Nonreligion
and Secularity Research Network Conference 2023
Abstract
Title:
Prayer, a ‘wounded word’
Jean-Louis Chretien (quoted by Caputo JD Truth p 83 London 2013) describes prayer
as a ‘word sent up from a cut or wounded heart’ in March 2020 in
response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic searches for ‘prayer’ surged to their
highest level ever https://trends.google.com while the Australian Census 2021 https://abs.gov.au continued to chart the decline in
those claiming religious allegiance. Yet in the author’s experience as a
hospital chaplain working alongside frontline healthcare professionals in
critical care people still value the wounded word of prayer even though their
own frame of reference is naturalistic or a very weak theism. Is prayer simply
a response to life’s finitude and contingency, ‘an activity that nonreligious
individuals engage with in relation to their worldviews and beliefs’? Prayer,
the author suggest is a natural human practice and as such can be valued and
promoted as a secular practice.
Author
The Revd.
Nicholas Rundle has been a chaplain for 20 years serving with NATO, with a
large Australian NGO and public hospital in Spiritual Care. Research Associate,
Research Unit of the Study of Society, Ethics, and Law, Adelaide Law School,
The University of Adelaide.
Introduction
In this
brief paper my aim is to explore the phenomenon of prayer arising from my experience
as a hospital chaplain especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021 I took medical
leave where like many healthcare professionals moral injury led me to a radical
revaluation of my being and purpose in the world.
Prayer
during the stress of working in Intensive Care and my own illness became a
‘word sent up from a cut or wounded heart’. 1. The author of
this quotation Jean-Louis Chretien drawing on the Christian writer
Augustine of Hippo sees the work of prayer as agonistic a form of wrestling
with a God who is apophatically unknown and unknowable. Chretien is a ‘new
phenomenologist’ exploring trajectories which include the possibilities of God,
prayer and encounter with the other.
Like many of
my generation, (I am 63) I have worshipped among the ‘many altars of
modernity’ 2 I have developing a pluralist imagination. I
have an appreciation that my response to the spiritual is expressive, mythic,
metaphorical, and imaginative. I have found what McGilchrist terms the
bi-hemispherical model of human functioning profoundly illuminating both
personally and professionally. 3
My focus
here is on what Vattimo calls ‘weak thought’ rather than religion as a
form of strong beliefs. Vattimo invites us to ‘the possibility of a
postmodern religious experience in which the relationship with the divine is no
longer polluted by fear, violence and superstition’ 4
In returning
after trauma to serve again as chaplain in Intensive Care and in the Cardio Thoracic
wards I wanted to become more attuned to the weak thought of prayer where God
was perhaps an occasional or non-existent thought for the person or people who
prayed. I also developed a mindful hand care program for healthcare
professionals and for patients to reinforce hand hygiene during the pandemic and
support people experiencing stress and anxiety which I see as a form of secular
prayer.
Chaplaincy
Chaplains are
participant observers ‘occupying multiple marginalities’ 5 arriving
not to impose but to listen, discern, support and engage, bracketing out their
own beliefs and presuppositions to be attentive to the other. Often those visited will request a prayer or
‘a few words’ even if they have little or no connection with a religious
affiliation I have often asked the question, ‘Have you ever prayed?’ and
have often been surprised by what people desire to share.
Prayer
illness and the hospital
If human experience is “about subjects caught in and freed from their
own stories” 6 Prayer can be a way in which
is stories emerge. Kripal in his extensive work calls on his readers to shape
new ways of imagination and expression and to value intuitive, visionary and
mystical ways of knowing. Bernardo Kastrup suggests that reality expresses
itself primarily through the whirl of symbol, myth dream and story, invoking
and evoking. 7
‘Spiritual’
originates from the Latin ‘spiritus’ to breathe. ‘Spirituality is
existential rather than creedal. It grows out of the individual person from an
inward source, is intensely intimate and transformative and is not imposed upon
the person from an outside authority or force’ 8
‘What I
do is live. How I pray I breathe’ wrote Catholic monk Thomas Merton 9 after his own
traumatic hospital admission. Luce Irigaray asserted
that ‘we worry little about our first food of life: air’ Breath ‘helps
us transform our natural life into a spiritual life’ 10
Hospitals are places where the breath
is measured as an indicator of health alongside the heart’s diastole and
systole. Patients in Intensive Care are intubated, sometimes for weeks, in an
induced coma. With many infectious
diseases present the hospital’s ventilation system is constantly monitored, and
all staff wear fitted masks. In the hospital chapel/sacred space prayers are
written in a book for all to see. Human woundedness find a response here in the
‘wounded word of prayer’
‘switching the conversation in one’s
head, taking a new subject position or viewpoint (including God’s), moving to a
new emotional register, altering focus, or dissociating from one state and
entering another ‘higher’ one’ 11
Just as music takes many forms,
prayer takes on many registers of language, power and performance from the
formal to the informal and intimate, from an AA meeting in a downtown hall to
the intricate ritual of a Tantric Buddhist transmission and to a Hillsong event
in a stadium. It can be flowers or teddy bear placed at the site of a tragic
event, a candle lit at a vigil, a moment of silence on Anzac or Remembrance
Day. These ritual acts alter a person’s focus and could be construed as
nonverbal, non-traditionally theistic acts of prayer, breathing spaces when
words seem inadequate.
Prayer can create and shape us in powerful
ways. As one patient in a 12-step program said to me:
‘I do not believe in God and I never
have. Yet I look in the mirror each day and say, I’m not going to end my life
today because even if I hate myself, you God love me. It’s weird but it works’
‘I hate the church ever since my
pastor tried to exorcise me from the demon of being a lesbian. The Bible makes
me sick but I sit on the beach at sunset and offer a prayer to the universe, it
makes me feel good, connected, alive’
Prayer seems
natural even for contemporary people with no declared religious allegiance. As Philosophy
Professor William Irwin writes
“prayer
for the atheist can be like singing in the car or in the shower. No one is
listening, and that is just fine’. He says that his practice links an appropriate
humility and gratitude and that petitionary prayer for others expresses
longing, hope or desire, a poetry of the heart” 12
The
Pandemic
In 2020 the
COVID-19 pandemic changed the way most humans lived as silence fell on the
cities of the world. The infected struggled to breathe and in Australia the
pandemic followed devastating bushfires where many died or became ill from
respiratory illness.
‘What
made the pandemic a unique global and domestic crisis was that it arrived in
the sails of a vast ship of change. ‘as the plague took its toll and industries
were reshaped, jobs disappeared, house prices skyrocketed, domestic abuse
soared’ 13
Physical
distancing and restrictions became normative during lockdowns. Some witnessed at first hand, or through the
media people struggling to breathe in Intensive Care Wards intubated or
‘proned’. The virus killed many, especially in ill prepared aged care and among
the poor many of whom were deemed essential workers and had higher exposure to
the virus. Many of us were unable to be present for the death of people they
had loved or to attend funerals in person. Funerals happened in some cases,
months after the death. Some witnessed a loved one’s last breath via a video
link from Intensive Care. At one such
death four health workers all clad, like me in full PPE held mobile phones and
tablets aloft as I prayed for the family of the patient present via technology
in four different states of Australia and overseas all unable to be present
because of border closures. When I conducted the funeral some weeks later there
were few in the chapel and all were masked but 50 others prayed with me via U
tube.
During the
COVID-19 emergency hospitals became even more enclosed and guarded places of
struggle Healthcare workers either ‘heroes’ or people to be avoided as
potential carriers of the virus. Workers worried about the safety of the family
members they returned to at home.
Searches
for Prayer and Research into Religious Demographics
In May 2020 Jeanet Sinding Bentzen published a paper entitled ‘In
Crisis we Pray’ 2020 14 noting that by using daily data on google
traffic in 95 countries that as the COVID-19 crisis grew worse so did searches
for prayer. She noted that this increase is not merely a substitute for
services in religious buildings but to an intensified demand for religion and
concludes: ‘We pray to cope with adversity.’ She points out that 83% of
the world’s population believe in God and this guides the attitudes and
behaviours of people. The data also
indicates that specific events in countries drove the search for prayer. Thus,
on January 5th 2020 as bushfires swept Australia people searched for
the movement ‘Prayer for Australia’. The author also suggests that the
rise in google searches which will mostly offer the texts of prayers from
various religions, underestimates the rise in prayer intensity. Many will turn
to a book or recite a prayer from memory or one they personally create; others
will have bookmarked a prayer site so not requiring a search engine. Others
will have no access to the internet or be restricted by their nation’s internet
rules from accessing material. Faced with uncertainty, illness or distress
people turn inward to their own inner sense of faith and private beliefs
offering prayer and sensing the closeness of God rather than outwardly by
attending a service. Bentzen notes that even in secular nations such as Denmark
people came together online to pray.
The 2021
Australian Census indicated that the percentage of people claiming an
affiliation with a religion continues to decline. 15
Like many European and increasingly north American societies, Australians live
in an increasingly superdiverse, privatising, and pluralistic culture. More of
us in the western world are claiming to be non-religious or not stating a
religion yet it seems we may pray from time to time and may retain a weak
belief that somehow, we live on after the death of our body.
The research of Woodhead, Boulma and
Halafoff 16 and others indicate that some that
claim ‘non-religion’ retain a sense of the sacred and spiritual which may be
expressed in empathetic connectedness with others. This may be a regular
practice or be a more occasional crisis directed response.
Hannah Waite
in her research for the UK based Theos wrote in ‘The Nones: Who are they and
what do they believe’ noted that there are three sub groups, campaigning
nones (34%) who are strongly atheistic and hostile to religion, tolerant nones
a mixture of agnostic and atheistic, spiritually closed, highly educated (35%)
and Spiritual Nones (32%) who are more likely to be women, more agnostic, more
open to a higher power than a personal God who see some value in religion. The
author warns that the ‘none’ category should not be seen as implying uniformity
but rather as a social marker. If 36% of those surveyed agreed that ‘humans are
at heart spiritual beings’ then prayer as connoting a sense of being in
relationship with a more than human world would seem a plausible response. 17
Even as
religious affiliation declines prayer continues. A UK Survey in August 2022
revealed
“A majority of 18- to 34-year-olds - 56% - say they
have prayed, with a third (32%) reporting that they have prayed in the last
month. By contrast, a minority in the 55+ age group said they had never
prayed - at 41% - with 25% saying they had prayed in the last month. The
Savanta ComRes survey of 2,073 UK adults showed that overall nearly half (48%)
said they had ever prayed with just over a quarter (28%) saying they have
prayed in the last month. Among those who had
ever prayed, the most common topics prayed about were for friends and family
(69%), people they know who are sick (54%) and to give thanks (51%)” 18
The
Australian census also suggests a trend away from active participation in
society, the private world of what Charles Taylor termed the ‘buffered self.’ 19
amid the fragmentation of the contemporary world.
Sociologist
Peter Berger argues that if the secularisation theory which assumes the
inevitable death of religion is to be given up, it should be replaced by a new
theory of pluralism, a much more fluid understanding that people, even people
with a profound commitment to religious practice move between secular and
religious modes of discourse and express different aspects of themselves in
different contexts. This is to be seen
in the collective consciousness of societies as well as in the individual
consciousness of humans.
‘Certain religious institutions have
lost power and influence in many societies, but the old and the new religious
beliefs and practices have nevertheless continued in the lives of individuals. 20
In August
2020 Mainsteam Insights says ‘COVID-19 is opening the door to spirituality
in Australia with one in four Aussie’s engaging in more
(much/somewhat/slightly) spiritual conversations (26 %) and praying more (28 %)
and seven in ten indicate that faith and spirituality (69 %) is a key element
in their identity. Younger Australians Gen Z are more open and have been
asking themselves more faith related questions. In this survey conducted during
COVID-19 lockdowns 70 % of Australians described themselves as religious or
spiritual:
‘Research
reveals that a large portion of this population aren’t comfortable publicly
expressing their beliefs. While the Australian spiritual landscape appears open
and safe, two in five Australians with religious or spiritual beliefs (40%)
still feel that they have to hide their faith or spiritual beliefs at least
some of the time’ 21
More and
more engagement, especially since 2020 is expressed through the disembodied
mediation of technology. It allows ‘prayer’ to be entered into a search engine.
Technology does support the retreat into the private while at the same time
also allowing participation, engagement, connection, and expression.
Responding
to disease and to illness as the lived experience of disease
If we pray,
especially in times of adversity we should also expect evidence of prayer in
hospitals as places of ongoing crisis. Steve Finbow from the perspective of a
seriously ill patient says that the hospital is a place of ambiguity where, ‘the
body undergoes supreme violence as means of sustaining life’ 22
Finbow finds
a way to articulate his own lived experience of being a patient after an
emergency admission to hospital in Foucault’s question, ‘How did I become
what I am and why do I suffer from being what I am?’ and concludes that for
him: ‘Illness is a monastery with its own rules, asceticism, silence,
inspiration’ 23
Philosopher
Havi Carel asserts that illness is a neglected area of philosophy and she
writes from the perspective of a participant observer living with a long-term
chronic respiratory disease. She writes,
‘illness is a breakdown of meaning in the ill person’s life’ 24 There are many elements of loss for the
patient and her family but wellness in her view may continue. John Gray says
that ‘to be chronically unwell is part of what it means to be human’ 25 yet we often assume the opposite. For this
reason Carel asserts that healthcare systems are places of what she terms
epistemic injustice ‘ill people are
much more vulnerable to testimonial injustice, because they are often regarded
as cognitively unreliable, emotionally compromised, or existentially unstable’
26
By contrast
healthcare professionals are privileged ‘by virtue of their training,
expertise and third person psychology’ 27 and
despite the emphasis on patient centred care and communication skills the
patient may feel that they as a person with feelings and a life world is
treated reductively as a body or brain to be repaired.
The
symbol of healthcare as a religious object
The
Australian public health system may not be a national religion as some have
claimed the UK National Health Service but all politicians are wary of even
suggesting changes to Medicare. As the
British sociologist of religion Linda Woodhead, writing in April 2020 said of
the UK National Health Service, almost overwhelmed by the severe illness and
the death of patients, which included health professionals who had become
infected:
‘It is
here rather than our national churches that we now affirm our shared values,
reinforce a sense of collective identity, deal with evil and suffering,
reaffirm hope’ 28
As Woodhead
states ‘However much we make invoke the prestige of medical science what we
are dealing with is faith’
Our local
hospital may the small country hospital in regional Australia staffed by a
small group of nursing and allied health and the town GP or it may be a city
hospital. The closure of a hospital, the relocation of services such as
maternity or scarcity of a doctor will be perceived as a symbolic collective
loss
Requests
for Prayer
In the
hospital sacred space or chapel a book and pen lie open and available for
everyone to freely read and to write notes. This is a brief de-identified
summary from a series of hospital notebooks I have viewed in Australian and UK
hospitals. It seems as if the entries are typical of those written by visitors
to hospital chapels in the UK and to Cathedrals as outlined by the work of
Tania Ap Sion and Peter Collins 29
‘Prayer
for those reading and writing in the book, you are not alone… Look after
dad. Thank you, God. Here a story from a
mother whose son was attacked and a telling of neglect by authorities. How to
guide a family member whose mother is finding it frightening after a diagnosis.
Prayers in Mandarin, Greek and Italian. Please forgive my sins and bless family
and grandchildren. God far off feeling frightened and insecure. In Jesus name
that he is alive and breathing. Returning once again, we just need mum to live.
Bless doctors and nurses. The Gates of heaven open. Made it through surgery!
For patience as doctors struggle to diagnose. Naming the surgeon with thanks
for their helping hands. Place is so peaceful, thanks for the chapel,
sanctuary, its great the chapel is here. Age of Holy Mary to come. Naming the
people in my family who are ill. Formal prayer for one who has died using
Catholic language. In capitals and with scripture quotes claiming healing. The
Book of Mormon is the Word of God. Fear and anxiety. Family list names, and
returns to the chapel to update God and any readers on the progress of her daughter
daily. Story of airlift after burns by the Flying Doctor, thank God I am alive
and leaving today. Details of illness. Thanks for healing. In capitals, the BIG
FELLA needs his leg. Poetic prayer spaced, general thanksgiving 15 years of
treatment. Blood of Jesus, spiritual warfare. Beautiful wife who has passed
today. Lost my baby in an accident, I’m a JW. Italian, invoking the saints.
Keep my faith alive. Thanks for the donor who gave my son his kidney. Help,
protection, grief. Statement, death is death and this is what I will do.
Quotations from Psalms in the King James Version in large red letters’
Despite the
ambiguity, negotiated and wounded nature of prayer it:
“like the
heart, it works even when the encephalogram is flat: even when dogmas are believed
with much reservation, moral norms are ignored or considered obsolete, and
rites are attended sporadically, it seems that prayer remains part of the lives
of many people today”
30
In a review
of the research into hospital spiritual care one reviewer commented:
‘Prayer
served as an important coping mechanism for all patients visited during times
of health crisis such as cancer…. prayer was also found to be helpful
particularly when families were in shock’
31
Experiences
that may link to prayer
My purpose
here is not to offer a theory or conclusion but to suggest reasons why so many
people either pray or think about prayer especially at times of crisis.
The
Religious Experience Research Centre at Lampeter UK houses an archive of over
6,000 firsthand spiritual or religious experiences gathered over decades
beginning with Alistair Hardy’s initial research. Mark Fox is among a series of researchers
examining these accounts and has tracked and recorded anomalous experiences
especially of light and of a loving presence. 32 The University of Virginia in the USA hosts
the Division of Perceptual Studies which has researched Near Death Experiences
and other seemingly inexplicable experiences.
“…vivid
and often life-transforming experiences, many of which occur under extreme
physiological conditions such as trauma, ceasing of brain activity, deep
general anaesthesia, or cardiac arrest in which no awareness or sensory
experiences of any kind should be possible according to the prevailing views in
neuroscience” 33
There is an
extensive literature on anomalous and near-death experiences including many by
scientists and medical doctors. Academic Neurosurgeon Eben Alexander is among
the most well-known. His vivid experiences in a long coma led to a profound
change of mind towards belief in a spiritual realm and while remaining
unattached to a religious tradition developing a practice of meditations that
were a ‘form of centering prayer’ 34
Neuro
theologians Newberg and Waldman are among those who postulate that religion is
much less about belief, (a strong theme only in forms of Protestantism) than
about deep feelings about life. Those
who pray more frequently ‘are not otherworldly but show higher civic
engagement in volunteering and charitable giving.’ 35
Damasio
postulates that the roots of human experience and therefore of religion lie in
deep feelings which lead to beliefs about life. ‘I see the development of
religious beliefs as most closely related to the grief of human losses, which
forced humans to confront the inevitability of death and the myriad ways it
could come about’ 36
Beliefs and
feelings, give rise to, and are shaped by religion asserts Damasio bringing
communities and individuals to homeostasis. One of the ‘functions’ of
prayer may be a desire for homeostasis when faced with uncertainty.
Recently I
spoke briefly with a man in the cardiac ward.
It was for me a fascinating visit standing at the door of his room. He
held up his hand to stop me from entering and then told me he had almost died
three times. ‘I’ve been there, I’ve seen the white light, the tunnel so I
don’t need to talk about it because now I know death is not real.’ Perhaps he anticipated that the chaplain
would exploit his experience with a narrowly religious hermeneutic.
It is March
2020 and I am praying silently outside the Red Zone barrier in the ICU corridor
for ‘Ed’ who is gravely ill with COVID-19. He is struggling to breathe face
down a few metres. They are not a religious couple but when I called his
partner Sue who is at home isolating, she asked me if I could come to the ward
and ‘say a few words’ for her husband who she is missing deeply. When I met them months later at an
outpatient’s clinic Sue said how much they had appreciated the support from my
social work colleague and myself. ‘Ed and I are not religious; we never go
to church but your prayer made all the difference. It’s a miracle we made it
through and I don’t think we would have made it without prayer’
Australian
Spirituality
Manning
Clark described an Australian sensibility as a ‘A whisper in the mind and a
shy hope in the heart’ The sociologist Gary Boulma 37 in
commenting on this metaphor postulates that despite Australians being reticent
about articulating their religion and spiritual beliefs and uncomfortable with
public displays of religious feeling they none they none the less remain
vibrant if often hidden from view. He notes that visitors from Europe are often
surprised by the vitality of religious life in a secular Australia.
Prayer weak
or strong as a personal response persists in Australian society becoming more
visible in crisis and may become more apparent during a hospital admission.
Some may turn to prayer or to spiritual forms of meditation because of a near
death or anomalous experience, from a ketamine induced hallucination
post-surgery or from psychedelic experience either illegal or part of a
clinical intervention for PTSD, depression, or palliative care.
Fewer of us
may declare a religious allegiance and an even smaller proportion of us will
regularly attend a church, temple, or synagogue. Many Australians are
uncomfortable with dogmatic statements about metaphysics. However, it seems
that few of us, especially at a time of crisis are philosophical naturalists or
materialists and a tiny minority of us will declare ourselves atheists or even
humanists on a hospital admission form.
The
emergence of google searches for prayer during March 2020 tells us that the
search for meaning remains strong and I have sought to indicate possible
reasons why people continue to pray including my own experiences. The practice
of prayer reflects who we are and the story of prayer shows humanity at our
best and worst. If we pray or meditate, we probably assume a worldview and an
instinct which shapes us and guides our life is a kind of religion as William
James suggests. 39
Weak prayer,
a weak theism, a weak idealism seems to live on in Australian society as normally
a deeply personal, private response to life that will emerge especially at
times of crisis and in this sense the term ‘prayer’ lives on.
Vattamo called for:
‘the
possibility of a postmodern religious experience in which the relationship with
the divine is no longer polluted by fear, violence and superstition’ 40
References
1 Chretian quoted on page 83 Caputo J (2013)
Truth Penguin London as part of a reflection on the potential for prayer
without belief in God. Caputo explores the writings of Derrida for whom the
concept of unknowing prayer was too precious to be surrendered to the
definitions of philosophy.
2 Berger P (2014 )The Many Altars of Modernity
Degruyter Boston
3 McGilchrist I (2021) The Matter with Things
Perspecta London an extensive discussion of contemporary neuroscience and its
implication for human culture and expression
4 page 171 Of Reality Vattimo G (2016) Columbia
University Press New York
5 Swift C
(2014) Hospital Chaplaincy in the Twenty First Century Ashgate Abingdon. Swift explores from a UK
perspective the contested and ambiguous role of healthcare chaplaincy and
includes a series of ethnographic and theological reflections on how chaplaincy
or spiritual care is adapting in the decline of religious affiliation, a sense
of the private and personal nature of spirituality and responding to the
critiques of chaplaincy by the new atheist and humanist societies. UK
chaplaincy offers a different model to Australia where chaplaincy and its
funding sources vary from state to state. In South Australia chaplaincy
services are almost entirely funded by Christian denominations. www.spiritualhealth.org.au contains recent Australian research
6 Kripal J (2017) Secret Body
University of Chicago Press Chicago
7 Kastrup B More than Allegory 2016
John Hunt UK e book
8 page 8 Tacey D (2003) Spirituality
Revolution Routledge Sydney
9 page 299 in Hart P & Montaldo J
Editors (1999) Intimate Merton Lion Oxford
10 Irigaray L
p xv11 in Skof L & Berndtson P
Editors (2018) Atmospheres of Breathing.
SUNY Albany. This is a volume of
respiratory philosophy exploring across history and culture and including
spiritual practices. There is little however on the extensive practice of
breath based prayer in the Abrahamic faiths.
11 page 213 Giordan G & Woodhead L
(2015 ) A Sociology of Prayer Ashgate Abingdon
12
Iai.tv/articles/prayer-for-atheists-auid-1181
13 p 283 Schultz S (2022) The Idea of
Australia Allan and Unwin Crows Nest e book
14 Bentzen Sinding J (2020) In Crisis
we Pray https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343627578_In_Crisis_We_Pray_Religiosity_and_the_COVID-19_Pandemic
15 .
Snapshot of Australia, 2021 |
Australian Bureau of Statistics (abs.gov.au)
17 ‘The
Nones: Who are they and what do they believe’ Waite H Theos 2022
theosthinktank.co.uk
18 Younger people more likely to pray than older generations, survey finds
| The Church of England
19 Taylor C (2007) A Secular Age
Belknap Harvard Cambridge
20 ibid p 145 in Berger
21 https://mainstreetinsights.com.au/category/faith-spirituality/
22 p 31 Finbow S (2017) Notes from the Sick Room
Repeater Press London
23 p 307 ibid
22 page 4 Carel H (2016) Phenomenology of
Illness Oxford University Press Oxford
23 ibid page 13
24 ibid page 14
25 page 35 John N Gray (2002) Straw Dogs Granta
London in which the author discusses the work of Freud and the human sense of
selfhood
26 Carel ibid 182
27 Carel ibid p 183
28 www.religionmediacentre.org.uk/news
29 ap Sion T ‘Prayer Requests in an English
Cathedral’ Collins P ‘An Analysis of Hospital Chapel Requests’ in Giordan G
& Woodhead L (2015 ) A Sociology of Prayer Ashgate Abingdon
30 p 1 ibid Giordan G & Woodhead L
31 p 99 Lindsay Carey Role of the Healthcare
Chaplain a literature review.
32 Sir Alistair Hardy www.studyspiritualexperiences.org See also Hardy A (1979) The Spiritual Nature of Man
Oxford University Press Oxford Fox M (2014) The Fifth Love Spirit and Sage UK.
The author is associated with the centre at Lampeter UK and draws extensively
from their data base.
33 Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) -
Division of Perceptual Studies (virginia.edu)
34
Alexander E (2014) The map of heaven Pan Macmillan Australia E
Book. Like many of the writers quoted in
this chapter the author believes that there is an invisible reality usually
filtered by our brains which can be termed a form of idealist or platonic
philosophy.
35 See page 41 Newberg A and Waldman M (2009) How
God Changes your Brain Ballantine E Book and the extensive discussion of prayer
and meditation and its cognitive effects on brain health and neural
functioning. Practices such as prayer ‘even when stripped of religious beliefs,
enhance the neural functioning of the brain in ways that improve physical and
emotional health’ p 19 The authors explore explore the harmful neural effects
of fundamentalism and the power of words to elicit fearful and aggressive states.
If we bring a sense of power and belief to words in prayer then destructive
prayers will deepen a sense of an angry, punitive and guilt inducing deity.
36 page 183 Damasio A (2021) Feeling &
Knowing Pantheon New York
37 61 page 32 Boulma G (2006) Australian Soul
Cambridge University Press Port Melbourne.
In exploring Manning Clark’s phrase Boulma says that Australians
typically have a distaste for display when it comes to religion but not in
sport.
38 p 189 Mackay H 2016 Beyond Belief Macmillan
Sydney
39 James W (1902) The Variety of Religious
Experience Kindle E Book
40 page 171 Of Reality Vattimo G (2016) Columbia
University Press New York
