Beyond Jabez

Prayer is clearly a hot topic these days, and publishers' reactions to the success of "the Bible's Little Big Man"—Jabez—have been swift and decisive. While many books have sought to emulate Jabez's successful formula with various knockoffs and rip-offs, others offer an entirely different view. In Praying Like Jesus: The Lord's Prayer in a Culture of Prosperity, James Mulholland challenges the Wilkinsonian view that prayer exists to change an individual's personal fortunes. Rather, he argues, prayer is about communicating with God the way Jesus did—hence the book's structure around the phrasing and themes of the Lord's Prayer as found in the New Testament. Far more than a "sour grapes" approach to Jabez's phenomenal success, this important corrective offers strong, thoughtful theology in its own right. (Harper San Francisco, $14.95 144p ISBN 0-06-001156-4; Oct.)

A more predictable "reaction book" is Ken Hemphill's The Prayer of Jesus: The Promise & Power of Living in the Lord's Prayer, which tackles most of the same themes as Mulholland's but without the same finesse. (Broadman & Holman, $9.99 112p ISBN 0-8054-2567-5; Nov.)

Speaking of prayer in the New Testament... 12 biblical scholars including N.T. Wright and David Aune offer the anthology Into God's Presence: Prayer in the New Testament, exploring the topic by first examining prayer in the Jewish tradition, in the Greco-Roman world and in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The essays then discuss prayer in the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles, ending (of course!) with a coda essay on prayer in the Book of Revelation. (Eerdmans, $28 307p ISBN 0-8028-4883-4; Oct.)

Beyond the Christian tradition, Praying Dangerously: Radical Reliance on God stands out as an almost mystical approach to prayer as communion with the divine. Drawing on Sufism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, Regina Sara Ryan, a former Roman Catholic nun, writes with passion and energy about what she calls "transformational" prayer, which seeks to annihilate the individual soul in favor of union with the Divine. (Hohm, $14.95 250p ISBN 1-890772-06-2; Oct.)

In The Way We Pray: Prayer Practices from Around the World, Maggie Oman Shannon asks readers to imagine a world in which "everything we do has the potential to be prayerful." She explores not the content of prayers—what is said—but the experiential practice of prayer in the world's religious traditions. Tibetan Buddhists pray with beads; what does that mean? Sufis dance when they pray; what can that teach us? It's an imaginative approach. As readers learn more about the religious practices of the world—painting icons, feasting, hoisting prayer flags, making milagros or wearing amulets—they will be challenged to think about prayer in fresh ways. (Conari, $15.95 220p ISBN 1-57324-571-2; Oct.)

Basic Buddhism

There seems to be no end to the introductory books crammed onto the Buddhism bookshelves these days, but Counsels from My Heart offers novice practitioners earnest wisdom from a Tibetan master, Dudjom Rinpoche (1904—1987). He does a fine job of presenting basic concepts like samsara and the Four Noble Truths, along with some reflections on the importance of the Dalai Lama and the dream for a free Tibet. (Shambhala, $19.95 112p ISBN 1-57062-844-0; Oct.)

Christopher Titmuss (Light on Enlightenment) culls together brief daily reflections in The Buddha's Book of Daily Meditations: A Year of Wisdom, Compassion, and Happiness. With just one quick quotation for each day of the year, the book at first glance appears superficial—but these excerpts are deceptively simple. Readers who take the time to engage them fully will profit from their paradoxical wisdom. (Three Rivers, $14 paper 400p ISBN 0-609-80780-3; Nov.)