A01=Rodney A. Werline
anthropology of prayer
Author_Rodney A. Werline
Category=QRJP
Category=QRM
Category=QRMF1
Category=QRVC
Category=QRVJ2
early jewish prayer
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
new testament communities
new testament prayer
ritual theory
Product details
- ISBN 9781978705586
- Weight: 590g
- Dimensions: 163 x 227mm
- Publication Date: 11 Oct 2021
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In Whenever They Prayed: Dimensions of New Testament Prayer, Rodney A. Werline shifts the scholarly approach to New Testament prayer from source and genre analyses to seeing prayer as a cultural practice, bringing new dimensions of the prayers to light. Assisted by ritual theorists such as Catherine Bell, Pierre Bourdieu, Talal Assad, and Roy Rappaport, Werline illuminates the genius of the New Testament authors and the members of their communities. Through years of embodied practice, these authors and members acquired an aptitude that humans uniquely possess—the ability through ritual practice to navigate and maintain their relationships with one another and, together, with their God. Werline especially focuses on how their actions brought cultural memory to life, assisted in receiving revelations, protected them from demonic powers, and established and fulfilled their obligations to one another and to that God. The full import of these observations, however, is not possible without placing the prayers within their Second Temple Jewish context. Jewish prayers outside the New Testament should not function as mere “background,” but as evidence of a grand cultural enterprise taking place, in which members of the early church actively participated.
Rodney A. Werline is dean of Howard Chapel, Marie and Leman Barnhill Endowed Chair in Religious Studies, and director of the Center for Religious Studies at Barton College.
