The social life of prayers – introduction

ABSTRACT

In this introduction the theme of prayer is brought into an anthropological discussion. Attending to prayers and how they are performed and seen to intervene in a social world is a significant way to engage with matters close to people. As argued in this introduction, prayers are a way to map affect and affective relationships people hold in what they are oriented towards and care about. Here a social perspective on prayer taking its cue from Marcel Mauss is particularly relevant as it invites us to go beyond the individual and see how prayers always point to a broader landscape. The reason for honing in on the social life of prayers is that it entices a particular form of situated comparison of diverse forms of Christianity that thereby pushes the anthropology of Christianity to consider central questions of agency, responsibility and subjectivity. This introduction argues that attending to the social life of prayers can be seen as a way of mapping affect. Prayers in different ways attest to the implicatedness of human beings in a social world. Furthermore, prayer works as a didactic tool and is in itself an internal scale of comparison and evaluation in various Christian formulations.

KEY WORDS:

• Prayer
• Christianity
• affect
• sociality
• agency

Introduction

The practice of prayer is no innocent social phenomenon. It is no innocent social phenomenon neither because the practice of prayers raises no controversy in the social worlds we attend to nor because prayer may be cast as a phenomenon unworthy of scientific attention and scrutiny. Prayer may, rather, reveal quite a bit about what is negotiated in the social worlds we study because the practice of prayer may persist and be performed outside the circles of the most devout and zealous practitioners and experts. In other words, the practice of prayer elicits a great variety of reactions in the social worlds wherein it is performed. Take the example of this Greek Orthodox woman in the Lebanese village of Jounieh and her reaction to one of her employee’s prayers. The woman designates herself as not being religious but she has a strong opinion about people and prayer. Running one of the best flower shops in Beirut, she was not particularly thrilled to have a devout employee spending too much time on prayer. ‘At my work I have an employee. She sits there mumbling,’ she starts,

and when I ask what she is saying, she says she is praying. I tell her that I don’t want her to pray to God, as if he will do her work. She is the one to do the work. Too many people here pray to God and then do nothing themselves. People think they can leave their own responsibility by praying!

Having said this, she pauses, only to even further her critique.

You know what, this lady, she lights candles at work and leaves them in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary. I say to her that she is here to work, and not to use her time for this. And then she responds that the candle is for Mary to protect our business. What do you give me? To protect our business! The only thing she should do is to do her work properly!

The vehemence of the woman bespeaks a highly sceptical position towards prayer as opposed to human labour. For her, an employee should not spend time on such an obsolete practice but rather should work towards bringing something about by her own doing. What caused this rant from her was an explanation of my research exploring the social dimensions of prayers. Hearing of this topic she went off. So already from the onset we can place one thing on the shelf: prayers move something in people, at least in the sense that some find them a waste of time and energy. Critique of prayer is therefore not necessarily a perspective from outside a social world. Rather, one frequently finds dissenting opinions on prayer – and social practices more generally – within the very same social world. Nevertheless, prayer is and remains a significant social practice in many social worlds. Here prayer is believed or hoped to change one’s circumstances, to alleviate suffering, or to point others towards salvation or what is perceived as a better life. What people pray for reveals much about their hopes, anxieties, desires and not merely their beliefs and convictions.

It is exactly for this reason that we in this special issue hone in on the social life of prayers. We contend that there lies a central anthropological task in exploring what is brought about in and through prayer. Furthermore, we think that taking such a central practice as prayer as our object of enquiry entices a particular form of situated comparison of diverse forms of Christianity that thereby pushes the anthropology of Christianity to consider central questions of agency, responsibility and subjectivity. However, beyond such a situated comparison, we also believe that a focus on one religious tradition, such as that of Christianity, can teach us something about prayer more broadly, namely that prayer is inherently social and as such it works as a didactic tool and is in itself an internal scale of comparison and evaluation. In this sense, this special issue uses Christianity as a lens on a broader religious phenomenon.

Exploring Christianity through prayer

Within the last 15 years, a vibrant field of anthropological studies of Christianity has brought to attention questions such as what and who is a Christian (Robbins 2003, 2004; Cannell 2006; Garriott and O’Neill 2008). Likewise great work has been done on the materiality of religion (Engelke 2007, 2012; Keane 2007) and the role of mediation (Meyer 2008, 2011) and how these fields impact Christian practice. The tendency has, however, been that primarily Protestant and Charismatic varieties of Christianity have been addressed, whereas a focus on Eastern forms of Christianity – both Orthodox as well as Eastern Catholic varieties (Mahieu and Naumescu 2008; Hann and Goltz 2010; Bandak 2012; Shenoda 2012; Heo 2013) – have only more recently been entering the conversation. One of the aims of this special issue is hence to engage critically a conversation and comparison of varieties of Christianity through the practice of prayer.

In researching the social life of prayers, it is necessary to engage with significant work that has already been done. Prayers in Roman Catholic communities have been explored by prominent researchers such as Christian (1972, 1996, 2012) and Orsi (1985, 1996, 2005). The rosary and the cultivation of prayers have been one avenue of research that has been taken up (Turner and Turner 1978; Winston-Allen 1997; Mitchell 2009; Venbrux 2012; Downey 2015). Prayers are here, beyond ritual practice, seen as a way of forging relationships between heaven and earth (Orsi 2005, 2; see also Brown 1981; Geary 1994; Cannell 1999). The relationships are complex and must be scrutinised as they unfold, and – it could be added – particularly so in times of crisis, when they come to hold a particularly potent position as a way of expanding one’s potential for action, which may otherwise be limited. We will return to this point later.

One particularly relevant discussion that has been promoted within the recent anthropological literature on Christianity is the one on sincerity and whether – paraphrasing Stanley Cavell’s classic 1976 work – one must mean what one says. Here Keane (2007) and Joel Robbins (2001, 2004) have compellingly argued that such formation of an earnest subject has been a directing force within a great many Protestant and Charismatic communities (see also Shoaps 2002; Mafra 2011). The Christian subject is one who learns to speak the truth on his or her own predicament as a sinner. And it entails a social process of learning to become a new and changed subject, of breaking with one’s past (cf. Robbins 2007; see also Meyer 1998; Engelke 2010). Here in various ways the process of learning to pray is formative for life as a Christian.

Where much can be said on how religion – and more specifically Christianity – is learned (see Berliner and Sarró 2007; Luhrmann 2012), it is important to point out how Catholic and Orthodox varieties of Christianity also relate to the discussion on the sincere subject albeit in a different manner. Where Evangelical Christians can often be heard denigrating Catholicism for formalism (see e.g., Keane 2007, 186f.), sincerity plays a role here too. However, sincerity in this context may not merely be a case of the individual’s relation to God, Mary, Jesus and the saints, but rather the formation of a collective form of passion. In this regard, what is important is not the formation of a modern and sincere subject in a Protestant formulation but how affective and emotional practices have been formed in broader Christian traditions. Catholic and Orthodox Christians indexing personal faith and proximity to the divine may focus on the state of the heart and the participation in the passion of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints. While the crafting of such affective forms of participation in things divine may be important avenues for thought and action in Catholic and Orthodox varieties of Christianity, it is equally important to address the differing degrees of participation that these varieties of Christianity also allow for. Here, the importance of being part of a living community and deferring to religious authority may be as fundamental as what any individual may ‘believe’ him- or herself (Bandak and Boylston 2014). The formation of Christian character may accordingly be viewed as affective and emotional dispositions crafted over time, where sincerity and intent may be or become relevant in certain contexts. Granted, Catholic and Orthodox variations of Christianity do not focus on the same aspects, but regardless of emphasis, these traditions can also be seen as directing the devout towards an affective relationship with God. And it is in and through prayer that an ethical formation of character can be nested and the self can be disciplined.

Discipline and the formation of religious character

A second strand of significant scholarship that it is critical to engage with is to be found within the recent work dealing with the anthropology of Islam. In this body of work, a theme of the cultivation of spiritual habitus has been prominent (Asad 1993; Henkel 2005; Mahmood 2005; Hirschkind 2006). This focus is fertile in attesting to the devoted labour of the pious subject in disciplining a particular moral and spiritual self. By praying and the repetitive ordering of life in and through prayer a religious self is cultivated and formed (El-Guindi 2008; Haeri 2013). Hereby an important focus on the disciplining aspects of prayers comes into view. Centrally Mahmood (2001) has argued how spontaneity is also rehearsed through practice. Where the disciplinary aspect emphasising the Foucauldian legacy of techniques remains important, it is critical to focus not merely on the docile body but also on ways in which mastery becomes possible. Here discipline is not the same as mastery, even if mastery may come through disciplined work on the self. What is important is that this takes something more than merely docile bodies.

It is significant to complement the focus of cultivation with studies of how prayer as such gains prominence in relation to broader societal trends and issues. In order to do so it is vital to broaden the scope of enquiry from cultivation to the existential aspects of seeking protection and comfort in times of crisis, a time when prayers, more than constituting a moral self, are a way of acting upon the world (see also Mittermaier 2012). Here it is important also to focus on the subjects who are not equally invested in the religious labour such as prayer, or who are so only when particular issues are felt pressing or specific occasions invite and incite this practice (Schielke 2009; Simon 2009). Where the Foucauldian perspective is conducive in bringing out the individualising forces of discipline and techniques, this special issue wants to highlight the accompanying communalising force of prayer. Prayer here inserts the subject not only in an individualised and personal relationship with God, Christ, Mary or the saints, but also in a social landscape populated with fellow beings. To return to the importance of the object of prayer for anthropological studies of Christianity, we are with this object allowed to complement the issues of what and who a Christian is with a timely focusing on how Christian practice looks from a social perspective.

Mauss and the sociality of prayer

One central interlocutor for all of the papers in this special issue is Marcel Mauss. Where Mauss’s seminal works on the gift (1954 [1923–24]), magic (1972 [1902]) and body techniques (1973 [1934]) have all had a strong uptake in anthropological work and beyond, only little attention has been given to his doctoral dissertation on prayers (2003 [1909]; see also Pickering 2003; Fournier 2005; Jenkins 2008; Giordan 2015). In this work Mauss takes up prayer and examines it as a central way to understand particular forms of sociality. One of Mauss’s central contentions is thus that prayers must be understood and explored as social phenomena rather than merely as individual petitions from troubled souls (Mauss 2003, 33). Hence Mauss works towards establishing a broad and encompassing definition of prayer. He arrives at the formulation that ‘prayer is a religious rite which is oral and bears directly on the sacred’ (Mauss 2003, 57). For Mauss, prayers are thus to be seen in the context of ritualised action and as an inherent part of religious life. Furthermore, prayer in his conception needs to be formulated orally even if the words may stem from tradition or be formulaic in content. Prayers according to Mauss are intended to bring about a change in sacred beings as they are the primary object of the prayer even if they also affect the persons praying.

Where Mauss in his work towards such a definition emphasised the inherent sociality of prayers, he did not do much to relate his own insights on gift exchange, magic and body techniques to the domain of prayer. Doing so would, however, greatly benefit an anthropological perspective on what prayers are and what they could be used for. Prayers are also to be understood as particular exchanges between the more or less devout and the deity; prayers are also to be understood as acquired techniques of use and comportment of the body; and prayers are also about ways to accomplish things in the social world by addressing different agents than fellow human beings. By focusing on the sociality of prayers we have a significant opening to contemporary ethnographic research and anthropological thinking. Prayers, in other words, reveal the hopes and desires not merely of individuals but of larger communities, too. We hereby want to go beyond any simple dichotomy emphasising a focus on both the social and the individual aspects of prayer. Prayers will be the prism through which we explore how quandaries of life are being dealt with, the central contention being that prayers are not to be understood merely as passive submission but as forms of action in and upon the world.

Take again the example of the Greek Orthodox woman with whom we started out in this introduction. The vehement critique of her employee for not assuming a proper role in relation to her work relies on a particular conception of what it means to act in the world. To the woman the words uttered to the Virgin Mary, or the candles lit to her, were but vain attempts at shying away from personal action. To the woman the energy was better saved and placed in something that to her seemed more concrete and tangible, that is, taking care of the flowers, customers and orders in her shop. Where this vehement critique may not be completely unjust, let us for a moment make pause and consider another side of prayer, namely how prayers in different ways attest to the implicatedness of human beings in a social world.

Ora et labora

What the critique voiced by the Lebanese woman reveals is an at times uneasy relationship between prayer and the social world. However, this uneasy relationship is not merely an outsider’s perspective on Christian practice. Rather we here face a central conundrum in Christian theology and practice, which is the relationship between prayer and work. Thus central questions throughout the history of Christianity and until this day revolve around human labour, the efficacy of prayer, and how these two impact on each other. In this sense, recurring themes in various Christian formulations continue to revolve around issues such as: what matters in praying? Is it the amount of time, the intensity, or – as pointed to above – the sincerity of the praying person that effects something? Or is it the quantity of prayers said, or the number of people praying? Does it matter whether it is one or more persons praying? Does it matter that prayers are repeated? Or is it the quality of prayers that matters? Furthermore, what is changed in and through prayer? Is prayer merely transformative of the self praying in the things, persons and issues towards which attention is directed? Or does a transformation of the world actually happen in and through prayer? Or is prayer but a feeble attempt at leaving one’s social responsibility to forces other than oneself? These questions are central as they point not merely to an external grappling with prayer, but likewise to an internal one.

Various emphases have been given to either human labour or prayer in diverse Christian contexts. It is therefore instructive to summon comparative work on the ways the balance or imbalance between work and prayer is played out locally. In the monastic orders, such as the Benedictine Order and the Cistercian Order, this has been captured in the Latin motto ora et labora, meaning ‘pray and work’. Monastic orders and their discipline thus were fashioned through continuous prayer and work. Here ideals of poverty and salvation were inculcated both bodily and mentally in dispositions of virtue and humility in living life itself as a constant and ceaseless prayer (see also Asad 1993, 47ff.). Manual labour and tidal prayers were instrumental in the fashioning of a particular Christian subject. Where monasteries and cloistered communities were definitely ways for strands of zealous Christians to stand out from the world and focus on matters divine, this is only part of the picture. The spiritual work undertaken in the monasteries also bespeaks the role of monasteries as centres of devotion where a spiritual battle for and on behalf of the world took place. Accordingly monasteries, holy men and saints have attracted popular masses who have wanted intercession or more forceful ways to plead with the divine (Brown 1983; Geary 1994, 163ff.; Kleinberg 2008; Forbess 2015). Take the energy put into pilgrimages on behalf of oneself or others and their persistence and flourishing also in the broader Christian landscape of today (cf. Frey 1998; Egan 2010; Kormina 2010; Peña 2011).

Beyond these assiduous forms of spiritually inflected labour in monastic communities, broader and more popular bases of Orthodox and Catholic Christians have been engaged with prayer as a matter of both individual and collective interest. Touching the icon of a benevolent saint, praying with the beads of a rosary in one’s hand, and saying the holy liturgy at Mass are all different ways in which Christian prayers are performed (Naumescu 2013). And it is important to bear in mind that quite frequently prayer is and remains a potential avenue for action, but an avenue that many will only start trying if immediate needs and concerns are raised. In this sense indifference on the part of many Christians may often be a standard response, and only when more direct and pressing concerns are raised is prayer as such put into practice (see also Bandak 2013; Mayblin, Napolitano, and Norget forthcoming). Furthermore, the use of prayer rarely occludes using various means to obtain what is found lacking or troubling in a given situation. In this sense, one may often find the simultaneous use of both prayer or ritual and such mundane methods as going to a doctor, seeking advice from experts in various fields, or borrowing money from friends in case of economic hardship. What is found is hence a general pragmatic where the use of alternative channels of agency that may not rely on divine assistance are accommodating more direct religious channels (see also Kleinman 1984; Whyte 1998). Ora et labora could here also be extended and used to refer more widely to how both prayer and human labour are enmeshed outside a directly theologically informed framework.

What we are reminded of is that social worlds are inhabited by a plurality of desires, longings and inclinations. The world in Orsi’s felicitous terminology is characterised by messiness (2005, 167). People may work both on their own salvation and on positioning themselves in a community. As a historian of religion Aviad Kleinberg formulated this insight with regards to saints and their followers (1992, 18):

There is no contradiction in saying that the saints and their followers were engaged in a spiritual quest for salvation and acknowledging that they were at the same time also engaged in other interactions involving power relations, nonreligious personal aspirations, and a need for recognition and status.

To take up the various affiliations and relationships that affect people in their lives is therefore a critical anthropological task.

Affective investment and moral obligation

What we posit here is that an examination of the social life of prayers can also be seen as a way of mapping affect. The central questions revolving around prayer can here productively be explored as matters of movement. What is moving people and what are they moved towards? Here we see how religious figures such as saints, priests or persons believed to have God’s special favour are besieged to entreat blessings and benefits in concrete situations as well as to direct the petitioner towards salvation. People may be moved by Jesus, Mary or their saints, but they likewise want to move them to see to them in their situation (Morgan 1999; Coleman and Eade 2004, 7, 16ff.; Hermkens, Jansen, and Notermans 2009, 6–8; Napolitano 2009). Prayer may in this sense open up a sense of empowerment, where the devout may feel that he or she can accomplish things by other means. However, such sense of empowerment entails forms of surrendering, which may come at a price (cf. Orsi 1985; Hermkens, Jansen, and Notermans 2009). Again, we see the configuration of action and inaction as central, a configuration wherein human agency is bound up with ideas of more than human actors and their involvement in their world.

Examples of such affective investments are seen in the devotion to the sacred heart (Morgan 2012; Hann 2014). Here the devout working to touch Jesus and his heart, thereby beyond praying for salvation, also attempts to make him interfere in the mundane realm of the person praying. Likewise affective investment figures prominently in the practice of making vows and promises in popular forms of Catholicism (Christian 1972; Gudeman 1988; Kristensen forthcoming). Here the relationship with the saint may be as complex as any other social relationship. The literature on Christianity in medieval Europe presents illuminating cases on how devout communities cursed their saints and even took their icons from the stands in the churches and placed them face down on the ground cajoling them into acting on their behalf in the defence of their community against foreign threat (Geary 1994; Bartlett 2013). What this reveals is the involvement in a social world where different ideas on how to act and make things happen are played out. Furthermore, we see a central feature of obligation coming into the frame.

Where involvement and implicatedness in the world are formed in one way in highly institutionalised forms of Christianity – be it variations of Orthodoxy and Catholicism (see also Bandak and Boylston 2014; Luehrmann, forthcoming) – the immediacy and direct engagement with God, Christ and the Holy Spirit in various forms of Charismatic Christianity may be no less passionate. Take Matthew Engelke’s example of the ‘live and direct’ relationship that is seen as the most conducive among the Friday Masowe Apostolics of Zimbabwe (2004, 2007). In their worship the workings of the Holy Spirit are central and this is believed to come about not in fixed form but rather in a radical openness to the ways of the Holy Spirit moving people. Furthermore, such Charismatic emphasis on the gift of the Holy Spirit also brings out a variation on the theme of Christian obligation. Where Mauss emphasised the three different obligations set into action in and around gift giving, namely the obligations to give, receive and return, it could likewise be a fertile perspective to bring into the orbit of prayer. If prayer is to be explored as a social phenomenon, it is important to explore which kinds of obligations are fashioned in and through the very practice of prayer. Omri Elisha in his work has emphasised moral ambition as key to understanding his interlocutors (2011), such that moral ambition quite often plays out alongside forms of moral obligation and debt (see also Graeber 2012). The price of salvation has come at a high cost, so where Jesus may be the source of rescue, such rescue also entails that a new and different life must be lived. Owing to the various forms of obligation that are brought about in the formation of the prayerful subject, many less zealous do not necessarily want to pray before no other resort is found (cf. Bandak and Bille 2013). Affective investment on the part of some correlates with the lack of intent, recalcitrance even, on the part on somebody else in the church, community, family or among one’s social relations as such.

Praying the right way

Where prayer could be seen anthropologically as a way to map affective investments, prayer is – as pointed out by Mauss – rarely just the outcry of an individual. Rather, prayer is socialised language and perceptiveness that are formed and transmitted in a religious tradition. Because prayer is learned in a social setting it is important to focus on how people are instructed and trained to pray. Instructions to pray and how to do so in the right way are hence significant avenues for anthropological research. Such instructions can be found in social situations where prayers in themselves mould the listeners in their own formulations. A Charismatic preacher may in his prayer for healing and the Holy Spirit to touch the people listening both draw on past formulations and variations of prayer and simultaneously be moulding what a strong prayer could and indeed should look like. Prayers are in this sense formulaic even if they are directed by an ideology of spontaneity contrasted to overtly liturgical forms. As argued by Thomas J. Csordas, there exist genres of ritual language and herein genres of prayer (1994, 59). Furthermore, prayers, particularly in freer formulations, are opening themselves up for scrutiny in a community.

Take Jesus and his instructions on where and how to pray in his famous Sermon on the Mount. Here Jesus advises his disciples to pray not to impress fellow man, but to focus on their Father in Heaven (Matthew 6, 5–15). One should rather pray in one’s room than in public. Jesus then teaches the Lord’s Prayer as instruction on how to pray, a model prayer so to speak. In formulating such a model prayer a particular form of repetitively structured prayer can be set in motion. And such patterned practice of prayer exists across Christian traditions both where the saying of this specific prayer is seen as instrumental, and where it is seen as an open model to build upon. Hereby it becomes apparent that prayer works as a didactic tool and is in itself an internal scale of comparison and evaluation.

The theme of right ways to pray – and conversely wrong ways to pray – is concomitantly one that Jesus gives other examples of. In the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector we are presented with two markedly different ways to pray: one characterised by self-righteousness, the other by humility (Luke 17, 9–18). The Pharisee thanks God for not being like evil-doers and the tax collector standing alongside him in the temple. Rather, he prides himself on actually doing well. In contrast, the tax collector simply asks God to have mercy on him, acknowledging his inequity. Jesus ends by lifting up the tax collector as the example to follow with regards to prayer. Where such an example of a written edifice remains important, the emphasis on what the precise meaning may implicate in different Christian traditions reveals the social life not merely of prayers but also of scriptures (Bielo 2009). The important focus here – as expressed by Tomlinson (2014) – is on the performativity of articulation. Such a focus entails honing in not on single utterances but on ‘the ways that connections between rhetorical forms are meant to create connections between people and God’ Tomlinson (2014, 6). In our context prayers and the instructions on how to pray we find such forms of performed articulation. Tracing the local variations on how to pray, and what constitutes ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ themes to pray for, allows for an analytic of Christian life and hope in actualisation.

Taking up prayer as the prism through which to engage with various forms of Christianity can help us situate comparison and evaluation not merely as a product of scholarly thought, but rather as part of the social worlds we study (cf. Robbins, Schieffelin, and Vilaca 2014). Prayers as well as Christian practice and efficacy are measured and debated internally. Some persons may be regarded as more pious than others, as more accomplished in praying than others (Mayblin 2010). However, such profligacy in praying may not be visible to the world as such, all the while that prayers may not always be brought out in the open. Hence it is not merely a matter of pointing to the prayerful virtuosi’s accomplished prayers but to the local corollaries of evaluation and assessment – be it in terms of miracles (Marshall 2010), success (Bielo 2007) or rightful ethical conduct (Bialecki 2014). More widely, what is framed as efficacy or success can be understood in quite diverse ways – be it to bear with and through an actual situation or ordeal, or to actually change one’s circumstances. What is considered a legitimate object to pray for is concomitantly also indicative of what image there is of God and his ability to interfere in the human realm. Here a comparative focus on the ways in which Christians of various traditions conceive of their own agency and responsibility for the world comes into view.

Probing into the worlds of prayer

Where anthropologists and ethnographers of religion over the last decade have grown increasingly interested in the mundane and everyday life (Jenkins 1999; Schielke and Debevec 2012), one could also engage a study of prayer in exploring how it can be a means of dealing with unfolding social crises. The point is not to detract from the value of the everyday and the mundane but to probe what happens when such normality is suddenly sundered, and individuals and communities need to address novel situations, be they of impasse or possibility. Relevant questions would then be how and to what extent do prayers enable ordinary action amidst crisis? Do attitudes to prayer change over time? And do prayers change attitudes? Where recent work on Islam (Mahmood 2005; Hirschkind 2006) attends to the role of prayers in everyday life, one could envision critically opening up new perspectives for prayers as a way of acting upon the world in a time of crisis. This may reveal the often uncertain nature of the social world, where change seems inevitably to impinge on conceptions of self and community (Naumescu 2013, 86). Here, a significant avenue to explore is not so much when crisis has become the context in a permanent sense (Das 2007; Vigh 2008; Hastrup 2011), but rather when it is the immediate horizon upon which both self and other are, for a time, to be reconfigured.

As in many other situations where prayer is being put to use the efficacy of prayers is also being tested. In praying, the person and community are already attesting to an implicit theology: that prayer seems to be good for something. What it is good for is precisely what could be explored when honing in on prayerful practice. Several relevant themes could be opened such as: what are local ideas of efficacy? What are believed to be the answers to prayers? And what is it believed to be unreasonable to pray for? Can the will of God be changed in and through prayer? In examining these questions, one could open up a broader landscape engaging ideas from the history of Christian theology but also philosophers such as Austin (1962), Cavell (2006), Marion (2008) and Agamben (2011) who, in various ways, have worked with ideas of repetition and hope, speech acts and performativity, and the workings of language in relation to prayer. Here openings within the anthropological literature are to be found and a more substantial conversation could be initiated (cf. Tambiah 1968; Miyazaki 2004; Bialecki 2014). A significant avenue would hence be to understand how theologies work in practice (Orsi 1985; Rubow 2000; Scott 2005; Robbins 2006) but also how ideas of efficacy work back upon ideas of theology.

Another avenue to address in a study of prayer in various Christian traditions is how gender and gendered practice informs religious life. Accordingly it is often observed that women are more active in praying than men (Christian 1972; Gudeman 1976; Sallnow 1981; Scheper-Hughes 1992; Orsi 1996; Eriksen 2014). Where this observation may hold true, it is still discernible that in terms of office males still hold quite the dominant position around the globe. How do gendered practices stabilise or challenge existing roles? Do the roles become more diversified during times of distress, or are they solidified? And do the prayers differ in content in relation to gender? In asking these questions, one could invite explorations of the different strategies applied by Christians in finding their footing, and diverse ways of acting upon both self and the social world.

Contributions to an anthropological engagement with prayer

Where several of the themes already advanced in this introduction will read across the papers in this special issue, each paper presents ethnographic engagements with particular Christian traditions where prayer is being practised. The sample of papers is deliberately broad in scope in order to open up for different forms of Christian engagement with prayer.

In Joe Webster’s contribution we see significantly how prayer is a way to work on distance and proximity. In Webster’s apt formulation prayer can fruitfully be explored as a map of relatedness. Prayer is work and it is a way to move the hands of God to do things on earth. Webster presents us with the case of the Scottish Protestants of Gamrie, a fishing village on the coast. Centrally, Webster uses Mauss to redirect the focus away from individual prayer as the principle behind collective prayer (cf. Mauss 2003, 36). Rather, Webster explores how the primacy of collective prayer and the participation herein marked his interlocutors as committed Christians. A sense of urgency and crisis runs through the prayerful agency on the part of Webster’s interlocutors. They implore God to see to their unsaved family and kin, to see to their village, and to some extent to lead the way of the nation. However, the prayers are carried by different affective qualities ranging from gratitude over anguish to resentment and resignation depending on the proximity of the topic being dealt with. The prayerful landscape of the committed Christians of Gamrie – as Webster powerfully argues – is in this sense marked by territories of emotional proximity and distance.

In the Zambian Copperbelt, Naomi Haynes presents us with the case of prayer at Higher Calling, a Pentecostal fellowship. Central for Copperbelt Pentecostals is their ability to learn and form their life in and through prayer. Herein Haynes explores the components of such a process of learning. Learning to pray forms the Pentecostal person and notions of personhood. And particularly so in what she designates as ‘collective-personal prayer’. People pray out aloud alongside one another. Where this normally is a customary practice, Haynes presents us with a case in which a woman causes uneasiness to her fellow congregants by her ways of praying. The concern to a large extent revolves around whether she copies prayers from others. However, as Haynes cogently argues, the troubling aspect here is not merely an issue of sincerity, whether the woman actually means her prayers. Rather, the actual cause of unease is that the prayers are seen to reflect a broader malaise in the congregation as such. Prayers here serve as an internal scale of comparison in a community, not merely of the individual, but of the spiritual standing of the entire collective, too. As Haynes argues, not merely praying, but praying in a particular way forms what it is to be a Pentecostal on the Copperbelt.

In Ghana among the committed Pentecostals Bruno Reinhardt has worked with, one finds a central internal attention directed towards spiritual maturation. In his contribution Reinhardt explores how everyday routines of prayer ground both Christian habits and a sense of anticipation. This anticipation is formed around a readiness ‘to pray until Jesus returns’ – as a local evangelist puts it to Reinhardt. And prayer permeates many parts of Ghanaian society in a great variety of ways ranging from speaking in tongues to prayer in people’s own words. Here Reinhardt uses Mauss’s conception of prayers as implying ‘an effort, an expenditure of physical and moral energy’ (Mauss 2003, 54), which attests to the amount of work and cultivation that goes into praying. Reinhardt here draws on discussions inspired by the work of Saba Mahmood and Talal Asad, but shows how such work on the self for Pentecostals is understood to be a matter of spiritual maturation, which takes the person from conversion to commitment and from prayer to a state of prayerfulness. In the committed work on the self the Ghanaian Pentecostals seek to establish new dispositions where prayer and praying turn into an active form of waiting.

Where the first cases of Protestant and Pentecostal variants of prayer have highlighted the energy and time used in prayer in what often is conceived as more individualistic forms of Christianity, Simion Pop highlights how ethics are formed in a complex relation between individual experience, and the sociality and efficacy of prayers in Romanian Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Pop presents us with a case of Elena, an ardent Christian in her 60s, who experiences that her prayers for a relative are rejected by her saint, Father Arsenie. The relation to the saint is moulding the character of the individual as it is formed in an authoritative tradition, where prayers are conceived to direct the individual outside of itself. For the devout the relationship with the saints thereby also forms what Pop terms an ‘intense pedagogical relationship’. Pop thus forms a conversation across domains of ethics, everyday life, and notions of a shared tradition opening up for how central forms of action are formed in the ethical demands of social situations. In the end Elena comes to the conclusion that her prayer was tempting the saint, which was why he had to reject her. Elena’s ‘wrong’ prayer in this sense still fuels ‘right’ conduct by being mediated by the saint’s guidance.

In Andreas Bandak’s contribution we see how the use of the rosary is a central object in the devotion among many Greek Catholics in Syria. Bandak focuses on the followers of Our Lady of Soufanieh at her shrine in Damascus, Syria, and how repeated prayers are a central aspect of the rosary said there. The materiality of the prayer is also literally manifest, something that is in the hands of the devout followers. Prayers are seen as a response to a grace already received from the Virgin Mary, and hence prayer amounts to a re-petition. The words of the prayer are repeated and said collectively at the shrine, more than being the result of overt forms of discipline is the implications of an affective relationship. Prayers are seen as a way to move the Virgin Mary as she is already benevolent towards her devout followers. That this is so in the perception of her followers is attested to in that their prayers are frequently reported to elicit miraculous responses in the form of holy oil being exuded from the icon of Our Lady of Soufanieh.

Conclusion

We opened this introduction with the vehement stance of the Greek Orthodox woman in Lebanon and her way of disregarding the value of prayers. However, the critique of prayers and their efficacy is not merely a perspective from outside, but rather is one that is to be found accompanying prayerful practice. I never got a chance to talk with the employee of the Lebanese woman, and hence could not get her perspective on prayer. However, one can assert that the employee at least had the hope of accomplishing something that to her did not seem easy or possible without praying. In praying, this employee engaged the Virgin Mary that she may protect the business, and probably much more. The critique of the employee for not taking responsibility may have been felt as appropriate by her employer. However, that the employee engaged with prayer does not seem to be best read as a matter of disinterest, but rather it could be read as a matter of care and concern. A woman like the employee could feasibly also hold that prayer is the most central way to deal with and act in the world. Hereby we are allowed to go against the idea of prayer – as well as hope (cf. Crapanzano 2003; Miyazaki 2004; Zigon 2009) – as being merely a passive form of surrender.

Hereby, we again touch on the central theme of this introduction, namely that Christian prayer – arguably as well as any form of prayer – resides in the play between action and inaction. Prayers reveal different idioms of agency and passivity, of responsibility and surrender, of empowerment and domination as they are performed in a variegated landscape, where they allow quite different forms of interaction to take place. In this special issue we have been presented with a great variety of cases ranging from Charismatic Christians in Ghana and Zambia, Protestant Christians in Scotland, to Orthodox Christians in Rumania and Greek Catholics in Syria. In all these cases we find that prayers are a form of action in and upon the world. Sometimes prayer thus conceived amounts to a form of action that seems to help people better to endure their situation, and at other times it seems a form of action that allows them to change their circumstances. Accordingly prayer is not an easy and stable object to control, either by the church leaders and authorities, or by any given local formulation from below.

Taking prayer as an object of anthropological engagement is not to take a side on its positive or negative influence over people’s lives. Quite often prayer may be both at the same time. Orsi is therefore correct to emphasise the stakes that prayer effects in a social world, prayers that are neither innocent nor without implications (1996, 186):

Prayer is not an innocent social or psychological activity. It is always situated in specific and discrepant environments of social power, and it derives its meanings, implications, and consequences in relation to these configurations. Indeed, praying is one of the most implicating social historical practices because it is in and through prayer that the self comes into intimate and extended contact with the contradictions and constraints of the social world.

Attending to prayers and how they are performed and seen to intervene in a social world is – we contend – a significant way to engage with matters close to people. As argued in this introduction, prayers are a way to map affect and affective relationships people hold in what they are oriented towards and care about. Here a social perspective on prayer taking its cue from Mauss is particularly relevant as it invites us to go beyond the individual and see how prayers always point to a broader landscape. Beyond such an invitation, however, it seems pertinent to combine Mauss’s own insights on techniques, gifts, magic and reciprocity with a focus on prayer.

Classic discussions on the anthropology of change and time in Christianity can in this sense also be read using prayers as a lens. One central concern, then, in Christian engagement with prayer is how change can be brought about. As we have already seen such kinds of change may vary. Change may be in relation to concern with atonement for an individual sense of guilt or iniquity. Change may also be in relation to the lives of unsaved souls among one’s family or friends. And change may be for health and wellbeing when these are needed. Prayer can in this sense lift both mundane and big issues. Attending to the work that prayers are seen to accomplish in a social world helps us to situate the comparative scope of anthropological studies of Christianity. However, the focus on Christian ways of grappling with prayer as has been taken up in this special issue is not meant to imply that prayer is unique to Christianity. Rather, Christian engagement with prayer as a means to change one’s circumstances or to engage in affective relationships with Jesus, the Virgin Mary and the saints bespeaks the broader analytical affordances of exploring prayerful practice, namely that the practice of prayer can be explored as a fertile way to cross over divides between people more or less zealous in their religious endeavours. This is so as prayer for the people we engage with works as a didactic tool and as an internal scale of comparison and evaluation. Prayers and the practice of praying may never be innocent, but surely it is a practice that evokes powerful reactions.

Acknowledgements

This special issue originated from a panel at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago, 2014. Thanks are due to all the panellists as well as our discussant Sonja Luehrmann for their engaged response and critique of the original set of papers. The author would like to express his thanks to James Bielo, Mikkel Bille, Simon Coleman, Martin Demant Frederiksen, Heiko Henkel, Regnar Albæk Kristensen, Ashley Lebner and Sonja Luehrmann for readings and conversations on the topic of prayer. Michael Stausberg and Steven Engler have both done an expert job of facilitating the publication of this special issue, for which we all are very grateful.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Andreas Bandak is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He is co-editor of Politics of Worship in the Contemporary Middle East (with Mikkel Bille, 2013) and has published articles in a number of journals including Current Anthropology, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Ethnos and Religion and Society. His research focuses on Christian minorities in Syria.

Additional information

Funding

The author wants to express his gratitude to the Danish Research Council for Independent Research in the Humanities | Culture and Communication for its generous funding of his research on prayer.