Prayer as External Authority
Prayer is experienced in these schools as an “external authority” that acts in people’s lives and works as an “agent” between individuals and God. Prayer’s authority is maintained and made to feel natural and obvious through the maintenance of key boundaries and the continuation of key practices. This chapter begins with a historical overview and then describes boundaries, going over how prayer is experienced as agentic and authoritative and describing how people improve at the performance and interpretation of prayer in ways that help prayer maintain its authority. In the Muslim schools, prayer is a more complex process requiring explicit instruction, especially the memorization of key phrases for du’a and the various physical actions and recitations involved in salah. In the Christian schools, prayer was often framed as a “relationship,” so even if there were specific rituals associated with the act, these were de-emphasized so as not to make the action appear formulaic.