For youth, prayer is relationship

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.

This chapter reports on a recent empirical investigation of prayer among a large group of young people from both Western and Asian societies, which explored the forms of prayer they used, the content or themes of their prayers, the relationship between prayer and civic engagement, and the influences which contributed to shaping most of them as people who prayed frequently. The chapter describes the method of the study and the characteristics of the sample obtained and then briefs the methods used in the analysis. Those who reported praying weekly or more often were asked a set of questions about the form and content of their prayers. Both questions were multiple-response: people could choose more than one answer. Variations in form and content were explored by analysing responses by gender, age-group, and country of residence and frequency of prayer. The chapter explores the bivariate relationships between frequency of prayer and a wide range of other variables by showing some strong associations.

© Giuseppe Giordan and Linda Woodhead, 2015. All rights reserved.