Image Credit: Options, The Edge
The following is an exploration of the benefits of prayer for the 21st-century citizen, originally penned in the summer of 2025. “Why pray?” is the first in a long-term series of articles on faith and Artificial Intelligence that will be posted to The Critical Currents in the coming weeks and months. Enjoy!
“I’ll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and I yet I will pray…my life now, my whole life, regardless of all they may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it.” — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Introduction
The oldest archaeological evidence for organized prayer dates back 11,000 years to a world of hunter-gatherer bands roaming vast plains alongside gazelle grazing on expansive fields of wild barley, and migrant geese searching for water.1 Constructed in what is now Türkiye, Göbekli Tepe is the world’s oldest temple, built overlooking the southern Anatolian plains. The site, littered with columns portraying scorpions, vultures, and other wild animals, is said to have had neither a permanent population nor a utilitarian function. Its construction predates the use of metal tools and even the advent of agriculture.2 The discovery of the “proto-cathedral” challenges the long-held belief among scholars that it was the development of settled agricultural communities that allowed time to be spent on creating complex social structures and religious rituals. Instead, it may have been the formulation of rituals and the construction of temples, like Göbekli Tepe, that laid the foundation for agrarian civilization.3 To explore worship, humanity’s attempt at reaching out to the inexplicable and divine, is to examine the very essence of who we are; prayer, after all, is more human than harvest.
What is prayer?
Before discussing the benefits of prayer, it is necessary first to define prayer and religion. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines prayer as “an act of communication by humans with the sacred or holy—God, the gods, the transcendent realm, or supernatural powers.”4 While some would argue that secular meditation and other non-religious practices are forms of prayer, for the purposes of this essay, I will focus solely on the form of prayer that creates a bridge between man and the Divine. Thus, I will define religion as the broader context within which prayer occurs. American philosopher and psychologist William James defines religion in his The Varieties of Religious Experience: “Religion, …shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men (sic)...so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the Divine.”5
While James’ definition captures the personal elements of devotional practice, including the growing share of adults who identify as “spiritual, not religious,” his words overlook the significance of community. French sociologist Émile Durkheim defines religion as “...a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden–beliefs and practices which unite in one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.”6 From here on, my definition of religion will consist of a synthesis of those introduced: religion is a system of practices and beliefs adhered to by a community, designed to cultivate both a communal and personal relationship with a higher power through prayer. It is with the support of this definition that I summarize the benefits of prayer as follows: the practice provides adherents with a community and delivers measurable psychological benefits.
Benefits of Prayer
During his decades of fighting for Indian independence, plagued with hardship, Mahatma Gandhi’s commitment to consistent prayer remained unwavering. On worship, Gandhi is said to have remarked, “Begin your day with prayer, and make it so soulful that it may remain with you until the evening. Close the day with prayer, so that you may have a peaceful night free from dreams and nightmares.”7 The Indian activist, politician, and revolutionary organized prayer meetings for Indians of all faiths. During these meetings, Gandhi lectured the crowds on the precepts of non-violence and freedom.8 In a nation beset with religious violence, Gandhi succeeded in uniting Indians of all religions–Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and others–by using what they all shared: prayer. With these ceremonies, Gandhi successfully demonstrated that religious cohesion was possible. Through the unity achieved through shared prayer, Indians could free themselves from British rule and its exploitation of resources and native religions.
The benefits of attending religious ceremonies are, of course, not limited to those of us involved in a fight for independence; religious groups are excellent places to build community, whether the adversary is colonialism or everyday loneliness. The benefits that stem from social connections formed during congregations are well-documented. Tyler VanderWeele, professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in his 2017 article on Religious Communities and Human Flourishing, writes, “religious service attendance is associated with an increased likelihood of subsequently making new friends, of marrying, of having nonreligious community membership, and of higher social support.”9 Additionally, VanderWeele notes “that those attending religious services at baseline are 30% to 50% less likely to divorce.” At a time when, according to the American Psychiatric Association, a third of adults in the U.S. feel lonely each week and 30 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds feel lonely every day, organized prayer can be an effective means of combating the loneliness epidemic.10
The requirement of prayer within most theologies means believers can set aside designated times for worship—often a social event—to counter our harmful culture of leaving social interaction to chance. Building new in-person friendships or potential romantic partnerships around shared religious beliefs at a time when adults struggle to meet new people is a compelling reason to start attending regular prayer-based gatherings.
A study conducted by Pew Research on Religion’s Relationship to Happiness Civic Engagement and Health Around the World indicates a significant correlation between participation in religious ceremonies and increased levels of happiness: “more than one-third of actively religious U.S. adults (36%) describe themselves as very happy, compared with just a quarter of both inactive and unaffiliated Americans.”11 Similar results were found in almost every other country included in the study. Religiously active individuals were also found to outperform their nonreligious counterparts on four other well-being indicators, including physical health. Researchers attribute the increase in overall well-being—and even longevity—to the “social capital” that religiously active adults gain through regular prayer and participation in their faith communities.12 That network of relationships can also provide a ready support system to rely on when, for instance, searching for a job or exploring other opportunities. Conrad Hackett’s team also suggests that prayer may help the faithful manage stress and suffering.13
It is clear that regular prayer offers tangible psychological and even physical benefits, especially when practiced among others. Prayer provides the lonely with company, the fearful with courage, and the lost with direction.
“Violent, irrational, & intolerant”
Critics of organized religion are quick to underscore the violent tribalism that often results. Examples, both historical and contemporary, are numerous and include the suffering brought about by partition in Gandhi’s own India, between his Hindu homeland and Muslim Pakistan. All despite Gandhi’s earlier efforts to create cohesion among different religious groups through communal prayer-based gatherings. The relatively recent acceptance of atheism has allowed writers such as Christopher Hitchens to savagely criticize belief. The British-American author and journalist, in his book God Is Not Great, characterizes organized religion as “Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.”14
While countless individuals have been killed in the name of religion, the same is true for most other identifiers that distinguish one group from another. Differences in race, education, ethnicity, gender, and political beliefs have all been at the root of conflict. The riots that took place during the Red Scare in the 20th century are just one example where fear over a new political ideology led to deaths.15 The fear of communism in the case of the Red Scare is not that dissimilar from the Western fear of Islam and Muslims in the 21st century. “Hard-Orientalist portrayals,” characterizations of Islam and all Muslims as violent extremists in the media, have been used to drum up fears of a Muslim invasion of the U.S. Since 9/11, these fears have been percolating both ideologically and legally.16 Islamophobia has repeatedly been used by the West to galvanize support for violence and foreign intervention in the Middle East; religion has been used as a justification by monarchs and politicians, among other differentiating features, for acts they were already committing or wished to commit for personal or political gain.17 Religion itself, especially prayer, should not be held responsible for the cruelty of individuals who cynically claim to be religious.
Conclusion
Some may find themselves asking: Why bother believing when there is no irrefutable proof of God’s existence? Why invest hours that could be spent pursuing hobbies and other pastimes? My objective is not to claim that there is any irrefutable proof of the Divine, sufficient to satiate our rationalist, empirical appetites. Neither do I suggest that you should take up prayer for the sake of acquiring salvation or any other metaphysical end.
My recommendation to take up worship is instead grounded in a desire to counter one of civilization’s greatest threats: chronic solitude and related mental health conditions brought about by social media. With advances in artificial intelligence capable of human-like interaction, we are likely to become even more isolated from one another. It is credible to imagine a future, perhaps even a likely future, where AI will replace traditional religious institutions in the coming decades, offering tailored companionship and new forms of prayer and spiritual practice. If this were to be our future, we would be vulnerable to manipulation and privacy violations that would be difficult to eliminate. Rather than entrusting our spiritual lives to wisdom emanating from soulless data centers, prayer is better left untouched by the technology that threatens to upend and reshape so many other aspects of our lives. We already have forms of worship that have evolved through human history and draw on our shared humanity, strengthening communal bonds. Why would we remove community from prayer? Without it—as we explored with Göbekli Tepe—prayer might never have developed.
Prayer offers a nearly cost-free solution to many of our modern troubles. Why must we prove God’s existence to return to or begin our practice? We, of course, do not. Instead, more people should take the Kierkegaardian leap of faith and reap the rewards of prayer.18 As weekly attendance at religious services dips below 30% in the U.S. and below 20% in Europe, and younger generations show little interest in worship, we must work to protect prayer and the religious establishments within which prayer occurs from extinction, or risk losing part of our humanity.19 Prayer, the panacea for the ills of the contemporary world, may have always been there for us—in the church, mosque, or temple just down the road.
Endnotes
1. Andrew Curry, “Göbekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?” Smithsonian Magazine, November 2008, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665/.
2. IBID
3. IBID
4. Adalbert G. Hamman, “Prayer,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed June 12, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/prayer.
5. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (Penguin Random House, 1982), 31.
6. Paul Carls, “Émile Durkheim (1858—1917),” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d., accessed July 14, 2025, https://iep.utm.edu/emile-durkheim/.
7. Gandhi Memorial Center, “Gandhi’s Inspiration from the Prophet Muhammad,” The Gandhi Message, March 22, 2023, https://www.gandhimemorialcenter.org/the-gandhi-message/2023/3/22/gandhis-inspiration-from-the-prophet-muhammad.
8. Manya Jain, “Final Days at Birla House: Gandhi’s Peace Mission Through Fasting and Prayer,” Enroute Indian History, August 16, 2024, https://enrouteindianhistory.com/final-days-at-birla-house-gandhis-peace-mission-through-fasting-and-prayer/.
9. Tyler J. VanderWeele, “Religious Communities and Human Flourishing,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 26, no. 5 (October 2017): 476–81, https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417721526.
10. American Psychiatric Association, “New APA Poll: One in Three Americans Feels Lonely Every Week,” news release, January 30, 2024, https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/news-releases/new-apa-poll-one-in-three-americans-feels-lonely-e.
11. Religion’s Relationship to Happiness, Civic Engagement and Health Around the World (Pew Research Center, 2019), https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/01/Wellbeing-report-1-25-19-FULL-REPORT-FOR-WEB.pdf.
12. IBID
13. IBID
14. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve, 2007), 55.
15. David E. Hamilton, “The Red Scare and Civil Liberties,” Bill of Rights Institute, accessed July 14, 2025, https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-red-scare-and-civil-liberties.
16. Sophia Rose Arjana, “4. Monstrous Muslims: Historical Anxieties and Future Trends” In Religion and Popular Culture in America, Third Edition ed. by Bruce David Forbes and Jeffrey H. Mahan (University of California Press, 2017), 86-88.
17. IBID
18. M. Jamie Ferreira, “Faith and the Kierkegaardian Leap,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Alastair Hannay and Gordon Daniel Marino (Cambridge University Press, 1997), 207–34, https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521471516.009.
19. The Age Gap in Religion Around the World (Pew Research Center, 2018), https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/06/ReligiousCommitment-FULL-WEB.pdf.
Bibliography
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Arjana, Sophia Rose. “4. Monstrous Muslims: Historical Anxieties and Future Trends” In Religion and Popular Culture in America, Third Edition edited by Bruce David Forbes and Jeffrey H. Mahan, 85-99. University of California Press, 2017.
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Hamilton, David E. “The Red Scare and Civil Liberties.” Bill of Rights Institute. Accessed July 14, 2025. https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-red-scare-and-civil-liberties.
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Jain, Manya. “Final Days at Birla House: Gandhi’s Peace Mission Through Fasting and Prayer.” Enroute Indian History, August 16, 2024. https://enrouteindianhistory.com/final-days-at-birla-house-gandhis-peace-mission-through-fasting-and-prayer.
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———. The Age Gap in Religion Around the World. Pew Research Center, 2018. https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/06/ReligiousCommitment-FULL-WEB.pdf.
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