Talk:Prayer

Prayer is currently a Philosophy and religion good article nominee. Nominated by Brent Silby (talk) at 11:10, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

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Short description: Invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with a deity

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Prayer was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
September 7, 2006	Good article nominee	Not listed
November 7, 2007	Peer review	Reviewed
January 18, 2009	Good article nominee	Not listed

Current status: Former good article nominee

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Supine prayers?

The traditional posture of prayer in medieval Europe is kneeling or supine with clasped hands. Was supine (laying on your back) really a traditional prayer stance? The only illustrations I've seen of someone apparently praying in that position is effigies on tombs, which I expect is an artistic convention rather than an example of how they actually prayed. A quick Google search for medieval images of people praying returns almost exclusively kneeling (on one knee or two), and a few standing. I'm sure I've also seen images of people praying prostrate as well, but they didn't show up in the search. Did people actually pray in a supine position, or is this an error (possibly a confusion between supine and prone)? Iapetus (talk) 21:47, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Article issues and classification

Greetings, this article fails the B-class criteria (#1). There are:

"disputed statements" from 2009,
"articles needing factual verification" from 2018 & 2020
"Articles needing more viewpoints" from 2018 that sounds like balance issues,
"Articles with unsourced statements" from 2021, and the lesser,
"Wikipedia articles needing page number citations" from 2014 & 2020. -- Otr500 (talk) 20:36, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Aboriginal Australians

@Laterthanyouthink: One glaring bit of vandalism that has irked me for many years is this diff that introduced this error some 15 years ago. As I know enough about the subject to know that in fact I don't know very much about it, I've been reluctant to call it out in the past. Now that this GA review is underway, I'll make a stab at it, and hopefully other more knowledgeable editors can make any necessary improvements, and add citations. Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 05:38, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of deity? I'm afraid that I know next to nothing about the topic and am just too busy off-wiki at the moment to look into it. Looking forward to seeing your improvements! Laterthanyouthink (talk) 09:38, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Bahudhara I support your edit. A quick google search was unable to find anything related to "Great Wit" in a religious context of Aboriginal Australians. It appears to be some sort of vandalism to me. Brent Silby (talk) 10:06, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, sorry, I didn't get that far down (being very pressed for time at the moment). Weird mixture of vandalism and apparently OK edits. The bit about Muslims is sus too. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 12:01, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Brent Silby I'm not surprised that your search didn't turn up anything in relation to "Great Wit" - it had immediately struck me as pure vandalism, with some template decapitalisations to make it look legitimate. I didn't want to simply revert it, as I considered that the term it replaced ("Great Spirit") seemed equally problematic. (It had been introduced in this edit by a now-inactive Canadian editor, who self-identified on his userpage as Christian, and it appears that his only knowledge of Aboriginal Australian mythology / cultural practice came from his reading of Elkin's Aboriginal Men of High Degree. "Great Spirit" is a term that comes from a North American context, and might be useful in elaborating the following paragraph on the Pueblo Indians - but that's a subject on which I'm totally ignorant.)

I don't have a copy of that particular book by Elkin, but I do have another by him (as well as others, e.g. by Berndt, Worms, etc.). It's not my field of expertise, but even I can see that some of the ideas/attitudes expressed in these 50+ year-old works are rather dated. Amongst Aboriginal Australians there are several hundred language groups with wide variations in culture, which continue to evolve through the continuing impact of Christian missions during colonisation, and subsequent revitalisation of culture in the modern period. This is a very complex and sensitive topic, and in the context of this article it seems that the best thing that I can do at present is to just provide some links to other relevant articles. Bahudhara (talk) 06:14, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, @Bahudhara! Thanks for doing a deep dive into the origin of that edit. The Canadian editor appears to be inactive, but it never hurts to ping them. His Wikipedia account might be linked to an email address.

@Blanchardb are you still active? Brent Silby (talk) 14:36, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Request for a GAN review

Hi, @Bahudhara and @Laterthanyouthink. We had a lovely discussion about reverting vandalism on this page (about Aboriginal Australians). I wanted to mention that I have recently nominated this article for a Good Article status. Is either one of you willing to perform a review? That would be greatly appreciated, since I was not able to find any other people willing to do it. Brent Silby (talk) 21:52, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have any experience with GA reviews, or much time at present. I've just made a couple of tweaks to the section on Buddhism, but still feel uncomfortable about some of the wording in that section; and as I mentioned above, the section on North American Indian practices is quite inadequate. In general, I feel there's an imbalance between the amount of space devoted to Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic religions over the whole article, and not just in the specific sections.

Re finding a GA reviewer, perhaps @Joshua Jonathan: might offer some suggestions. Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 03:02, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't participate in GA-projects; to me, they're vanity-projects, with sometimes articles ending-up with a status shich is undeserved and misleading. Sorry... Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 03:31, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

non verbal prayer?

I've anecdotally heard that yoga positions are a form of prayer? Not sure if true, if verified by academic sources. I also heard that hand mudras can also be for prayer? Also I heard that in tibetan buddhism, also non verbally, it is understood that turning a wheel with words on it counts as saying the words? counts as prayer? All of these I think are not currently in the article? (note: following be bold, be reverted, take it to talk page) (wasn't aware it's a good article nominee - sorry for any trouble) User:D Kirlston - talk 23:49, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The latter is mentioned under "See also" as Prayer wheel, that list also includes (Tibetan) Prayer flag. Other articles which could be linked include Parikrama, Yatra, Japamala and Prostration (Buddhism). Bahudhara (talk) 03:42, 3 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]