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Religion, Spirituality and Everyday Practice pp 77–88Cite as

Toward a Sociology of Prayer

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Abstract

This chapter looks at the shifts in prayer patters between generations of individuals in a primarily Catholic cultural setting. What he finds is that people of the younger generation (25–40 year olds) generally continue to pray, whether or not they attend church, but that they pray differently – specifically that traditional rote styles of prayer are either entirely abandoned on the one hand for free prayer, or are used, but because of the putative “meaning” they have to the person praying rather than because they are authorized or mandated by the institutional church.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Several studies about praying are certainly to be found in sociology of religion, even if the theme has not been investigated in a systematic way; see Beckford (1978), Swatos (1982), Poloma and Gallup (1991), Foster (1992, 2009), Csordas (1992, 1997), Meslin (2003), Pargament (2007), Baker (2008), McGuire (2008).

  2. 2.

    Literally “Praying and Oral Rites,” however the English translation is entitled On Prayer.

  3. 3.

    Regarding the sociological debate about the category of spirituality cf. Roof (1993, 1999), Wuthnow (1998, 2005), Heelas and Woodhead (2005), Giordan (2006, 2009), Flanagan and Jupp (2007).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Giuseppe Giordan

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  1. Giuseppe Giordan
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Correspondence to Giuseppe Giordan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Dipartimento di Sociologica, Università degli Studi di Padova, Via Cesarotti 10, Padova, 35123, Italy

    Giuseppe Giordan

  2. Augustana College, Rock Island, 61201, Illinois, USA

    William H. Swatos, Jr.

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Giordan, G. (2011). Toward a Sociology of Prayer. In: Giordan, G., Swatos, Jr., W. (eds) Religion, Spirituality and Everyday Practice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1819-7_6

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