In a first-of-its-kind feature, Our State magazine presents “A Prayer for North Carolina” in its December 2013 issue.
Editor in Chief Elizabeth Hudson invited people of faith from the mountains to the coast — rural preachers, urban ministers, and religious scholars — to share their interpretations of “a prayer for North Carolina.”
“These prayers,” Hudson says, “are unlike anything we’ve ever presented before. They are positive meditations on our state’s geography, culture, history, spirit, and people, and they inspire hope and joy for the place we call home.”
So unique was the undertaking that it also inspired a first-of-its-kind digital storytelling project. At Our State’s fully interactive website — prayer.ourstate.com — readers can listen to the writers read their work, see photographs of places across North Carolina that inspired these essays, and enjoy exclusive video and musical compositions arranged just for us. Readers can share the prayers that most inspire them and contribute their own prayer to the collection.
“There is content on this new website that you won’t find anywhere else,” Hudson explains. “And it will allow readers to fully immerse themselves in these prayers.”
In the issue, Rev. Billy Graham, who has shared his message of faith and hope with nearly 215 million people worldwide, turns homeward with a prayer for his beloved North Carolina.
Other contributors include Rev. Dr. Sid Batts from Greensboro’s First Presbyterian Church, Rabbi Paul Sidlofsky from Wilmington’s Temple of Israel — the first synagogue in North Carolina — and Fred Bahnson, director of the Food, Faith, and Religious Leadership Initiative at Wake Forest University School of Divinity.
Experience the prayers at prayer.ourstate.com beginning November 15, 2013. New prayers will be released each weekday until November 26, 2013, when the December issue will be available on newsstands.
You’re Invited! Celebrate Our State’s December Issue — “A Prayer for North Carolina” — at The Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, N.C. on Thursday, November 21, 2013 from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. Come be a part of this special celebration. This event is free and open to all. Stop by the Our State table to receive your free gift.
To commemorate our 90th anniversary, we’ve compiled a time line that highlights the stories, contributors, and themes that have shaped this magazine — and your view of the Old North State — using nine decades of our own words.
From its northernmost point in Corolla to its southern terminus on Cedar Island, this scenic byway — bound between sound and sea — links the islands and communities of the Outer Banks.
Us? An icon? Well, after 90 years and more than 2,000 issues celebrating North Carolina from mountains to coast, we hope you’ll agree that we’ve earned the title.
After nearly a century — or just a couple of years — these seafood restaurants have become coastal icons, the places we know, love, and return to again and again.
