The Evolution of Prayer

91:1.1The func­tion of early evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is to con­serve and aug­ment the es­sen­tial so­cial, moral, and spir­i­tual val­ues which are slowly tak­ing form. This mis­sion of re­li­gion is not con­sciously ob­served by man­kind, but it is chiefly ef­fected by the func­tion of prayer. The prac­tice of prayer rep­re­sents the un­in­tended, but nonethe­less per­sonal and col­lec­tive, ef­fort of any group to se­cure (to ac­tu­al­ize) this con­ser­va­tion of higher val­ues. But for the safe­guard­ing of prayer, all holy days would speed­ily re­vert to the sta­tus of mere hol­i­days.

91:1.2Re­li­gion and its agen­cies, the chief of which is prayer, are al­lied only with those val­ues which have gen­eral so­cial rec­og­ni­tion, group ap­proval. There­fore, when prim­i­tive man at­tempted to grat­ify his baser emo­tions or to achieve un­mit­i­gated self­ish am­bi­tions, he was de­prived of the con­so­la­tion of re­li­gion and the as­sis­tance of prayer. If the in­di­vid­ual sought to ac­com­plish any­thing an­ti­so­cial, he was obliged to seek the aid of non­re­li­gious magic, re­sort to sor­cer­ers, and thus be de­prived of the as­sis­tance of prayer. Prayer, there­fore, very early be­came a mighty pro­moter of so­cial evo­lu­tion, moral prog­ress, and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment.

91:1.3But the prim­i­tive mind was nei­ther log­i­cal nor con­sis­tent. Early men did not per­ceive that ma­te­rial things were not the prov­ince of prayer. These sim­ple-minded souls rea­soned that food, shel­ter, rain, game, and other ma­te­rial goods en­hanced the so­cial wel­fare, and there­fore they be­gan to pray for these phys­i­cal bless­ings. While this con­sti­tuted a per­ver­sion of prayer, it en­cour­aged the ef­fort to re­al­ize these ma­te­rial ob­jec­tives by so­cial and eth­i­cal ac­tions. Such a pros­ti­tu­tion of prayer, while de­bas­ing the spir­i­tual val­ues of a peo­ple, nev­er­the­less di­rectly el­e­vated their eco­nomic, so­cial, and eth­i­cal mores.

91:1.4Prayer is only mono­logu­ous in the most prim­i­tive type of mind. It early be­comes a di­a­logue and rapidly ex­pands to the level of group wor­ship. Prayer sig­ni­fies that the premag­i­cal in­can­ta­tions of prim­i­tive re­li­gion have evolved to that level where the hu­man mind rec­og­nizes the re­al­ity of benef­i­cent pow­ers or be­ings who are able to en­hance so­cial val­ues and to aug­ment moral ide­als, and fur­ther, that these in­flu­ences are super­hu­man and dis­tinct from the ego of the self-con­scious hu­man and his fel­low mor­tals. True prayer does not, there­fore, ap­pear un­til the agency of re­li­gious min­istry is vi­su­al­ized as per­sonal.

91:1.5Prayer is lit­tle as­so­ci­ated with an­i­mism, but such be­liefs may ex­ist along­side emerg­ing re­li­gious sen­ti­ments. Many times, re­li­gion and an­i­mism have had en­tirely sep­a­rate ori­gins.

91:1.6With those mor­tals who have not been de­liv­ered from the prim­i­tive bond­age of fear, there is a real dan­ger that all prayer may lead to a mor­bid sense of sin, un­jus­ti­fied con­vic­tions of guilt, real or fan­cied. But in mod­ern times it is not likely that many will spend suf­fi­cient time at prayer to lead to this harm­ful brood­ing over their un­wor­thi­ness or sin­ful­ness. The dan­gers at­ten­dant upon the dis­tor­tion and per­ver­sion of prayer con­sist in ig­no­rance, su­per­sti­tion, crys­tal­liza­tion, de­vi­tal­iza­tion, ma­te­ri­al­ism, and fa­nati­cism.