Prayer as Remembrance

This essay attempts to describe practices of Bahá'í prayer in a way that will help both Bahá'ís and scholars of religion better understand and interpret these practices. I begin by borrowing from the Bahá'í scriptures what appears to be an important way of talking about Bahá'í prayer: prayer is a process of "remembering." The author then moves on to an extended reflection on prayer as "remembrance," examining several ways that understanding Bahá'í prayer as remembrance might help interpreters of Bahá'í worship better understand Bahá'í conceptions of God, human nature, and the divine-human relationship. The author suggests that prayer in the Bahá'í tradition is a process of first understanding and then overcoming the problematic gap between the human and divine worlds. IThe author then points out that the obligatory prayers can be understood as a particularly efficacious practic of (literally) "re-membering" self, God, and the divine-human relationship. Obligatory prayers are, in Bahá'í language, of "special potency and significance" because they enlist both mind and body in a discipline of remembering.