Relating different types of Christian prayer to religious and psychological measures of well-being

This research explores whether persons who practice different types of Christian prayer can be differentiated according to measures of spiritual and clinical well-being. Building upon Poloma and Gallup's study (1991), this research conceptualizes prayer as a means of relating to the divine with increasing health related benefits occurring as one progresses spiritually through prayer-types (from conversational to meditative to contemplative). A theoretical paradigm for understanding the relationship among Christian prayer types and well-being is developed using relevant literature in psychology, medicine, biblical studies, theology, history of Christian spirituality, and psychology of religion.;In an empirical phase, 264 adults completed these nine measures assessing religious and psychological factors that might correlate with prayer type: the Prayer Questionnaire (Poloma and Gallup, 1991), the Spiritual Well-Being Scale (Ellison, 1983), the Mysticism Scale (Hood et al. 1993), the Richness of Prayer Experience Index (Poloma and Pendleton, 1989), the Bell Object Relations and Reality Testing Inventory (Bell, 1989), the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Raskin and Hall, 1979), the Defense Mechanisms Inventory (Ihilevich and Gleser, 1986), the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Speilberger et al. 1983), and a demographic and religious questionnaire.;The findings partially support the hypothesis that there is a progression of prayer types. Conversational prayer, in comparison to meditation and contemplative prayer, was less highly correlated with existential well-being, mystical experience, and richness of prayer experience and most highly correlated with anxiety and unhealthy internal representations of relationships, namely insecure attachment and social incompetence. Meditation and contemplative prayer, in comparison to conversational prayer, were more highly correlated with existential well-being, mystical experience (meditation prayer with extrovertive mysticism and contemplation with introvertive mysticism), and richness of prayer experience and less highly correlated with anxiety and unhealthy internal representations of relationships.;This interdisciplinary study suggests that future research on prayer needs to specify which types of prayer are being studied. This cross-sectional study further suggests that longitudinal studies can clarify whether people with lower levels of well-being are drawn toward lower levels of prayer type, or whether, over time, prayer type moves in a progression from lower to higher, with similar changes in well-being.