At the heart of Christian life and liturgy is the practiceof prayer, that distinctive and yet utterly perplexing act, which believers andnon-believers alike struggle to understand. Drawing on the rich resources of the Christian tradition ofprayer and spirituality (including Origen, Augustine, the Reformers, Karl Barth,Hans Urs von Balthasar and Thomas Merton), liturgical resources, and biblicalmaterial, this book guides the reader through some of the fundamentalquestions, tricky issues, and complex themes surrounding the problem of prayerfrom a Christian perspective. Additionally, Cocksworth describes and investigates therecent re-turns to theologies of prayer and spirituality in contemporaryacademic theology and ethics (including, amongst others, in the work of RowanWilliams, Sarah Coakley, Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells) and provides somereflections on why prayer has suddenly once again become quite fashionable inacademic discourse.Finally, Cocksworth examines some of the problems invarious popular approaches to prayer that market prayer in terms of individualtherapy or are dominated by issues of efficacy and the promise to pray better.