The Social Life of Prayer

Anthropological Engagements with Christian Practice
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-0-367-71235-8
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 122 Seiten, Format (B × H): 174 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 390 g

This book brings the theme of prayer into anthropological discussion. Across diverse significant ethnographic case studies, five anthropologists attend to prayers and how they are performed and seen to intervene in the social world.

The studies include Pentecostals in Zambia, Charismatic Christians in Ghana, Protestants in Scotland, Eastern Orthodox Christians in Romania, and Catholics in Syria. Across these ethnographic cases, the book argues that focusing on the social life of prayer offers a significant way to engage with matters close to people. Prayers are a way to map affect and the affective relationships people hold in what they are oriented towards and care about. Taking its cue from Marcel Mauss, the book invites us to go beyond the individual and see how prayers always point to a broader social landscape of obligation and affective investment. Focusing on the social life of prayers, the book posits, accordingly entices a particular form of situated comparison of diverse Christian traditions that pushes the scholarly conversation on Christianity to consider central questions of agency, responsibility and subjectivity. Taking up prayer as the object of study, this book offers novel anthropological perspectives on Christian life and practice.

The chapters in this book were originally published a special issue of Religion.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bandak, Andreas

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Gebet & liturgisches Material

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: The Social Life of Prayers: Affect, Obligation and the Formation of Religious Character

Andreas Bandak

1. Praying for salvation: a map of relatedness

Joseph Webster

2. Learning to pray the Pentecostal way: language and personhood on the Zambian Copperbelt

Naomi Haynes

3. Praying until Jesus returns: commitment and prayerfulness among charismatic Christians in Ghana

Bruno Reinhardt

4. ‘I’ve tempted the saint with my prayer!’ Prayer, charisma and ethics in Romanian eastern orthodox Christianity

Simion Pop

5. Repeated prayers: saying the rosary in contemporary Syria

Andreas Bandak

Über Autor(innen)

Andreas Bandak is associate professor at the Department for Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research interests include Orthodox and Catholic Christianity in the Levant and Denmark. Currently, he is co-PI of the collective research project The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Global Modernities.