I have a question for Christian dopers regarding prayer etiquette. My brother’s wife is religious. She is Episcopalian. Neither my wife, my brother nor I are religious. My Sister’s husband is Catholic.
Now that we have the players laid out, here is the situation. When my SiL hosts dinners, she starts with grace. No big deal, it’s their house, their rules. We hold hands and she says grace. As atheists, my wife and I just kind of stare at the carpet and wait for it to be over. Her prayers tend to be specific: please bless Madmonk28 as he returns to Iraq, or whatever.
The last dinner at their house, my SiL invited my wife’s husband to say grace, as I said, he is Catholic. When he says grace he doesn’t hold hands, and his prayer is kind of formulaic and the same every time. So he says his standard pre-meal prayer, says amen and crosses himself. When he finished, my SiL adds “and please bless Cindy who is having surgery, and Frank who is ill, etc. etc.” Essentially, she added an addendum to the prayer.
I have never attended church of any kind, but to me and my wife, the whole thing seemed rude. She asked my BiL to say grace and he said it. Her addition to his prayer seemed to say he hadn’t done it correctly. Also, it’s weird to us that she had to say those things out loud as if God would say to himself, “I guess the Madmonk clan doesn’t care Cindy and Frank, I guess I’ll kill them.”
What do Christian dopers think?
Full disclosure, I don’t particularly like my SiL and think she is a ball-busting control freak, so that might color my opinion.
I had to chuckle when I read this disclaimer. I’m not a Christian, so I can’t answer you. Sorry. But I do think the above statement says quite a lot about the circumstances. Prayer etiquette would hardly seem to matter if you don’t believe in prayer anyway.
Well, it was clear that my BiL was kind of offended and another full disclosure: my sister and BiL don’t care too much for my SiL either (to be honest, she seems to bug my brother, her husband too).
Sure, our prayers can be formulaic, but you know that going in; if you want free-form prayer, go with a different Christian denomination for your pre-meal blessing needs.
It seems to me like the addenda were indicative not of a desire to have the prayers added, but of an intrafamily dynamic that has nothing to do with worship (ph34r my 1337 diplomacy skillz!).
Joke’s on her, though. Every good Catholic knows that once you say “Amen” and cross yourself, that’s like hanging up the phone. God didn’t hear her anyway- he’s still going to kill everyone who went unmentioned.
I’ve never seen it done, but I don’t think its rude. Or, I don’t think its any more rude than praying at the table with your atheist guests (which one could argue is rude in some circumstances, but here it seems to pass). Her addendum is clearly offered for the benefit of others in need (as far as I can tell), and while this may be nonsensical to a non-believer I couldn’t imagine how another believer could be offended. Now, if she were to jump in with her own version of the Lord’s Prayer, or if here addendum goes on for 10 minutes, than that would be one thing. But a simple prayer for Cindy in the hospital? Worth allowing the host a few more moments.
One clarification, the “cindy” (not her real name) prayed for was my wife who had surgery scheduled soon and she also mentioned some other folk, I think she included her father who has health issues.
As I said, my wife and I are atheists and SiL knows that. When I was in Iraq, she always made a poing of telling me that her church included me in a list of people to pray for serving overseas (I’m not military, but a foreign aid worker). I always shrugged it off and said something like, “oh, that’s nice of them”. She does make a point of praying for us a lot, it is mildly irritating, but not worth a drama. As for praying before meal in her house, my attitude is she invited us, we know it’s part of the deal when we accept the invitation.
As a Catholic, I would not have found the situation rude, per se. If my non-Catholic friends/family call on me to say grace and then tack on a couple of petitions when I have finished, I just figure that they are more comfortable with the more open-ended format and I do not take it as an insult. (Heck, my Mom, who is so Catholic she makes Benny XVI look like John Calvin, always tacks on a couple of personalized petitions, regardless who leads the prayer in what format.)
Of course, if there is some additional family dynamic involved, that is a separate issue. My personal view is that if we agree on praying to God, we should be tolerant of others’ expressions, (as long as the “petitions” do not become a list of “character traits” that the pray-er is hoping to “correct” among the others in attendance. (C’mon! It is 30 seconds or a minute out of the evening (fifteen seconds for the standard Catholic prayer including signs of the cross). It is not something to get upset about.)
She has been to our house and we don’t pray before meals (or ever). She might say something to herself, I don’t notice/care. I want guests to be comfortable. Believe me this is the least irritating thing she’s ever done, most annoying would be the time she wanted us to lavish attention on her when my mom was in the hospital for a stroke.
I’m an atheist, and have been “blessed” with some pretty strongly religious friends who pray for me often. I will always show respect for blessings at other folks houses, but IMHO, to tack on anything at the end of someone else’s prayer other than “AMEN” is pure attention-getting behavior.
My first thanksgiving with my husbands family, they asked the son to say the prayer, he said the prayer, then the grandson wanted to say a prayer and then someone else piped up to offer a prayer and the daughter said “I think the food is blessed enough considering we are all a bunch of heathens.” and then turned and asked me what my favorite shooting range was. Yes, it was her son I married. (who of course, years later gave me shit for not having my daughter christened)
There is a place in the Sunday service, at Episcopalian churches, during the Prayers of the People, when it is encouraged that folks add their own “please bless so-and-so” type thing. Perhaps she is accustomed to that, and added her own ‘additional’ prayers.
Addenda to prayers is not necessarily rude, but could be circumstantially rude. Depending on the players, multiple people praying before a meal (even though someone has said “Amen”) is totally ok, sometimes even expected. (e.g., if someone had something that was really weighing on their mind, I wouldn’t give a second thought to them continuing the prayer)
Hmmm. Well, I tend towards thinking your SiL was kind of rude, but I can’t find a specific etiquette cite to back me up.
I’m an atheist, but I think that once you ask somebody to give a blessing, then it’s best to just take what he’s given you, even if it isn’t exactly what you’d have said yourself. Adding to the blessing does seem (to me, at least) to be making a statement that the blessing given wasn’t adequate on its own. If she felt that she had to have a ‘Protestant style’ blessing (not a rote prayer; and with specific requests included), then she shouldn’t have asked a Catholic to do the honors.
Anyway, that’s my take – as I said, though, I can’t find any offical support for my opinion.
My family is, as usual for Spain, composed of the practicing Catholic, the not-so-practicing Catholic, the folkloric Catholic (those who go to religious parades more often than to Mass) and the baptised who burned churches and killed priests during the last Republic.
We don’t ask Gramps the republican church-burner to say grace. We don’t ask Grandma (who only sets foot in a church for St Lucy’s) to say grace. Whomever is saying grace says whatever grace he wants to say. In general, we avoid versions of grace that we know will be offensive to others around the table. I say in general because Middlebro has been known to choose Dad’s retromonarchic version after Gramps had been making very rude jokes regarding The Nephew’s paternity (The Nephew being Middlebro’s son; in effect, my always-so-charming Gramps had been calling SiL a whore)… SiL was confused but Mom just patted her hand and said “don’t worry, it’s an ‘all in the family’ thing.”
The OP’s SiL is an idiot. Asking someone to say grace and then finishing it is like ramming into someone’s kitchen and trying what’s on the fire - let the cook do his own cooking!
There is no issue for people to add on to prayers, and this is commonly done at prayer meetings of the church of Christ (church just meaning followers of Jesus, having nothing to do with pointy buildings), as the Spirit of God moves people. It is not correcting them, it is each contributing their insight to the Glory of God. Each of us only has a piece of the total picture.
In this situation however is a bit different, it’s not so much as a prayer gathering as a dinner event. While it’s proper to pray for a blessing on the food and always give thanks and praise to God, going beyond that in this situation, with non-believers I don’t know if it’s the best thing to go into long details unless those people are at the point where they may start follow Christ.
It appears like she may be doing it to express her concern for the other people, and to comfort herself, but it’s hard to tell, she may be moved by God’s Holy Spirit to do what she is doing.
I’m not an atheist, and I think she was being an attention whore too. Given that grace is not the only oportunity one has to pray - in fact most theists are “allowed” to pray any time they want to - it was completely unnecessary for her to pray then. And even if she thought it was absolutely necessary to pray just then, why didn’t she pray silently? I can’t think of a non-attention whore reason to have jumped in with her own out-loud prayer after amen.
this strikes me more as part of the "control freak"dynamic than a religious question. You (madmonk) seem to have a mature/respectful attitude towards the whole thing. But (I am Christian) when someone is invited to say grace before a meal in my house, it is clear before hand whether or not others are invited to add their own petitions, or if it is just one person asking the blessing and then everyone says Amen.
Someone else chiming in anyway is not exactly rude, unless (as you mentioned) it is a habit by that person that is expressed in other ways as well.
Not speaking for all SoBabtists but way back when I actually attended, it was very common for several people to take turns adding addendums to other folks prayers. It was bad form to allow dinner to get cold but there was no such thing as a “short” prayer in my family or in my church. In church they could easily take an hour to get through with everyone saying Amen dozens of times. They were also quite specific as to what they prayed for such as, “Please bless my brother Kyle as he came home late last night and was probably drunk and out whoring around with that nasty Sue again.” And this with Kyle and Sue right there.
(who of course, years later gave me shit for not having my daughter christened)