The Evolution of Prayer

91:0.1Prayer, as an agency of re­li­gion, evolved from pre­vi­ous non­re­li­gious mono­logue and di­a­logue ex­pres­sions. With the at­tain­ment of self-con­scious­ness by prim­i­tive man there oc­curred the in­ev­i­ta­ble corol­lary of other-con­scious­ness, the dual po­ten­tial of so­cial re­sponse and God rec­og­ni­tion.

91:0.2The ear­li­est prayer forms were not ad­dressed to De­ity. These ex­pres­sions were much like what you would say to a friend as you en­tered upon some im­por­tant un­der­tak­ing, “Wish me luck.” Prim­i­tive man was en­slaved to magic; luck, good and bad, en­tered into all the af­fairs of life. At first, these luck pe­ti­tions were mono­logues—just a kind of think­ing out loud by the magic server. Next, these be­liev­ers in luck would en­list the sup­port of their friends and fam­i­lies, and pres­ently some form of cer­e­mony would be per­formed which in­cluded the whole clan or tribe.

91:0.3When the con­cepts of ghosts and spir­its evolved, these pe­ti­tions be­came super­hu­man in ad­dress, and with the con­scious­ness of gods, such ex­pres­sions at­tained to the lev­els of gen­uine prayer. As an il­lus­tra­tion of this, among cer­tain Aus­tralian tribes prim­i­tive re­li­gious prayers an­te­dated their be­lief in spir­its and super­hu­man per­son­al­i­ties.

91:0.4The Toda tribe of In­dia now ob­serves this prac­tice of pray­ing to no one in par­tic­u­lar, just as did the early peo­ples be­fore the times of re­li­gious con­scious­ness. Only, among the To­das, this rep­re­sents a re­gres­sion of their de­gen­er­at­ing re­li­gion to this prim­i­tive level. The pres­ent-day rit­u­als of the dairy­men priests of the To­das do not rep­re­sent a re­li­gious cer­e­mony since these im­per­sonal prayers do not con­tribute any­thing to the con­ser­va­tion or en­hance­ment of any so­cial, moral, or spir­i­tual val­ues.

91:0.5Pre­re­li­gious pray­ing was part of the mana prac­tices of the Melane­sians, the oudah be­liefs of the African Pyg­mies, and the man­i­tou su­per­sti­tions of the North Amer­i­can In­di­ans. The Baganda tribes of Africa have only re­cently emerged from the mana level of prayer. In this early evo­lu­tion­ary con­fu­sion men pray to gods—lo­cal and na­tional—to fe­tishes, amulets, ghosts, rulers, and to or­di­nary peo­ple.