In this introduction the theme of prayer is brought into an
anthropological discussion. Attending to prayers and how they are
performed and seen to intervene in a social world is a significant
way to engage with matters close to people. As argued in this
introduction, prayers are a way to map affect and affective
relationships people hold in what they are oriented towards and
care about. Here a social perspective on prayer taking its cue from
Marcel Mauss is particularly relevant as it invites us to go beyond
the individual and see how prayers always point to a broader
landscape. The reason for honing in on the social life of prayers is
that it entices a particular form of situated comparison of diverse
forms of Christianity that thereby pushes the anthropology of
Christianity to consider central questions of agency, responsibility
and subjectivity. This introduction argues that attending to the
social life of prayers can be seen as a way of mapping affect.
Prayers in different ways attest to the implicatedness of human
beings in a social world. Furthermore, prayer works as a didactic
tool and is in itself an internal scale of comparison and evaluation
in various Christian formulations.