11/07/2025 08:30
- 12:00
HALL: Franz König Hall
Chair:
Myers B.,
Wright S.
Proponent:
Myers B.,
Wright S.
Speaker:
Mart G.,
Myers B.,
Paliyath N.,
Wright S.
This panel explores the evolving role of prayer within the socio-cultural transformations of modernity, focusing on European contexts and beyond. Prayer, as a practice deeply embedded in religious traditions, has historically served as a bridge between individual spirituality and collective identity. However, modernity—characterized by secularization, individualization, and religious pluralization—has challenged traditional forms of prayer while simultaneously creating new opportunities for its reinterpretation and reinvention. Rather than retreating in the face of secularization, prayer emerges in new and surprising forms, reflecting the complexities of modern European intellectual and social contexts.
The panel examines how prayer, both as an idea and a lived practice, has been reimagined in response to modern intellectual and social transformations. How have thinkers, artists, and religious communities negotiated the relationship between prayer and the demands of modern autonomy, reason, and individual expression? To what extent does prayer persist as a mode of resistance against—or accommodation to—the forces of secularization and rationalization? To what extent has prayer continued to function in modernity as an evolving cultural and symbolic reservoir?
By highlighting the creative reinterpretations of prayer in modernity, the panel invites a deeper reflection on how ideas and practices of prayer have continued to shape, and be shaped by, the transformations of European religious and intellectual life.The panel welcomes perspectives from a range of disciplines, including theology, cultural studies, philosophy, sociology, and literary studies.