Praying Truthfully

Sincerity and the Inducing of Belief

Bibliographic Data

ID14760205
AuthorsMichael Haruni (0000-0001-8713-851X, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume50
Issue4
Pages645-669
Publication date2022-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Religious Ethics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0384-9694 • E-ISSN: 1467-9795
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/jore.12415
OpenAlexW4315780386
LanguageEN
References cited49

In a Jewish context, it seems, it is a naïve consensus view that in praying liturgically one aims to express to God, in the manner of ordinary, interpersonal conversation, those thoughts stated by the text. But on this ordinary conversation model (OCM), a problem of insincerity arises when, as commonly happens, the text states a claim the practitioner does not believe. The idea of redeeming one's prayer by reinterpretation is, I argue, incompatible with OCM. Another strategy, which finds some encouragement in Jewish tradition, is to try inducing the missing belief . I further argue, however, that for one's expression of a belief to be proper, in the sense of being authentic , this belief must be corroborated by the evolving, diachronically largely‐coherent understanding distinctive of one's person—a requirement which an induced, otherwise‐missing belief cannot fulfill. This, I suggest, provides some reason to seek a model of liturgical prayer different from OCM

Aesthetics · Blessing · Complaint · Context (archaeology · Conversation · Epistemology · Forgiveness · Interpersonal communication · Linguistics · Political science · Prayer · Reinterpretation · Sincerity · Sociology · Theology · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Theology and Philosophy of Evil

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