Soul searching: Prayer and the process of education

Prayer is a controversial issue in education. What, if anything, ought to be its role in the schools of open liberal democratic societies? Scholarly discussions of this issue have generally focused on two issues. First, whether it is possible to educate in religion without succumbing to morally reprehensible indoctrination; and second, whether prayer should be allowed in common in addition to faith school in liberal democracies, and if so in what forms and circumstances. Less attention has been paid, however, to the nature of prayer itself and its relation to the process of education, to the potential value of worship in democratic schools from an educational perspective. This question calls for an inquiry into the nature of education, prayer, and the relation between them, which is what I propose to conduct in this chapter.