Give me what I need now – or I’ll be bloody angry!

New prayers challenge old formulas.

It’s taken 3 years for a working-group to reach agreement on a new collection of prayers which attempts to capture the language of everyday Danish. They are written by 97 different pastors and lay writers and are far more direct and less humble than those the church is used to. “Give us this day our daily bread” has given way to the prayer in the headline above.

 

Some might not call that a ‘prayer’, but one of the authors, Pastor Jørgen Demant, Lyngby Church, tells the daily newspaper Politiken: “The conversation with Our Lord doesn’t need to be in an especially reverent language. It can be in a language you feel at home in. God is with us everywhere, also when you’re up to your neck in shit or you’ve just dropped half your shopping outside the supermarket.”

 

In competition with spirituality
Among the 23 themes are joy, work, sex, and everyday life, each with a biblical text and a bridge to the prayers in the form of a biblical ballad to help steer the text into the modern universe of the prayer. Researcher Marie Vejrup Nielsen of the Department for the Study of Religion at Aarhus University says: “The new generation of clergy know that there is competition in the market, not so much against secularization as against spirituality. Prayers are the church’s offer for religious practice.”

 

The prayers are not authorized for church use – only the bishops can decide that. But Bishop of Haderslev, Niels Henrik Arendt believes that some of them will find their way into the service. “There are already points in the service where the pastor can pray freely and that is where some of these prayers could be used.” The bishop is tolerant of some of the more colourful language (see the prayers below): “If there is one area where we must return to childhood it is in our relation to the Lord. So I accept the use of ‘shitty nappies’ and ‘bloody angry’ as part of the search for an ‘everyday devotion’ that can keep faith alive.

 

Two examples of the new prayers:

All that stuff about being good to one another and the animals
and all that Jesus sauce
Well, excuse me!
Let me
get to the heart of the matter
I’m not nice to other people
I’m not the way you want
me to be
I’m a human being for better or worse
but I still know that you’re there for me
whatever

 

God
now it’s everyday again
he’s so demanding
it’s nothing but feeding, toys ans shitty nappies
There’s nothing left for us
when he’s had what he needs
Look after us so we don’t let go

Photo: iStockphoto.com

By: Edward Broadbridge

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