From a netfriend:

We have a weekly intercessory service where these issues (for me at least) regularly surface. I attempt to address them in the short introductions we bring to the service, and we then move on to updating information about each of the names on our list, then ‘naming’ them in a time of prayer.

I’m still not absolutely sure what we’re doing – but, phenomenologically, ‘something’ does happen. What I’ve come down to is something like this:

– We are not telling God something God already knows. We are ‘re-membering’ each person, with God as part of the loop of memory. Memory is refreshed (even though God’s may not fade) and the value of each person remembered is affirmed – again, with God in the loop, but probably mostly by a community of compassion.

– I am constantly amazed at how grateful people are – even people who have no connection (religio?) to our community, when we offer to ‘re-member’ them – and how they say they derive comfort and peace from simply being remembered – and they are aware that God is included in that remembering conversation. It’s a worthy gift, and, I think, a real aid to healing. We may not be asking for God’s intervention in some gross or mechanistic way, nor are we _persuading_ God to act in a way God would not have acted without our prayer, but I think there is an experience of God that is mediated through the community of faith, and is only available through the community of faith (the work of the Holy Spirit?) and it is through that (real!) experience that God ‘acts in a way God would not have acted without our prayer.’

– The specificity of our prayer – using a name, trying to understand a situation – is the point and the power of our meeting. It’s a kind of incarnation – applying and claiming the general love and compassion of God to a specific person – much like baptism claims God’s general grace for a specific person. My problems are not with prayer for/remembering God’s love for individual persons, but with those general statements – like praying peace in all our days – or for rain.

My contribution

I’ve been thinking about some of the discussions last week on the topic of prayer: hope y’all don’t mind 2c worth from a Baptist. Here’s my precis of an article with which I have been arguing recently (‘Can Intercessory Prayer Work? by Dr. Michael R. Austin, Expository Times, August 1978, pp. 335-338): ~~~ Prayer is difficult. The masters of prayer have never denied that… Intercessory prayer, in its most unsophisticated form, requires me to pray for, say, Mrs Elsie Smith who has cancer and is in the Royal Infirmary in Ward 8, third bed down on the right. Sincere people pray like this and it would be impertinent to criticize them. I cannot pray like this because my theologically sophisticated reason tells me God does not need to be told [all that]… Yet most of us who are theologically sophisticated still pray for Mrs Smith _as though_ God did not know and _as though_ God needed to be told in order that God might take some action… If God knows everything from all eternity why intercede at all? Three responses: 1. [Most of us think] prayer persuades God to act in a way God would not have acted if we had not prayed. The best example in the Bible is in Genesis 18 where Abraham manages to persuade Yahweh to save Sodom for the sake of ten righteous men. But we must see this dialogue within the context of the sensitive and beautiful anthropomorphisms of the Yahwist [It is not] an actual historical encounter. (I do not believe Yahweh actually walked in a garden in the cool of the day, nor that Yahweh regretted making humans etc.). Now we can agree with this in our study: but what happens when we visit the hospital? My doubts about this form of praying rest not on a lack of faith in God, but on a faith in God conceived of as merciful and loving and omnipotent. 2. Intercessory prayer is also to bear the burdens of others: we are grateful every time that happens for us. But although prayer is a participation in God’s creative work, is such an experience no more than ‘a trouble shared is a troubled halved’? 3. Does intercessory prayer release healing forces? Such a view may reduce prayer to a mechanistic view of the working of divine grace… These may be caricatures of the prayers of the saints. The importance of intercessory prayer is always assumed, but rarely justified. J. H. Newman’s argument that prayer is impossible without faith, and that faith is deepened by prayer, is a circular justification which is hardly helpful. ‘You believe – then pray’ is no answer to my problem. Considerations such as these lead me to the conclusion that intercessory prayer is meaningless both on the ground of rationality, and also on the ground of faith in God as merciful and omniscient. ‘Almighty and everlasting God, who dost govern all things in heaven and on earth; mercifully hear the supplications of thy people, and grant us thy peace all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord’. This collect (1662 Book of Common Prayer, Epiphany II) raises the question: if God is already merciful why are we required to ask God to be so? [And when we pray for those who are hungry or at war, and they remain like that] either God does not wish to grant us these blessings, or God cannot, because it is a fact that God has not. We are apparently, in prayers like this, giving God an impossible task which God cannot fulfil. As theologians we say that we should not take anthropomorphisms literally, yet we pray as though we do… To ask God to ‘grant peace all the days of our life’ is to ask the impossible. If an anthropomorthic God does not exist except in language we must not be surprised if there is no answer to our prayers… Of course, language is the product of time and space, and thus all language about God must be inadequate… So how do I pray? I start with the conviction that all life is sustained by God who uniquely, but not solely, is revealed in Jesus Christ. Conviction of that truth _is_ prayer. But as soon as prayer is articulated and particular I run into problems. But what of the traditional disciplines of prayer associated with words (the ‘office’)? And when someone says ‘Please pray for me’ can I pray with integrity – in a way they expect me to pray for them? I do not know. If all of life is created and sustained by God, then, as de Caussade reminds us, every passing moment is a temporary revelation of God. And every passing moment is also a revelation of human sinfulness. But there is no need to particularlize. To ‘know’ is to pray. And how to avoid the dangers of specificity? For me one answer lies in painting, scultpure, and music. The arts are capable of expressions of the heart and mind which are beyond words… ~~~ End of precis. I hope I have done justice to this article. If you have access to a theological library you could read it in full. Now I have about three major problems with Austin’s thesis. But before I ‘articulate’ (!) them, I wonder if some of you out there might like to react to all this? Rowland Croucher