Shanti — peace, rest, stillness. It closes countless mantras, prayers, and readings from the Upanishads and other sacred texts, sounded as "Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti": Om, the sacred syllable, then peace three times over.
Why three times? Explanations vary among teachers, but a common one holds that the repetitions address three sources of disturbance: what lies beyond our control, the world around us, and the self within. And many Hindu peace prayers ask for more than one's own calm: the ancient Shanti mantras wish that the divine protect and nourish teacher and student together, their study free of discord — peace sought as something shared.
Buddhism: the metta phrases
Buddhist practice cultivates peace through metta — loving-kindness, or goodwill — meditation. The practitioner repeats simple phrases of well-wishing, first toward themselves, then a benefactor, a neutral person, a difficult person, and finally all beings without exception. The classic phrases, in a widely used English rendering, run:
"May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be safe. May I live with ease."
Then the same sentences turn outward: "May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe. May you live with ease." And at the widest circle: "May all beings be happy."
No deity is addressed here; metta is a training of the heart, rooted in the Buddha's teaching that goodwill is both a protection and a liberation. Its peace is not the absence of trouble, but a mind that meets beings — beginning with the hardest case, oneself — without ill will.
Sikhism: Sarbat da Bhala
Every Sikh service ends with the Ardas, the community's standing prayer of remembrance and petition — which itself ends with a line looking outward past the congregation: "Sarbat da Bhala," may all prosper, may all be blessed. Its fuller closing asks for the well-being of all humanity.
This is not a decorative ending. The same conviction runs the langar, the free kitchen in every gurdwara, where anyone of any faith or none is served a hot meal, all sitting side by side. Peace here is inseparable from seva — selfless service — and from a blessing that refuses to stop at its own community's borders. The prayer names everyone because the kitchen feeds everyone.
How to actually use these prayers
One suggestion governs the rest: do not mash them together. Their beauty is their distinctness, and each makes complete sense on its own terms.
Instead, try one tradition's prayer a day. Read Oseh Shalom on Monday — transliteration first, then translation — and let its image of peace made in the heavens stay with you. Read the Prayer of St. Francis on Tuesday as a request to be changed rather than soothed. Sit with the metta phrases for five minutes on Wednesday, and notice which circle is hardest to mean.
The week almost organizes itself: six days, six prayers, and a seventh to return to your own tradition's, or whichever stayed with you longest. Faith Map's prayer library holds prayers from each tradition, kept separately in their own sections, and listening to the prayer library is free — you can Open the Faith Map prayer library and read or hear one tradition's prayer each day without mixing a thing.
Over a week you will notice these prayers agree on almost nothing except what matters here: peace is worth asking for, by name, out loud, on behalf of other people.
Frequently asked questions
Is it respectful to pray a prayer from a tradition that is not my own?
Generally, yes. Reading — even praying — a tradition's public peace prayers, as written and in context, is a form of respect, especially kept in their own words rather than blended. The courtesies are simple: do not rewrite them, do not present one tradition's prayer as another's, and follow a community's guidance when joining its worship.
Why not combine them into one universal peace prayer?
Because each prayer carries its own tradition's theology. Oseh Shalom addresses the God of Israel; the metta phrases address no one and train the heart; the Qur'anic verse is an instruction within a specific passage. Merging them would misrepresent all of them at once. Kept distinct, they can be honored honestly; blended, they belong to no one.
Which of these prayers is the oldest?
The Jewish and Hindu sources reach back furthest: the Shanti mantras of the Upanishads are over two thousand years old, and Oseh Shalom has roots in ancient rabbinic prayer. Metta traces to the Buddha's teaching in the fifth century BCE, the Qur'anic verse to the seventh century CE, Sarbat da Bhala to the Ardas as it took shape later, and the Prayer of St. Francis — the surprise of the list — to 1912.