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When a big disaster occurs in a country, you can often see messages saying:
Pray for [Country X]
Are people really writing this to incite people to ask their God for anything?
For instance Japanese people (in majority non-religious) have started using this expression a lot.
Among similar but non-religious, politically-correct expressions, what would be the expression that most closely express the same feelings as "Pray for [Country X]"?
Since praying, in this context, is a religious activity, there is no non-religious equivalent.
However you might use "Spare a thought for [X] [at this difficult time]"
Pray does not only have a religious connotation: (from M-W)
to hope or wish very much for something to happen
to seriously ask (someone) to do something
but if you prefer a different expression; give your emotional support to (Country name), may fit the context.
I wish them well myself.
It's a lot like praying for them, but less diety oriented.
A non-religious equivalent to "Pray for Country X" would be "Let our thoughts be with Country X."
Let us keep [Country X] in our thoughts.
Yes, among Christians at least, the phrase "pray for (someone)" is literally a request that you say a prayer for their health/safety/recovery/etc.
There isn't a literal equivalent that avoids including prayer, but a similar secular phrase would be to "keep (someone) in your thoughts".
These often get combined into: "keep (someone) in your thoughts and prayers" to include (or at least hopefully avoid offending) both those who pray and those who do not.
To a non-religious person, saying "I pray that something like that will never happen again", doesn't necessarily have any religious connotation. As most religions have been losing their faithful since the second half of the twentieth century, phrases like "I pray that..." and "I swear to God..." are frequently used as figures of speech. To answer your question, the non-religious equivalent to "pray for a country" is "pray for a country".
EDIT - Two or three generations ago, my family was very religious and everyone attended services on Sundays. Things have changed a lot during the past fifty years and very few of us ever go to church these days. In spite of that, even the atheists still say "Thank God!", "God forbid!" and "God bless you" and they say it just out of habit, without any religious feeling. It is, therefore, difficult to affirm that a certain phrase is always religious. It largely depends on who is saying it.
Religious phrases and idioms permeate both religious and secular society.
To say "our prayers are with you" can mean a wide range of things from passive-agressive proselytization to simply offering empathy sans any religious context.
"Merry Christmas" can be the same way. It can be a sincere phrase shared amongst Christians in celebration of a very religious holiday, or it can mean it's Egg Nog season.
So, to answer the question the religious phrase:
Pray for [Country X]
has a (one of many) non-religious equivalent of:
Pray for [Country X]
Context is key.
"Stand By/ Stand with [Country X]"
Do you believe people are invoking the Norse god Thor when they invite you to tea on "Thursday?" Surely you must understand that many religious phrases are a cultural expression and that people are not trying to proselytize you.
The polite and intelligent man or woman will accept that a request for prayer can be understood as a call for compassion and empathy without getting caught up in trifles over wording.
Send good vibes to [country x]
However, it does have strong religious connotations when expressed without further context.
Two definitions that are not specifically religious are:
- to make earnest petition to (a person).
- to make petition or entreaty for; crave:
When a typical religious person is stating "Pray for [Country X]" when that country's people/land are in distress, what they are actually communicating is a request (a prayer) with some elided aspects to it (communicated in parenthesis below). Essentially, they are saying something like:
(Would you join with me to) pray (to God) for [Country X] (that help and relief would come from Him for the distress they are in)?
The point is not simply to have that country in others' "hearts & minds," as such does Country X no tangible good. In the normal religious context (which I hold to BTW), one is asking God to do what needs to be done to help, usually to an extent that is far beyond any one individual's ability to help.
So to make it not inherently contain a religious connotation, simply provide more context for who the request is targeted to, and perhaps change the word used. Something like:
Pray others to help [Country X]
or
Entreat others to help [Country X]
Recall that the original statement assumes that the one calling to "Pray for [Country X]" is in no more than a small position (if any) to help the country themselves, and that they assume most people are in a like small position to help. So the request is to entreat God to help (while also subtly asking that one be a part of that help as one can). If God is going to be taken out of the equation, then one would need to simply implore other people to join them in imploring yet other people to help (such as they can help).
It may be shortened to
Help [Country X]
But that does not quite communicate the same thing, as it does not directly entreat others to continue to motivate still others to help also.
"Pray for [Country X]" after a disaster
At its base level this is a call for people to ask a deity to do something. Universally, deities are are best known for their masterly inactivity. It is their creations - humans - that do all the work.
I would therefore say "I hope the government/UN/army/emergency services, etc sends aid as quickly as it can."
