Group Prayer Does Work

Several Christian Views:

Jonah,

Let me join the minority of people that defend the increased effectiveness of group prayer. I think one effective approach is to look at Christ’s interaction in the New Testament with people who requested favors, miracles, etc. There was the blind man who sat on the side of the road and cried out, “Jesus Christ, Son of David, have mercy on me” louder and louder, despite the rebukes from the disciples. Christ cured him. Had he not shouted out, would Christ have passed him by? Who knows. Then there’s the cripple who reaches out and touches Christ’s robe as he passes. The text actually says something like, Jesus felt the power come out of him, and He turns and confronts the leper(?) and then says his faith has healed him. He eats lunch at a friend’s house and the crowd lowers a cripple in on a hammock from an opening in the ceiling and He cures him/her. It seems like the general gist of the healing miracles in the Bible is ask and you shall receive. Yet had they not gone out of their way, I guess we’re left to assume that He would not have healed them. Thus they did something to “change God’s mind” as it were, or affect their own future through petition to a merciful God. It is true what your reader says, that all prayers are answered, and sometimes the answer is just no. But in unexplained times, the answer is yes. If a group of people that decide to take the additional effort to lower their sick relative before Jesus can have their prayer answered, maybe that’s a lesson. Yes, God is omniscient and all merciful, but (in the Christian realm) Jesus is also human and (in the Catholic perspective) his mother and the saints can intercede for us. To make a narrow Catholic argument, I think the proclamation of saints is an important aspect of the effectiveness of prayer. The Church lays out these people whose lives are to be followed, who need proven miracles to be declared saints in the first place. Their power to intercede leads groups of people to have special devotions to them, which hopefully, in turn, influences those people to follow their example and become saints themselves. I see all of this as evidence that prayers can bring different results, and prayers that demonstrate the devotion of individuals or groups, can be more effective than others. There you have it.

Jonah,

According to traditional Catholic doctrine, petitionary prayer does change the world, not merely the person who prays. This position doesn’t mean that prayer changes God’s mind or gives God new information. Instead, God eternally wills for us to receive some goods ONLY IF we pray for them, or only if several people pray for them. Thomas Aquinas defended this position in the 13th Century, so it’s not a consequence of modern views about democracy.

According to Aquinas, God acts this way–instead of giving us good things regardless of whether we pray–in order to give creatures the power of causing goodness in each other. Analogously, a father who has three children might decide that he’ll let the two older children do some things to take care of his youngest child, instead of doing everything for his youngest child himself.

This position obviously raises some questions, but I want to keep this message brief. I’ve written an article in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly that addresses this issue in more detail. I’d be happy to send you a copy. Maybe I’m flattering myself, but I think it’s free of technical jargon.

Best wishes,

Larry Masek

And…

From an email entitled “Prayer: You’re being spun by hyper Calvinists”:

So God doesn’t respond to prayer?

I fear you’re being spun by a bunch of calvinists/platonists.

What scriptures did they cite to support this contention?

If God doesn’t answer prayer somebody forgot to tell the writers of the

Bible about it. Here’s a whole bunch of scriptures to support that

point. Not mere argument but evidence, in the form of testimony by

those who wrote the Bible.

[The author then provides a very long list of scriptural passages]

And…

I think this whole thing got started based on the New Testament passage:

Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as

touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of

my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered

together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20)

Theologically I think that this passage presages the idea that is developed further following Jesus’ death that the assembly of Christ’s followers incarnate Jesus Christ, or are the “body of Christ”. But you will hear this more typically worded as “The Church” is the “Body of Christ”, but as this passage clearly states, the idea in its incipient form was launched prior to the development of an institution known as “The Church”. It all goes back to a participationist model of rectification. Christ’s followers are made right with God, not on account of themselves, but because in a mystical or supernatural sense are participating in the life of this other person, Jesus Christ. So they have all been executed, as they participated in his execution, and they have all been blessed with a new, eternal life with God, again because they are participating in his blessed life.

As to the power of prayer of those who are so assembled (in Christ’s name) and are consequently manifesting in their physicial presence Christ’s continued presence on earth, the idea is just as the Father always granted his son’s prayers on earth, so he will continue to do so as the assembled can almost be thought of as expressing his son’s spirit.

Caveats: theologically Christ regarded an manifest fully in each Church; he is not more manifest in churches with larger congregations. So this would seem to undermine the “more is better” approach.