Worship and Spiritual Resources

The resources assembled here are provided for use during worship and other spiritual gatherings in your faith community throughout the year, including after a suicide or suicide attempt. These materials promote the themes of life, hope, reasons for living, and connectedness, which are central to the campaign and to preventing suicide. They include:

• Prayers, meditations, and liturgies
• Sermons, homilies, reflections, and related aids
• Hymns and songs, and
• Scriptural resources

Variety

The items featured in the samples below reflect a variety of faith or spiritual traditions and perspective. We hope that, to the degree possible, most faith leaders regardless of tradition, philosophy, sect, or denomination, will be able to find materials here that are useful in their ministry. Therefore, it is necessary to include materials that reflect particular theological perspectives, understanding that many users of the site will pick and choose among the materials to find resources suitable for his or her particular faith community. The very nature of this work means that all materials will not be acceptable to all faith communities. It is left to each faith leader to select those resources deemed suitable for each instance.

Below is a sampling of information and resources to support leaders as they prepare messages and plan for member gatherings related to suicide prevention. 

• Buddhist Perspective
• Christian
• Hindu Perspective 
• Interfaith
• Muslim
• Jewish
• Native American Spiritual Resources

The materials available through the Faith.Hope.Life. website reflect the theological or spiritual perspective of the contributor or the author of each piece and not necessarily the Action Alliance or the Faith Communities Task Force.

Use "As Is" or Tailor

Most of the resources on this website may be used without permission, either in their current form, or as you choose to modify them to suit the culture, language, and customs of your particular faith community. Additionally, these resources may be used as aids in developing your own messages in support of Faith.Hope.Life. with appropriate attribution. Important: Some commonly-used messages can actually contribute to the suicide risk of those that hear it. For instance, citing statistics that could leave the impression that suicide is more common that it actually is, might increase the risk for certain vulnerable individuals. Please refer to the Action Alliance's Framework for Successful Messaging for assistance in creating customized messaging for suicide prevention. Remember, use statistics with extreme caution.