The Meaning of Prayer by Harry Emerson Fosdick

First published: New York: Abingdon Press, 1915, with an introduction by John R. Mott

Genre(s): Nonfiction

Subgenre(s): Meditation and contemplation; prayer book; theology

Core issue(s): Daily living; God; prayer; union with God

Overview

How does one pray? How does prayer work? How can a believer create and cultivate a discipline of daily prayer to draw closer to God? These are the mysteries of faith that Harry Emerson Fosdick seeks to address in The Meaning of Prayer, a slim volume (194 pages) of daily devotions. Fosdick guides the reader through a ten-week cycle of everyday prayer, with each of the ten chapters addressing a different element of prayer. Each of the seventy devotions features a straightforward method for approaching God in prayer: an introductory Scripture passage, a theological reference or exposition by Fosdick on how prayer works, and a closing prayer to frame his daily theme. Fosdick’s approach to teaching how to pray is eclectic and was modern for its time. He draws on a wide breadth of scriptural allusions, literature, theology, and historic events and figures. A daily devotion might include a quote from the New or Old Testament and several paragraphs about Fosdick’s beliefs, interspersed with extended quotes from a wide array of spiritual thinkers, such as French theologian and mathematician Blaise Pascal, Saint Augustine, or the poet Robert Burns. Chapters then conclude with “A Comment for the Week” in which Fosdick digs more deeply into the prayer issue being presented and “Suggestions for Thoughts and Discussion,” questions for the individual or group reading the book.

To understand the significance of Fosdick’s treatise on prayer, it is important to recognize the context in which he preached, taught, and wrote. Born in 1878 in Buffalo, New York, Fosdick trained for ministry at Colgate University and New York City’s Union Theological Seminary and was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1903, the beginning of great turmoil within American Christianity. The Protestant church in the early twentieth century was just starting to split along conservative and liberal theological fault lines. Conservative Christianity held dearly to the doctrines of biblical inerrancy and authority. Because of an inherent distrust of all things new, the conservatives often viewed the emerging modernity of the United States (mass communication, the movement of women into the workforce, industrialization, urbanization, Roman Catholic immigrants pouring into the cities, and so on) as a direct threat to their “traditional Gospel.” The God preached by conservatives was a judgmental one, unerring in condemnation of human sinfulness and both distant and threatening. Liberal Christianity, for whom Fosdick would become the standard-bearer, sought to openly engage the flowering modern world and saw these new and radical social changes not as a threat but as an opportunity to reform both the teaching of the Gospel and the human soul. The God preached by liberals like Fosdick is approachable and knowable by humans in sincere prayer, where we are asked:

. . . to desire above all else the friendship of God himself. . . . The man who misses the deep meaning of prayer has not so much refused an obligation; he has robbed himself of life’s supreme privilege—friendship with God.

It was in this spirit of challenging traditional conventions about prayer and images of God that Fosdick wrote The Meaning of Prayer.

Taking this modernist view of prayer, Fosdick creates a spiritual arc as he invites the reader into the various methods of learning how to pray and understanding prayer, from the personal to the universal. As a typical Christian apologist, Fosdick builds argument upon argument for the need for and efficacy of prayer. In chapter 1, “The Naturalness of Prayer,” Fosdick writes that prayer is a universal human need and natural act, practiced throughout history and in all faiths. Human beings pray because that impulse is built into the very fiber of our being:

. . . the tendency to pray is native to us, that we do pray one way or another, . . . and that men have always prayed and always will pray. . . . The culture of prayer therefore is not importing an alien, but is training a native citizen of the soul.

Chapters 2, 3, and 4 continue on this intimate scale and address “Prayer as Communion with God,” “God’s Care for the Individual,” and “Prayer and the Goodness of God.” Fosdick challenges traditional childish concepts of prayer—praying to God for specific results or requests—and instead asks the believer to mature and move to an ever deeper, less self-focused form of prayer. Fosdick’s God is portrayed not as a bellhop ready to deliver on demand but as an old and trusted friend and companion who seeks above all else to be in relationship with his creatures, humankind.

. . . the practice of prayer is necessary to make God not merely an idea held in the mind but a Presence recognized in the life.

Thus confident of convincing the reader that prayer does work and that the God to whom we pray is real, Fosdick uses chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 to address what he sees as the stumbling blocks a modern believer is bound to encounter when a life of prayer is undertaken. In “Prayer and the Reign of Law,” “Unanswered Prayer,” “Prayer as Dominant Desire,” and “Prayer as a Battlefield,” Fosdick asks and answers the inevitable questions that emerge when one prays on a regular basis. Are there prayers God cannot answer because to do so would break natural law? Why do we sometimes pray and get no answer? How does one balance human desire with God’s will? Because Fosdick pushes his reader to take the power of prayer seriously, he acknowledges in these chapters that the more widely prayer is applied to daily life and the life of the world, the harder it gets. Fosdick does not avoid these tough questions. He respects his readers and invites them to dig deeper and deeper into a full life of prayer. The final chapter, “Unselfish Prayer,” brings the book full circle and calls the reader to move to the highest form of prayer: praying unselfishly for others.

Christian Themes

Fosdick was the first widely known modern American Liberal Christian. At a time when society was just beginning to change at a breathtaking pace, Fosdick sought in The Meaning of Prayer to argue for a modern, relevant faith, one that did not fear the world but instead engaged it with curiosity and a willingness to tackle the hard questions of belief in God and the reality of prayer. Fosdick’s liberal take on Christianity finally declares that the act of prayer is universal, that God is an eternal power accessible to all, and that all humans are born with an intrinsic need to pray that cuts across exclusive claims of “old time religion” and scientific doubt.

Fosdick’s book still resonates as true more than 90 years after its first publication because it offers prayer forms that are practical, accessible, and possible for the average person. Fosdick did not write this book for theologians or scholars, though as a text on prayer it is theological. By shaping The Meaning of Prayer as a prayer workbook and not merely a book about prayer, Fosdick opens prayer to those in his emerging modern world who viewed prayer with rational skepticism and those who needed to find God anew and escape the tired images of the divine they inherited from childhood and traditional orthodoxy. Fosdick takes the hand of his reader, as if to say, “Let’s talk about prayer as a real possibility for your life of faith,” and then gently and eloquently he accompanies them on this journey into the very life of God. As Fosdick understates in his introduction:

This little book has been written in the hope that it may help to clarify a subject which is puzzling many minds . . . a theoretical deity saves no man from sin and disheartenment. . . . Such vital consequences require a living God who actually deals with men.

Sources for Further Study

Fosdick, Harry Emerson. The Autobiography of Harry Emerson Fosdick: The Living of These Days. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956. Fosdick tells of his spiritual growth into the greatest and most famous American Protestant preacher and teacher of the first half of the twentieth century.

Fosdick, Harry Emerson, and Michael W. Perry. The Manhood of the Master: The Character of Jesus. Seattle: Inkling Books, 2002. For those who want to explore another book of Fosdick’s daily devotions, this book takes the reader through a twelve-week introduction to the life of Jesus.

Pultz, David, ed. A Preaching Ministry: Twenty-One Sermons Preached by Harry Emerson Fosdick at The First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, 1918-1925. New York: The First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, 2000. This book contains basic biographical information about Fosdick, the birth of American Liberal Christianity and several of his most famous sermons. Of particular note is “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”