Gimme! Thanks! Oops! Wow! Pardon?

You won't be surprised to learn that I thought Zev Chafets' article "Is There A Right Way To Pray?" in the New York Times Magazine a piece of fluff. (The accompanying picture, complete with candles and, at lower right, two squirrels, sets the tone.) Perhaps it makes some sense to send a reporter who is bemused by religion - rather than practicing or deploring it - to report on the state of prayer in America, but a reporter who reports his bemused reactions to everything? One needn't and probably shouldn't be pious about religious topics to write about them, but an authorial voice such as Chafets' pretty much prevents the reader from learning anything.

By way of "research," Chafets cited a Pew study reporting 75% of respondents pray weekly but only half as many attend worship somewhere, then talked to a few people - mostly in New York - who lead prayer, offer spiritual direction, lead retreats, etc. Steven Waldman, the editor in chief of BeliefNet, predictably reported that prayer has become its own religion in this society. People pick and choose. They want to be their own spiritual contractors. (45) (Recall that BeliefNet's "only agenda is to help you meet your spiritual needs.") But how about talking to even one of these DIY spiritual contractors? Have any changed religious denomination because of this? (Chafets seems unaware of recent discussion of religious mobility and pluralism in America, an obvious context for the topic at hand.) The prayer teachers he interviewed advise all manner of tricks, but what do the pray-ers on the ground do? Some eclectic pray-ers I know are quite thoughtful about what they do, and wouldn't be as charmed as Chafets by Rabbi Marc Gellman's quip that when you come down to it, there are only four basic prayers. Gimme! Thanks! Oops! and Wow! (46) These are all about me and my feelings - is that what prayer's all about? (Even so, only the first and last make even superficial sense to Chafets.) Gellman also recommends his congregants pray in Hebrew, even if they don't understand it - why not follow that up? Could it be that prayer sometimes takes people beyond their own spiritual needs, closer to the needs of others, and to other realities which everyday language cannot compass? Chafets ends his article with a description of a Pentecostal service in West Virginia, where children testified to him, and reflects: I realized that I was probably never going to become a praying man. But if, by some miracle, I ever do, I hope my prayers will be like the prayers of the kids ... Straight-up Gimme! on behalf of people who really need the help. How nice of him. But since he's started praying, why not wipe the smirk off his face and continue?