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Aching for fuller life, a better world

It’s reflected in these prayers and stories, says Peter McGeary

Songs of Praise Book of Prayer
Andrew Barr, editor

Lion Hudson £9.99 (978-0-7459-5247-5)
Church Times Bookshop £9

If you are a secularist liberal, one of the more irritating things about the BBC is the persistent popularity of religious broadcasting. For many years, Songs of Praise has withstood the moderniser and the seculariser, retaining a devoted and substantial following.

Why should this be? Does Songs of Praise express the dying throes of a now defunct culture, in which a faithful few hang on to a pseudo-religious comfort through the safely distant medium of television? Is its place in the modern media culture quaint and eccentric?

Or is it a manifestation of a more genuine, and surprisingly contemporary, need? In the words of the Dean of Windsor, quoted at the beginning of this book, “There is, deep down in each human being, some spiritual impulse and energy that is constantly yearning and aching and longing for a fuller life and a better world.”

I am not sure about the title of this book: there are, indeed, many prayers quoted in the text, and a very good anthology it is, too. But I am not sure that it is a “book of prayer” in the commonly accepted sense.

Rather, it is a series of short chapters about various subjects that have surfaced in the author’s experience (Andrew Barr has spent more than 30 years in religious broadcasting), and have found expression, catharsis, or resolution in prayers old and new.

The prayers range widely in subject matter, and are consistently contemporary in application. Barr gives us the human stories behind the prayers, and sketches the lives for whom the prayers have come to mean so much.

This is a good study of how life can lead to prayer —and not just for fans of Songs of Praise.

The Revd Peter McGeary is Vicar of St Mary’s, Cable Street, London, and a Priest-Vicar of Westminster Abbey.

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