Secondhand Prayer

A man who once lived in Tibet’s forbidden city of Lhasa wrote of his experiences in the July, 1955, issue of The National Geographic Magazine. He mentioned the Tibetans’ use of prayer flags and wheels. At the homes of the well-to-do, prayer wheels are huge. One Tibetan home, said the former Lhasa resident, had a massive eight-foot prayer drum; it was cranked day and night by men hired for the job of praying for the wealthy householder. A short item in a Philadelphia newspaper caused thinking persons to ponder that some professed Christians are not much different from the Tibetan who hires others to “say” his prayers. Said The Sunday Bulletin (June 26, 1955):

“A church in Scarsdale, N.Y., has been experimenting with an innovation which gives a strangely mechanical touch to the most intimate of religious experiences. It is offering a morning and evening ‘prayer of the day’ by telephone. Anyone dialing SC 3-4567 hears a recorded one-minute prayer, much as he might receive the weather report by dialing another number. The response has been astounding. . . . Now the word has spread to other cities, and the New York Telephone Company is dismayed to find that the flood of calls has swamped its lines, and compels the installation of new equipment. . . . It seems hardly likely that so many hundreds have been dialing SC 3-4567 just to hear a recorded voice.” Like the pagan Tibetans many in Christendom practice secondhand prayer, substituting a mechanical device or a book for the human heart.