Abstract
Studies into the nature of Christian prayer and the Lord’s Prayer in particular have become especially prolific over the last thirty or forty years. One recalls, for example, Benson and Wirzba’s Phenomenology of Prayer, Glavich’s more practical Prayer First! for classrooms, and Rolheiser’s formational and psychological Prayer: Our Deepest Longing. Cronshaw’s book strikes a different cadence with a focus on its stated aim of offering strategies for fostering prayer and spirituality within an approach to mission that centers on neighborhood transformation and global needs. It does this by employing the Lord’s Prayer as a radical blueprint for theology, prayer, and praxis. In this sense it could be used in a complementary manner with other books on the same theme, such as John Dominic Crossan’s biblical and theological treatment, The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer, and Pope Francis’ more homiletic and formational approach in Our Father: Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer.
Cronshaw pursues a different but harmonizing rhythm in his book with the belief that sustainability in mission is not possible without prayer, nor is prayer possible without mission. One recalls the adage of Evagrius Ponticus: “If you are a theologian you pray; If you pray you are a theologian.” The Lord’s Prayer is dangerous because it seeks what it pronounces—the living out of a countercultural and radical stance in response to what is prayed and at the service of God’s kingdom. This kingdom demands of the Christian an approach to prayer that honors restoration, justice, forgiveness, and a transparent preaching of the gospel.
Dangerous Prayer is divided into five sections focused on the Lord’s Prayer and bookended by an introduction and a conclusion. The author concentrates his commentary on the Prayer’s key themes of: Our Father, Your Kingdom come, Our daily bread, Forgive us, and Deliver us. Michael Frost’s foreword opens with Karl Barth’s chilling assertion, “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” This evokes the spirit which guides Cronshaw’s entire meditation on prayer as a dangerous life commitment.
Dangerous Prayer urges its readers throughout to cultivate contemplative space for this dangerous prayer. The author sustains his readers with prayer strategies for the journey in the form of reading prayer books, retreats, centering prayer, the Ignatian examen, and lectio divina (sacred reading). Perhaps one of the associated dangers of such practices is that they slow us down in order to place us more securely in God’s presence, which was there all along—as Meister Eckhart says, it is we who have left home and gone away: God remains present to us continually.
The author situates the “dangerous” nature of the Lord’s Prayer in its opening invitation to embrace God as “Our Father,” One who cares for the whole world and challenges us to the radical hospitality of God. Equally, this model for all prayer demands that we confront injustice, selfishness, and individualism—ours and others’. It urges us to pray for the daily bread of all people and to actively work for its provision. It invites radical forgiveness and deliverance from a culture of objects and rampant consumerism. Each chapter concludes with suggestions for journaling, reflection, and discussion.
Perhaps one of the most trenchant litmus tests for the prayer “theses” contained within Dangerous Prayer is to counterpoint its claims against other analyses of the nature of Jesus’ own prayer life and his teaching on prayer. In this, the gospel examples match well with the book contents—each of the following two perspectives on prayer are present in Cronshaw’s book to varying degrees. If they happen not to be strong in this book, it is this reviewer’s belief that they will become more prominent in Cronshaw’s future works as he better articulates his connected vision of prayer, theology, and mission. Ryken, Wilhoit, and Longman (1989) in their Dictionary of Biblical Imagery accentuate the metaphor of prayer as conversation that is expressed through strong emotional responses (crying, beseeching, seeking, chutzpah). In such ways, prayer is an embodied response to God that includes the elements of speaking, waiting, and listening. Silence and solitude are also key to this ecology of prayer.
This is reflected in a similar manner in Sheldrake’s (2005) treatment of prayer in his Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality. Perhaps one form that could be given more emphasis in the book is the Jesus Prayer and its associated form, the Prayer of the Heart or Stillness. True, various forms of Eastern spirituality are addressed by Cronshaw such as praying with icons. However, the Jesus Prayer has a special place in this Eastern taxonomy and is a “dangerous prayer” due to its barefaced approach to a person’s sinfulness and his or her vulnerability to silence (“Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner”). The prayer of stillness or hesychia calls the pray-er to quietness and withdrawal. It is this state and type of prayer that frees a person from the loud demands of the mental imagination as well as from bodily and psychological desires. As John of Damascus (eighth century) expressed it succinctly, “Hesychia gives birth to prayer, and prayer is the mother of the vision of God.”
Cronshaw’s formational reflections successfully challenge the reader to consider shifts in their own thinking, theology, and praxis—such as what I would term “theological refurbishment” towards divine parenting, stretching one’s relationship with God to a bigger, more expansive Presence, and commitment to a social justice that feels the pain of others (com-passion) and seeks to address it. His book is replete not only with approaches to prayer but also saintly models for one’s prayer life, such as Oscar Romero, who “walked the talk” of prayer and social justice. He also considers anti-models, as in the dialectic between a “get more” Howard Hughes and a “give more” Mother Teresa.
Dangerous Prayer concludes with some 25 versions of the Lord’s Prayer, ripe for recitation, reflection, and contemplation. This is supplemented by an extensive and useful bibliography along with 25 pages of explanatory notes. This book is highly recommended for anyone who prays and who has experienced difficulty or dryness in prayer (most Christians and those of other faiths), for teachers, parishioners, worshippers, parish workers, theologians, and spiritual formators. It is especially recommended for those who habitually struggle with dualisms such as individual–community, body–soul, and action–contemplation. It will also assist those who perennially “do” and “agitate” in a state of relentless movement, with less time subsequently devoted to silence, contemplation, and private intimacy with God.
All of which is eloquently expressed in Cronshaw’s own exhortation: “Be encouraged to pray dangerously and live dangerously—let your prayers and life embrace the world…We need to act in ways that honour God” (p. 81). In order for this to transpire, as Richard Rohr suggests, our little kingdoms have to go (disappear) before God’s larger Kingdom can come. Only then can the world’s “nightmare” be transformed into “God’s dream” for humanity and the cosmos. I am certain that Darren Cronshaw and his book would respond with a decisive “Amen” and “Thy Kingdom come” to each of those assertions.