This is not a book of piety. The reader will not find recommendations or advice about how to pray well, or any examples. I am not trying to guide him in his prayer, or provide him with a prayer book. I am too deeply convinced that prayer is an act involving the whole person, a decision which is profoundly individual. Hence it is not for me to direct and influence the reader. (v)

With these direct words revealing his existential commitments, Jacques Ellul begins his brief reflection on prayer. True prayer, for Ellul, is not found in any of the comforting images that Christians are raised on. It’s not a telephone to heaven, or the corporate recitation of a formula. I suppose his view of Pentecostalism would be covered by “Dionysiac prayer” where the congregation indulges in “[l]eaps and shakings, invocations repeated a hundred times over in a shrill voice, the clapping of the hands, beating time with the entire body until suddenly one of the participates who is laid hold of by God begins the dance of the possessed” (24).

Yeah, Ellul is a little opinionated.

For Ellul, modern people do not need to pray. Our needs are generally met, leaving no need to petition a higher power. In light of this, there is only one reason to pray: obedience to the command of God. As we pray thus, we engage in combat. As Kierkegaard wrote, “[t]rue prayer is a struggle with God, in which one triumphs through the triumph of God” (in Ellul 139). In prayer as combat, we reject the crass idea that God is merely an “agent for satisfying the needs created by our society” (144). Instead, in light of the revelation of Jesus, prayer is an opportunity for “warfare against the religious” (147). It’s no wonder that Ellul cited Kierkegaard. Bourgeoisie Christendom be damned!

It pains me to write this next part, because I’ve valued Ellul’s thought immensely over the years. The Meaning of City and important views on technology have had a significant impact on my worldview. While there are many inspiring passages in Prayer and the Modern Man, Ellul is ultimately unconvincing because he refused to take into consideration the lived reality of Christians who actually pray. Instead, he took the first chapter to invalidate their piety. Ellul’s acceptance of the strictures of modernity led him to posit an anemic version of prayer that will only be helpful for the most extreme disciplined existentialists.

Ellul, Jacques. Prayer and Modern Man. Translated by C. Edward Hopkin. Seabury, 1970.