Full Description
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.
Contents
Contents: Introduction: You never know. Prayer as enchantment, Giuseppe Giordan; Prayer as practice: an interpretative proposal, Carlo Genova; For youth, prayer is relationship, Michael C. Mason; Pentecostal prayer as personal communication and invisible institutional work, Yannick Fer; Transcendence and immanence in public and private prayer, Martin Stringer; Prayer as a tool in Swedish Pentecostalism, Emir Mahieddin; Contrasting regimes of Sufi prayer and emotion work in the Indonesian Islamic revival, Julia Day Howell; A socio-anthropological analysis of forms of prayer among the Amish, Andrea Borella; Filipino Catholic students and prayer as conversation with God, Jayeel Serrano Cornelio; The embodiment of prayer in charismatic Christianity, Michael Wilkinson and Peter Althouse; Prayer requests in an English cathedral, and a new analytic framework for intercessory prayer, Tania ap SiÃ'n; An analysis of hospital chapel prayer requests, Peter Collins; Conclusion: Prayer as changing the subject, Linda Woodhead; Index.
