About the What is Prayer? A (Very) Theological Approach (2022) course
What is going on when we pray? What does prayer have to do with religious belief and action?
This study day explores how Christian understandings of prayer down the ages and in the contemporary context have addressed these questions. In an age when prayer and thinking are often kept apart from each other, this day seeks intentionally and explicitly to connect theological reflection and contemplative practice.
The aim is to reach a theological interpretation of Christian prayer and to see Christian theology itself as a form of prayer: prayer and theology make sense of each other. Taking cues from the Lord’s Prayer and John 17, we’ll focus especially on the person of Christ. But we’ll also call attention to the ‘dangers’ of prayer in the living of the Christian life: what happens when prayer is not so much the solution to but part of the problem of the injustices of the world?
This course is led by Dr Ashley Cocksworth , Senior Lecturer in Theology and Practice at the University of Roehampton, and author of Karl Barth on Prayer (T&T Clark, 2015) and Prayer: A Guide for the Perplexed (T&T Clark, 2018).