A Sociology of Prayer

Giuseppe Giordan, Linda Woodhead

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351961486
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Prayer is a central aspect of religion. Even amongst those who have abandoned organized religion levels of prayer remain high. Yet the most basic questions remain unaddressed: What exactly is prayer? How does it vary? Why do people pray and in what situations and settings? Does prayer imply a god, and if so, what sort? A Sociology of Prayer addresses these fundamental questions and opens up important new debates. Drawing from religion, sociology of religion, anthropology, and historical perspectives, the contributors focus on prayer as a social as well as a personal matter and situate prayer in the conditions of complex late modern societies worldwide. Presenting fresh empirical data in relation to original theorising, the volume also examines the material aspects of prayer, including the objects, bodies, symbols, and spaces with which it may be integrally connected.

Chapter 1
Prayer as Practice: An Interpretative Proposal

Carlo Genova

Against the common view that prayer is first and foremost a matter of religious belief and interiority, this chapter argues that it is possible to interpret some forms of prayer as ‘social practices’ i.e. repeated activities that do not require explicit processes of reflection, and which, for the actor, can have a meaning that transgresses the boundaries of religion, sometimes completely.

After having made a brief overview of relevant ideas put forward by classical sociologists who have dealt with religious phenomena I shall, first of all, comment on the reflections of Mauss, who was the first to face the question whether the activity of prayer ‘makes sense’. Reference will then be made to some authors who have been involved in the social analysis of prayer more recently, in order to show how thinking has developed over time. I pay particular attention to authors who have considered prayer as social practice. The final section of the chapter considers the feasibility of applying the concept of practice to the analysis of actual forms of prayer, to facilitate a more adequate interpretation.

1. First Reflection on Prayer as Social Phenomenon

The phenomenon of prayer might seem to be one of the most fundamental subjects for the sociology of religion to deal with. If we go beyond definitional questions which are not included in the scope of this contribution, it seems possible to affirm that every religious tradition expresses itself through activities which can be interpreted as prayers. It would then be logical to suppose that a discipline that deals with religious phenomena would give first priority to the analysis of the geographic, social, historical and cultural variability of prayer. However, if this rather naive hypothesis were tested by a general overview of the classical texts of the sociology of religion, and the most well-recognized textbooks dedicated to this field, it would become evident that the reality is completely different. Not only is it extremely difficult to find introductory texts which deal with the question of prayer, it is also rare to find a serious analysis of this phenomenon in works by authors considered to be ‘classical’.¹

From a sociological perspective, even though Comte refers to this issue in Catechisme positiviste,² he does so mainly from a prescriptive angle – and he hardly mentions it at all in Cours de philosophie positive;³ Durkheim speaks of it in Formes elementaires de la vie religieuse, but it is neither structured nor organic;⁴ Simmel makes only brief mentions of prayer in some passages in Beiträge zur Erkenntnistheorie der Religion, in Die Gegensätze des Lebens und die Religion and in Die Religion;⁵ Weber mentions the issue briefly in only a few passages of Wirthschaft und Gesellschaft⁶ and Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus,⁷ and in Der Wirthschaft der Weltreligionen. From a more anthropological perspective, some consideration of the topic is found in Lectures on the Religion of the Semites by Robertson Smith,⁸ in Structure and Function in Primitive Society⁹ and African Systems of Kinship¹⁰ by Radcliffe Brown, in the various volumes of The Golden Bough by Frazer, and above all in the pages of Primitive Mentality by Lévy-Bruhl.¹¹ Nevertheless, the question is not dealt with in a direct or explicit manner in any of these texts.

In many of these texts we find interesting descriptive elements of specific forms of prayer along with some more general reflections on prayer as a characteristic activity of the religious field – but structured, systematic reflections are lacking. The great exception to this rule is the contribution made by Mauss, who dedicated a book, although uncompleted, to the subject – On Prayer. It is this text which offers us a useful starting point for reflection.

From Mauss’s point of view, prayer is an activity which involves both belief and ritual at the same time. The religious person both thinks and acts in the prayer; the ritual and mystic components are inseparable one from the other and bear the same weight (Mauss 1969–74 vol. I: 359–60). Mauss suggests that if all religious rites were divided into manual activities such as body movements and the moving of objects, and oral activities such as repeated phrases, then prayer would tend to be located within the latter category, whilst also sharing some aspects retaining of the former. Prayers are oral religious rites that aim at modifying something profane by conferring a sacred characteristic upon it (Mauss 1969–74 vol. I: 413–14).

In this sense, each and every prayer expresses religious sentiments and ideas: a prayer is an attitude and an act adopted toward sacred things. That is, a prayer is an attempt to communicate with the divine in an attempt to influence: some form of outcome is expected from a prayer. Prayer involves the use of words which have an objective and an expected effect. It is an ‘action instrument’ that works through the expression of ideas and sentiments. Therefore, prayer incorporates both acting and thinking. It unites ritual, cult and belief, and embraces both meaning and efficacy.

In this perspective, a rite acquires a raison d’être only once its meaning (i.e. the notions and ideas it has been based on and the belief it corresponds to) has been discovered (Mauss 1969–74 vol. I: 358). Likewise, prayer finds its reason to exist in the notions and beliefs from which it derives. In most cases prayer has clearly expressed reasons, circumstances and motives for being uttered. However, both the form and meaning of prayer should always be taken as a phenomenon which is not simply traceable to a single individual, but something of a fundamental social nature. Indeed, according to Mauss, even if the prayer is individualistic and free, and even if the individual chooses how and when to pray, the words and their meaning are consecrated and, therefore, social. The more a prayer is social in its content and form, the less it exists outside a ritual. It is related to collections of phrases handed down from one generation to another and often inscribed in written texts. The same applies to the circumstance, the moment, the place and the attitude taken towards the prayer, all of which are often strictly defined. Each prayer is a ritual speech adopted by a religious society, a series of words with a determined order and sense. Even the most personal and free form of prayer follows prescriptions (Mauss 1969–74 vol. I: 375–80).

It goes without saying that, even if prayer is a social phenomenon, this does not mean it is not also an individualistic, personal one. However, personal prayer is not primary over collective prayer, but rather the opposite. Historically, prayer was first of a collective nature, even if personal prayer was not forbidden. Moreover, it is collective not only in form, but also inasmuch as it has both juridical and moral aspects. Although recitation and prayer did become more and more individualistic with the passing of time, this never eliminated their social content. The original contribution of each individual in prayer does not annihilate its essentially collective character, as even personal prayer is strongly influenced by the cultural forms the individual who uttered it is part of. Moreover, the community that practices the prayer not only determines its characteristics, but also its efficacy (Mauss 1969–74 vol. I: 380–84).

It is the social dimension of prayer that brings about a weakening of its sense when it is reproduced individually. If, indeed, the sense of prayer is first and foremost one of a social nature and only afterwards does it take an individual form, then at the moment it is adopted by an individual there is the risk of it becoming detached from its original sense. And a practice which is not linked to its origin can be only a mechanical sequence of traditional movements.

If then, from a historical perspective, prayer was at first chiefly social and bodily with little to do with any thought process, it later became a more completely mental and interior process. However, this process is not an irreversible one. Indeed, at times prayer starts off as being wholly spiritual only to become a form of recitation void of any personal content. Therefore, there are certain oral rites that have become manual rites after a degradation process (Mauss 1969–74 vol. I: 413). Prayers repeated constantly, time after time, recited in a language that can’t be understood, formulas that have lost every meaning, with words so outdated as to be incomprehensible, unrecognizable, are clear examples of such a regression. Moreover, we also see some cases where prayer has been reduced to a mere material object e.g. the rosary, the prayer-tree, the prayer wheel, the amulet and ex-votos, are all materialized prayers. This kind of materialization can then easily translate into a weakening of the known sense of the prayer. In neither case is the distinction between a prayer pregnant with meaning or devoid of it absolute, but rather refers to states of the same prayer in different moments (Mauss 1969–74 vol. I: 357). According to Mauss, once prayer, inasmuch as it is a rite, loses its tie to the notions and beliefs that generated it, it also loses its meaning.

2. Prayer in Recent Scholarship

Mauss’s work on prayer, despite constituting a fundamental starting point for this field of study, can, of course, only be correctly interpreted in terms of its peculiar historical and cultural background. When more recent contributions to a social analysis of prayer are taken into account it is clear that the question of meaning becomes more complex. However, even within this literature we can still find reference to the idea that only when a prayer is accompanied by explicit reflection on the meaning of the gestures and words it contains are we dealing with meaningful prayer. Conversely, we find the idea that when a recitation – whether physical, vocal or mental – is less tied to a reflection on meaning, then prayer lacks meaning.

It is helpful to begin by looking at classifications used in this more recent literature to distinguish the various types of prayer (Khoury 2004: 564; Cipriani 2011; Janssen, De Hart, Den Draak 1990: 104; Poloma, Pendleton, 1989: 48–51; Ladd, Spilka 2006: 233). Taking these together, prayer is described as:

• request: asking for something that you don’t have at that moment, whether it be spiritual or material;
• intercession: when you advocate and ask for something for someone else;
• confession: asking for forgiveness for one’s own sins;
• praise, worship and adoration: where God is praised;
• relationship: where contact with the Creator is sought;
• thanksgiving;
• meditation: where order can be established in one’s thoughts;
• rite or ceremony;
• communication: where a dialogue is established with the Divine, with ‘the other’ or with oneself.

Of course these characteristics can be present simultaneously and are not mutually exclusive.

Even if this typology is necessarily partial and incomplete, it does allow the diversity of the phenomenon to be grasped. It also shows that different types of prayer are defined on the basis of the function they are believed to fulfil. A significant number of definitions of what a prayer ‘is’ make specific reference to these functions. Thus prayer is defined as: a communication technique (Headley 1994: 11; Swatos Jr 1982: 157; Khoury 2004: 561; Chauvin 1970: 111); an instrument to help cope with difficulties, both in the sense of making reality more acceptable and that of intervening in it (i.e. a coping mechanism, in the sense of the management process of internal and external problems) (Janssen, De Hart, Den Draak 1990: 105; Baker 2008: 170–71); a means to divine aid and guidance (Baker 2008: 171; Chauvin 1970: 113); a means to define, redefine or reactivate the mutual position of the divine and earthly (Headley 1994: 11); a means of construction and interpretation of reality and individual experience (Janssen, De Hart, Den Draak 1990: 105–6).

It is clear that the frameworks for understanding prayer as a...