Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Christian prayer, as an activity which is both public and private, ritualized and spontaneous, has been of great interest to sociologists since the inception of the discipline in the nineteenth century. Recently, the study of Christian prayer within sociology has moved from macro-level functionalist-inflected accounts of the uses of prayer in organizing religious communities and defining subjectivity, to more micro-level phenomenological approaches which render prayer as a relational act connecting an individual with God, through psychological techniques which are both improvised and disciplined, inspired by the work of TR Luhrmann from 2004 through 2012. We claim that in this shift from macro to micro, what is missing is a meso-level perspective on prayer, as a way that people get things done. We argue that prayer can be instrumental at the meso-level, as well as organizational at the macro-level and numinous at the micro-level. Our data consists of interviews with fifty-seven people who identify as Christian humanitarians from the global north who work in emergency relief and poverty alleviation. Although we did not specifically ask about prayer, it emerges as a practical tool for accomplishing tasks. Specifically, our participants used prayer as a means of making decisions from a range of options, and of building and sustained an inclusive organizational identity as a faith-informed group. Our research with a theologically diverse group complements the work of Yannick Fer and Emir Mahieddin on prayer in Pentecostal communities and responds to Nathaniel Barrett’s 2017 call for more work on “ordinary religious experience.”