When prayer is NOT the answer (or isn’t enough)

July 3, 2013

What if prayer lists were work lists?
Yaholo Hoyt, writing for Red Letter Christians, reminds us of teachings from the biblical book of James. Hoyt writes, that “When we ask God to ‘help’ there is an immediate underlying assumption that something is beyond our control. No, wait, not control—responsibility. The farmer does not control nature, but he is responsible for working the land all the same. If someone has fallen on hard times, it seems almost insulting to just say ‘let’s pray for them’ without pausing for a second to ask ourselves, ‘how can WE help?’”  Read more of what he says about ways that we—perhaps all too often— think about prayer.

Letha Dawson Scanzoni is an independent scholar, writer, and editor, and is the author or coauthor of nine books. In 1978, she and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott wrote Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?, one of the earliest books urging evangelical Christians to rethink their views on homosexuality (updated edition, 1994, HarperOne). More recently, Letha coauthored (with social psychologist David G. Myers) What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage (HarperOne, 2005 and 2006). Another of Letha’s most well-known books is All We’re Meant to Be: Biblical Feminism for Today, coauthored with Nancy A. Hardesty (Word Books, 1974; revised edition, Abingdon, 1986; updated and expanded edition, Eerdmans, 1992). Letha served as editor of Christian Feminism Today in both its former print edition (EEWC Update) and its website for 19 years until her retirement in December 2013.

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