How one should pray not only which words, if any, to use, but also which postures to inhabit remains an active conversation in many religious communities, and the yearning to pray "better" or more "effectively" sustains an industry of gurus and guides.
Is the novel a comment on how one should live?
In each of the Supreme Court's school-prayer cases, the Justices have been trying to avoid, at the minimum, official coercion of children to be religious or endorsement by the state of particular religious activities... What the Supreme Court has recognized and school-prayer advocates sometimes miss, is that the state should not express a view on how anyone should pray.
"Government should never — never — be in the business of telling people how they should pray, or where they can pray," Mr. Bloomberg said on Monday.
Her tribe's leader at the village of Mother's Crown speaks of a goddess, and how everyone should pray to her for answers, with corrupted robots posing an increasing threat to the safety of the human colonies.
Even Christians who share Bryant's theology might still disagree with the exact text of the prayer or take issue with the government telling them when and how they should pray.
Then I remembered what the priest at Maviddapuram told me when I asked how a non-Hindu should pray to Murugan for her mother.
The transformation can be traced to the well-financed influence of Islamic militancy and theological fundamentalism rooted in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia; as these forces spread eastward, so do ideas about how and where Muslims should pray.
We love to tell each other how to behave, and whom to vote for, and what to eat, and what to read, and which songs to listen to, and when and how and if we should pray.
During the meeting, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Don Argue, told Mr. Clinton, "These are praying people," and asked how the group's members should pray for him.
