Prayer Changes Things: A Comparative Ethnography of Sunni and Evangelical High Schools

• In Event: 165 - Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Religion and Adolescents

Abstract

This paper, drawing on fieldwork in two Sunni Muslim and two Evangelical Christian high schools, argues that there are three kinds of prayer. The first is ultimately individualistic and concerned about a kind of self-cultivation towards a certain vision of the good. The second is economically motivated and seeks certain distinct goods through the mechanism of prayer. The third is an explicitly communal experience whose goal is the feeling of collective effervescence over and above the other two goals of prayer. Each of these three transformation—the change of a certain material or psychological need, the change of a self, and the change of a collective emotion—can be produced by prayer, often in the same action. Additionally, actors can set out to achieve these goals through prayer and find their goals unrealized, forcing them to find some explanation for the lack of effectiveness. Muslims and Evangelicals participate in all three of these categories of prayer, although often in quite different ways. Community members had to know implicitly how to pray, yet they also had to be able to figure out—both consciously and unconsciously—how prayer works best in a given context and towards a given end. In each case, prayer works because it is done under the right conditions, directed towards the right person, and meets with God’s plan.

Author

• Jeffrey Guhin, University of Virginia