Prayer in an Ecumenical Context

Many years ago in a small town, the dentist was also Secretary of the Baptist Church. During the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the churches arranged a United Prayer Meeting and the next day, two of his patients had been there. One was a fellow Baptist who said, ‘When the Anglicans pray, they read it all out of a book; how can that be real prayer?’ The next was an Anglican who said, ‘When you Baptists pray, you make it all up as you go along; how can that be real prayer?’

One of the differences between parts of the Christian Church is the way we pray. Private prayer is a matter for each individual but when it comes to public worship or praying together, there needs to be a convergence of understanding. In an ecumenical context, those encountering a way of praying which is most unlike their own will try to engage with it, even if it is something they would not want to adopt regularly. One difference in ways of praying is whether it is a composed liturgy or is extempore. Ecumenically, it is possible to see both the strengths and weaknesses of both and to embrace each where appropriate.

The weakness of a written liturgy is that it can be ‘vain repetition’, a mere reciting of words while the mind and heart are elsewhere. Liturgical text should always be prayed and not merely ‘said’ and it is good if the rubrics show this. Liturgy is a kind of prose poetry. Words are carefully crafted so that they are theologically and grammatically correct and will bear repetition. The strength is that they open up the vista beyond the words and offer the worshipper a means to engage with the worship of the Church beyond the actual moment. Some Churches prescribe which liturgical texts may be used while others give latitude to the worship leader. An ecumenical partnership will normally include a means of combining these disciplines without breaking them. Since it is an experiment, it should nurture new liturgical resources which may eventually be used elsewhere.

Some ancient texts such as the Lord’s Prayer were originally written in Greek or Latin so it is important ecumenically that they are translated by the Churches together into modern English. The International Commission on English Texts (ICET) brought together experts from a wide range of Churches across the English-speaking world. This means that visitors to churches different to their own are likely to find the same liturgical texts in use.

Extempore prayer can also succumb to vain repetition of a different sort. There was a legendary prayer meeting where the intercessions offered always included a mention of ‘those laid aside in beds of sickness.’ The uninitiated might wonder if the prayer was that someone would hoist the poor things upright again and change their beds! More recently, a university chaplain persuaded the students of the Christian Union to ban from their prayer meeting the words ‘just’ and ‘really’ which they used so frequently that they meant absolutely nothing. The strengths of extempore prayer are that it needs no particular training, only a willingness to put faith into words, and that it can respond to the needs of a moment without preparation. A Vicar’s wife who was Diocesan Prayer Secretary for the Mothers’ Union was asked by some young women in the parish how to pray extempore. They began with simple one phrase prayers – a discipline she also kept to herself – and within a year they were praying fluently and some were leading prayer groups themselves.

Another aspect of prayer which has arisen particularly in the past forty years comes from the charismatic movement. The Pentecostal movement which began one hundred years ago was a rediscovery of the gifts of the Holy Spirit as practiced in the Early Church. This proved controversial and resulted in many Pentecostals leaving, or being excluded from, mainstream churches. However, a South African Pentecostal Pastor called David du Plessis, finding his message unwelcome in the conservative free churches, turned to Anglicans and Roman Catholics where it was accepted. The charismatic movement still led to some divisions but more often it brought a different kind of unity. Prayer ‘in the Spirit’ may include using the gift of tongues, perhaps best understood as the ‘tongues of angels’ to which St Paul refers in 1 Corinthians 13.1. The person praying in tongues may not know the meaning of his or her prayer and, unlike a prophecy, that may not be necessary. It is ‘through our inarticulate groans the Spirit himself is pleading for us.’ (Romans 8:26) Charismatic prayer is a challenge for the ecumenical movement as some will consider it divisive and others may be judgemental about those who do or do not exercise the spiritual gifts.

A more recent development in prayer relates to the Fresh Expressions movement. This recognises that the historic Churches are culturally alien to a large proportion of the population. Regarding prayer, it seems that whether a written liturgy or extempore, it is another flood of words for people who are overloaded with data. Contemplative prayer is having a resurgence and the visual arts are being engaged in prayer in many ways. Those who respond find connections which ignore the remaining divisions between the Churches.