Petitionary Prayer Research Articles

Prayer and Mental Well-Being in the United States: An Overview of Original and Comprehensive Prayer Data.

The Baylor Religion Survey (Wave 6; 2021) contains the most comprehensive set of prayer questions of any national survey of the USA; it also contains multiple indicators of mental health and well-being, specifically measures of happiness, depression, anxiety, sense of control, mattering, and dignity. This paper provides a complete overview of how various dimensions of prayer correlate with these different aspects of well-being. While many of these relationships will require more intensive investigation, our synopsis provides confirmation of past expectations using new data. Overall, we find that prayer is related to mental well-being in both positive and negative ways. Specifically, we find that praying with others and positive emotions felt during prayer are correlated with greater overall mental health and more positive self-concepts. However, we also find that petitionary prayer topics, belief that God is impersonal, and negative emotions felt during prayer coincide with higher levels of depression, anxiety, and a lack of control. Generally, these conclusions hold after controlling for basic demographics, religious tradition, and church attendance, which confirms that mental well-being is related to the practice of prayer in both beneficial and detrimental ways.

The evidential challenge for petitionary prayer

Abstract In the past decade, philosophers have devoted a great deal of attention to the practice of petitionary prayer. Philosophical inquiries have posed a priori problems – issues that arise from an analytical investigation of the concept of God, the concept of petitionary prayer, and the relationship between the two. Taking a different direction, this article shifts the focus from possibility to actuality. Accordingly, this article does not deal with the question ‘Can God answer petitionary prayers?’ but rather with the question ‘Does God answer petitionary prayers?’ and, mainly, its implications. More accurately, I will present the tension between the religious belief that petitionary prayers can be effective and the fact that this does not seem to be so in reality, a claim that has been the conclusion of several empirical studies. Then I will present and examine several solutions to this tension. Although I will try to promote my preferred solution, my main aim is to clarify the problem and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the solutions offered to solve the problem under discussion.

Aquinas on Prayer in the Eternal Trinity

AbstractAccording to Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr, the divine Persons eternally pray to each other. According to Thomas Aquinas, they do not. Thomas allows for ways in which the divine Persons worship, glorify, contemplate, and give thanks to each other. Yet he defines prayer as petition, and he teaches that the divine Persons cannot petition each other—which means that They cannot pray to each other. For Thomas, however, Christ's prayer reveals His eternal sonship, and certain terms in which Thomas casts divine sonship recall those in which he casts prayer. Thomas, therefore, can open up certain avenues towards the conclusion that the petitionary prayer, which is limited to creatures, resembles and is rooted in the Son's eternal sonship.

İbn Sînâ’nın Tanrısı: Değişmez ama Karşılık Verir

The term “God of the philosophers” refers to the concept of God as understood and discussed in philosophical discourse. It is a philosophical concept of God that is often considered distinct from the concept of God found in religious traditions. Throughout history, various philosophers and theologians have used the term to refer to God whose existence and attributes have been the subject of philosophical reasoning and reflection. In this study, I explore Ibn Sīnā’s way of reconciling two concepts of God. I argue that Ibn Sînâ, a philosopher with an Aristotelian and Neoplatonic heritage, sees no contradiction between the God of the philosophers and the God of the scriptures. Ibn Sina’s way is interesting because it is an attempt to bridge the gap between two concepts of God without compromising the classical theistic understanding of divine attributes. First, I will briefly present the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic contexts of Ibn Sīnā’s philosophy to show his way of reconciliation. Second, I will give an account of Ibn Sīnā’s concept of God as it is revealed in his understanding of the divine attribute of immutability. Finally, I will examine his views in which he most explicitly offers the concept of a God who is responsive, who is present, and who is engaged with human beings. His ideas about God’s agency, petitionary prayer, and divine providence provide ample evidence that the God of Ibn Sīnā is the God of the religious traditions known to and worshipped by human beings.

Yesterday's Daily Bread: Petitionary Prayer for Past Events

AbstractThe paper's subject is whether one is justified to pray for an event that has already happened from the point of view of the individual who is praying. About this, there are several possibilities, all of which I will consider: a) the past event is not known to the one who prays, b) it is known by them to have happened in a way which is not the desired one by the one praying and c), it is known to have happened according to their wishes. It also deals with two derived problems: if knowledge and ignorance are essential to our possibility of petitioning for something in the past, should we remain willfully ignorant about the past in order to pray to God so that it happened as we desire? Also, once we come to know that the past event did not go about as we desire, is it reasonable to pray to God so that our knowledge about the past is incorrect?

The Pain and PRAYER Scale (PPRAYERS): development and validation of a scale to measure pain-related prayer.

Prayer is a devotional practice used across religious traditions to commune with the sacred and has been used as a coping strategy for pain. Previous research on prayer as a pain coping strategy has had mixed results, with prayer associated with both greater and lesser pain depending on prayer type. To date, there has been only 1 measure of pain-related prayer, the prayer subscale of the Coping Strategies Questionnaire-Revised, which measures solely passive prayer, neglecting other types of prayer (eg, active and neutral). To better understand the relationship between pain and prayer, a comprehensive measure of prayer for pain is needed. The aim of this study was to develop and validate the Pain-related PRAYER Scale (PPRAYERS), a questionnaire exploring active, passive, and neutral petitionary prayers to God or a higher power in response to pain. Adults with chronic pain (n = 411) completed demographic, health, and pain-related questionnaires, including PPRAYERS. Results of an exploratory factor analysis yielded a 3-factor structure consistent with active, passive, and neutral subscales. A confirmatory factor analysis resulted in adequate fit after the removal of 5 items. PPRAYERS showed good internal consistency and convergent and discriminant validity. These results provide preliminary validation for PPRAYERS, a novel measure for pain-related prayer.

Necessary Existence, Immutability, and God's Knowledge of Particulars: A Reply to Amirhossein Zadyousefi

Necessary Existence, Immutability, and God's Knowledge of Particulars:A Reply to Amirhossein Zadyousefi Ebrahim Azadegan (bio) From the Qur'an, Surah Maryam: (21) So she conceived him, and went in seclusion with him to a remote place. (22) And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree: she cried (in her anguish): "Ah! would that I had died before this! Would that I had been a thing forgotten and out of sight!" (23) But (a voice) cried to her from beneath the (palm tree): "Grieve not! for thy Lord hath provided a rivulet beneath thee;" (24) "And shake towards thyself the trunk of the palm tree: it will let fall fresh ripe dates upon thee." (25) "So eat and drink and cool (thine) eye. And if thou dost see any man say 'I have vowed a fast to (Allah) Most Gracious, and this day will I enter into no talk with any human being.'" This Surah depicts a human being in unbearable pain. What makes the pain tolerable is the sympathy that God shows for Mary. Hearing her inner voice, understanding her suffering and her grief, God is moved to provide her with practical and substantive support to help her bear her agony. For me this story portrays a God who is active in the world, hears the supplications of humanity, and has empathy with the needy, the oppressed, and those who are suffering. Yet I am concerned that our theological traditions in the Islamic world (as also in Christendom) have developed through the centuries such that God is now seen, by overwhelming theological consensus, as an immutable being, a being outside time who has determined our providence from the standpoint of eternity, who has foreknowledge of every free action of his creations and has designed all according to His plan for past and future events; who knows in advance even the timings and contents of our petitionary prayers and has decided already whether to answer them. Aloof [End Page 188] from the mundane world, He has predetermined when and where he will act or intervene in our world; and since He is perfect, the world He has created is the most perfect that could have been actualized. Everything that happened in the world is according to God's predetermined plan, and even our supplications are in His plan and so every event has a role and special place in the jigsaw puzzle of the best-designed world. God, in this picture, is transcendent from our dirty and intractable material world. But when we read the text of the Qur'an free from such philosophical and theological doctrine, we are confronted with a God who is close to us, who has on occasion changed His verdicts (Q 2:106), who asks us to aid Him in order that He may aid us as well (Q 47:7), and who clearly and firmly introduces Himself as being close to us: "When My servants ask thee concerning Me, I am indeed close (to them); I listen to the prayer of every suppliant when he calls on Me" (Q 2:186). Nevertheless, theology matters. Theology is not merely a system of beliefs about a transcendental world or our personal relationship with the sacred. As Carol Christ explains, theology matters since our ideas about divinity play an essential role in the way we make sense of our religious experiences, our personal experiences, and even our experience of the world.1 The ethical implications of our theological views can and must be taken into consideration, because our understanding of divinity shapes our understanding of what is right, just, and wrong in the world. Theology matters because religious symbols not only articulate meaning, but also provide the grounds for our ethical decision-making, which in turn shapes our social-political order. Our understanding of the role of the state, the relation between I and Thou, family law, the constitutions of our societies—all of these depend to some extent on our theological backgrounds and views. Indeed, it is upon God that we would model our lives. As John Sanders writes: "The way God treats us is the way we should...

Petitionary Prayer for Healing and South African Pentecostals

Abstract Most Pentecostals accept and proclaim that God answers petitionary prayers of believers for prayer, whether for themselves or someone else, based on the clear evidence found in biblical texts. Their worship services regularly contain testimonies of believers or about believers whose prayers were miraculously answered. However, to what extent is it true that their prayers are answered, and how probable it is that it can be proven as the outcome of prayer if their desire is granted? Is their belief in answered petitionary prayer justified? Or should they rather stay agnostic about answered prayers? The article uses grammatical-historical exegesis to consider biblical evidence and published empirical research reports related to healing in response to prayer before Pentecostal hermeneutics is used to reconsider and formulate a classical Pentecostal viewpoint.

Experiential Avoidance Mediates the Relationship between Prayer Type and Mental Health before and through the COVID-19 Pandemic

The practice of prayer has been shown to predict various mental health outcomes, with different types of prayer accounting for different outcomes. Considering the numerous stressors facing seminary students, which have only intensified throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, prayer may be a common coping strategy for students who study theology, spiritual growth, and leadership. The present study investigates the role that different types of prayer may have in reducing anxiety, depression, and work burnout among seminary students. Experiential avoidance is proposed as a mediator such that specific types of prayer contribute to greater spiritual and characterological formation through staying engaged in the midst of struggle. Longitudinal data was collected from 564 graduate seminary students from 17 institutions accredited by the Association of Theological Schools. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that experiential avoidance would mediate the relationship between colloquial, liturgical, meditative, and petitionary prayer types and the negative mental health outcomes of anxiety, depression, and work burnout. Results confirmed significant negative relationships between colloquial, liturgical, and meditative prayer types and all three mental health indicators, fully mediated by experiential avoidance. Petitionary prayer was not significantly related to lower levels of mental health. These results indicate that engaging in certain prayer practices may be a protective factor by facilitating experiential engagement.

Preliminary Validation of the Pain-related Prayer Scale (PPRAYERS): An Exploratory Factor Analysis

Previous research on prayer as a pain coping strategy is mixed, with some studies associating prayer practices with greater pain and others with less. To date there is only one measure of pain-related prayer, the prayer subscale of the Coping Strategies Questionnaire-Revised (CSQ-R), which solely measures passive prayer, thus neglecting other types of petitionary prayer (i.e., active and neutral prayer). Therefore, to better understand the relationship between pain and prayer there is a need for a more comprehensive measure of petitionary prayer for pain. The aim of this study is to conduct a preliminary validation of the newly developed Pain-related Prayer Scale (PPRAYERS), a 22-item self-report questionnaire that asks participants to rate the frequency of their use of various petitionary prayer statements to God or a Higher Power in response to pain. Statements included active, passive, and neutral petitionary prayer statements. Two hundred and five adults with chronic pain completed a series of demographic, health, and pain-related questionnaires including the PPRAYERS. A maximum likelihood factor analysis with an oblimin rotation was used to examine the underlying factor structure of PPRAYERS. The scree plot and factor eigenvalues (>1) were evaluated. Factor loadings (>0.30) and cross-loadings were used to evaluate individual items. Congruent with theory, analysis yielded three factors, neutral, passive, and active prayer, that explained 40%, 15%, and 10% of the total variance, respectively. All but four items demonstrated primary loadings on one factor with primary loadings >0.5 and a difference between primary and secondary loadings >0.2. These results provide preliminary validation for PPRAYERS that measures active-, passive-, and neutral-style petitionary prayer. Additional research by the authors is ongoing to confirm the factor structure of the measure and provide evidence for convergent and discriminant validity by examining the associations between PPRAYERS and existing relevant measures. Grant support from 2021 Episcopal Church United Thank Offering Grant.

Invoke Your Lord in Humility and in Secret (Q 7:55): Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī on the Efficacy of Petitionary Prayer

In this article, I explore the response of the Ashʿarī theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) to what can be called “the problem of the efficacy of petitionary prayers” (PEPP), namely the effectiveness of making supplications to God that involve a request for something. The key text I examine is al-Rāzī’s highly dense philosophical work al-Maṭālib al-ʿāliya min al-ʿilm al-ilāhī, in which he outlines his core objections to the efficacy of petitionary prayer and then addresses them directly. In section 1, I include a short historiography of specific English books on the topic of supplications (duʿāʾ) and consider the relevance of al-Rāzī’s response to the issue of their efficacy. In section 2, I outline the preliminaries necessary and relevant for understanding the discussion that follows. In section 3, I survey al-Rāzī’s view on personal prayers. In section 4, I exam­ine in detail al-Rāzī’s formulations of the arguments (from the Maṭālib) that constitute PEPP, with parallel discussions in his huge exegetical work Mafātīḥ al-ghayb. In section 5, I lay out al-Rāzī’s responses to PEPP from the Mafātīḥ in more depth, and draw on theological views from his other works to help support his arguments in the Maṭālib. In the conclu­sion, I evaluate al-Rāzī’s responses and the wider implications they have on a Muslim’s relation to and understanding of God.

Introduction to Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind

In the book Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind, McCauley and Graham present a novel contribution to the Cognitive Science of Religion. The authors propose a naturalistic, pluralistic, and interdisciplinary approach to analyze the continuities between normal cognition, religious cognition, and abnormal cognition. McCauley and Graham use the idea of maturationally natural systems to understand different religious “abnormal” experiences: hearing voices from God or other spiritual beings, mood disorders caused by a failure in petitionary prayer, religious scrupulosity and its resemblance with Obsessive-Compulsive symptoms, and the “mindblind atheism” of Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Despite some minor weaknesses, e.g., an excessive use of maturationally natural systems to explain religious phenomena, the book is an important contribution to the Cognitive Science of Religion.

Petitionary Prayer—Caught in the Chaos of Strange Attractors: A Study of Divine Action in the Writings of John Polkinghorne

ABSTRACT In the field of science and religion, divine action, or how God acts on the world, raises complex questions. The goal of this research is to investigate whether a belief in the efficacy of petitionary prayer, evidenced through a particular model of divine action, is warranted. In particular, I will assess whether John Polkinghorne’s model of divine action is sufficient to sustain a belief in petitionary prayer. In the end, I conclude that Polkinghorne’s model is inadequate to account for petitionary prayer due to Polkinghorne’s kenotic theology and the nature of chaotic systems.

Did God Answer That Prayer?

Abstract In his recent book Petitionary Prayer, Scott Davison presents an epistemological challenge to petitionary prayer. He asks: If S prays for God to bring about event E, and E in fact occurs, how could one be justified in believing that E was an answer to S’s prayer? Apart from direct revelation in which God explicitly provides reasons for believing that E was an answer to prayer, Davison argues, S could not know that S’s prayer had been answered by God. Thus, the person praying should remain agnostic about answered prayers. I argue that in failing to attend to two theological resources available in the Christian tradition—the concept of spiritual senses and teachings about the relational nature of prayer—Davison’s conclusion is premature. Drawing upon recent literature on the epistemology of perception and the theology of prayer, I argue that one can be confident that God has answered one’s prayers.

The Rhetorical Function of Petitionary Prayer in Revelation

This article examines petitionary prayer in Revelation 5:8; 6:10; 8:3–4; and 22:20 for the purpose of ascertaining its rhetorical function with respect to the vindication of the martyrs, the judgment of the wicked, the coming of Jesus, and the completion of God's mission in the earth. This analysis also places Revelation in conversation with prayer passages within the Fourth Gospel in order to discern how these documents, read on their own terms and then taken together, provide a fuller picture concerning the function of Johannine prayer.

The Influence Aim Problem of Petitionary Prayer: A Cosmic Conflict Approach

This article addresses the problem of whether petitionary prayer, aimed at influencing God, is consistent with the traditional Christian affirmations of divine omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. In this article, I first briefly articulate the problem of petitionary prayer, then briefly introduce and discuss some common approaches to resolving the problem. Finally, I introduce and discuss some implications of retrieving a cosmic conflict approach with rules of engagement as a possible avenue that warrants further consideration relative to the problem of petitionary prayer.

Prayer in Cancer: What the Patients Said

How do cancer patients pray? This article presents research into what was found within stories published by 160 cancer patients. A grounded theory methodology was used for this study. Almost equal numbers of men and women provided evidence of praying. A positive association of prayer with well-being was found. Some cancer patients utilized poetry or scripture or meditation. Others used petitionary prayer, for others it was intercessory prayer. However, thanksgiving prayer was the most common form. Women were found more likely to thank their friends whereas men thanked their families.

How Puzzles of Petitionary Prayer Solve Themselves: Divine Omnirationality, Interest-Relative Explanation, and Answered Prayer

Some have seen in the divine attribute of omnirationality, identified by Alexander R. Pruss, the promise of a dissolution of the usual puzzles of petitionary prayer. Scott Davison has challenged this line of thought with a series of example cases. I will argue that Davison is only partially correct, and that the reasons for this reveal an important new way to approach the puzzles of petitionary prayer. Because explanations are typically interest-relative, there is not one correct account of “answered prayer” but many, corresponding to a variety of reasons to care whether God might answer our prayers. It follows from this that the omnirationality solution can be vindicated and that puzzles of petitionary prayer that are not dissolved thereby will typically contain within themselves the seeds of their own solutions.

Incorporating Biopsychosocial-Spiritual Resources in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy

Incorporation of important biopsychosocial-spiritual (BPS-S) resources in therapy is rarely outlined within the major systemic therapy models used by couple, marriage, and family therapists. A growing body of empirical literature indicates that incorporating BPS-S resources in therapy could help to accelerate and improve client outcomes. Incorporating BPS-S resources in emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT) is particularly challenging because of the primary emphasis of EFT on couple attachment. The purpose of this paper is to provide clinicians with practical guidance regarding how to incorporate BPS-S resources into EFT. We broadly consider valuable resources within each domain of the BPS-S model which, when incorporated into EFT, could help enhance treatment effectiveness. Specific clinical guidance regarding how to incorporate one resource from each domain of the BPS-S (exercise, mindfulness, volunteerism, and petitionary prayer) into EFT is also provided.

Disappointment in God and Relational Spirituality: Moderator Effects for Meditative Prayer

In recent years, there have been a number of studies exploring the positive and negative aspects of spirituality. While many studies have indicated spirituality has a generally positive influence in persons’ lives, people also experience negative effects associated with spiritual struggles. Studies have also suggested that spiritual practices such as prayer have the potential to mitigate the difficult and distressing aspects of spirituality. In this study, we explore the role of prayer in the relationship between disappointment in God and relational spirituality (i.e. how one relates to what they perceive to be sacred). Our results indicated that meditative prayer has a moderating effect, such that the negative relationship between disappointment in God and relational spirituality outcomes became less significant as subjects engaged in more frequent meditative prayer. Significant effects were not found for colloquial prayer or petitionary prayer.