ABSTRACT
There are many forms of prayer in many religious traditions. The Oxford Book of Prayer includes prayers from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sources as well as from Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Baha’i, and Zoroastrianism. This collection also includes indigenous African, Native American, and other sources (Appleton 1988). Because prayer forms a fundamental feature of many religions, philosophy of religion needs to take prayer seriously. This chapter will consider rst whether religious prayer should best be understood as addressed to a sacred, divine, or supernatural reality. It will then focus on the nature and value of petitionary prayer. The term ‘prayer’ is derived from the Latin precari (‘to ask earnestly’), and considerable philosophical work has gone into articulating and challenging the idea that an all-good God would respond to human petitions. Not all prayer is petitionary (there are prayers of adoration and confession, for example), but the practice of beseeching God to respond to human requests has generated the deepest debates. A further section addresses prayers of praise. Why has theistic tradition emphasized the value, and even the religious duty, of praising God? Praising a ruler might make sense in the world of ancient Mesopotamia, but today the practice may well seem to reveal a crude anthropomorphism. At the end of this chapter I raise eight questions to provoke further philosophical re ection.
