Prayer was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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Forms of prayerAviod phrases like "The great spiritual traditions", that is an inappropriate tone for an encyclopedia. Bullet points need to be converted to prose. Also avoid weseal words like "Some anthropologists believe . . ."
The act of prayer No references. Lots of weseal words. (partly dealt with)
Include metaphysical examinations of whether prayer can work, in general, or when considered within specific religious traditions.
Prayer in Abrahamic religions The various subsections here should be summaries of the main article. For example look at Prayer in Christianity: main topics are The Early Church; Liturgical; Vocal; Meditative; Prayer of recollection; Contemplative prayer; Physical posture; Charismatic prayer: Speaking in tongues; A Christian philosophy of prayer; Christian Science Prayer; and Epistemological issues. Less than half of these topics are summarized. Your summary of Christian prayer in this article should only need small additions and tweaking to be the lead over at Prayer in Christianity. The same issue needs looking into throughout this section. No references for this section.
How is neopaganism an Abrahamic religion
Prayer in Eastern religions Same issues as last section. Also I am noticing the lack of animist traditions. Having only an Eastern section and a Abrahmic section means other traditions are left out.
Approaches to prayer Needs more references.
Experimental evaluation of efficacy of prayer This is slighty out of context without an introduction to the whole idea of Prayer healing. BTW Prayer healing is a redirect to this article and probably should be addressed directly and bolded.
Historical polytheistic prayerThis is the first the first mention of scrafice related to prayer. Despite the earlier section of "Prayer in the Bible" The whole section seem out of place. Why leave out the Aztecs or the Vikings? And what about non-historical polytheistic prayer? No references
EtymologyI would think this section would be first rather than last. No references. (partly dealt with)
Perhaps ((cquote|If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. - Thomas S. Szasz<ref>[http://thinkexist.com/quotation/if_you_talk_to_god-you_are_praying-if_god_talks/225684.html Thomas Szasz quotes]</ref> )) can be included
Clearly, the article topic here is the comparative discussion of "prayer" in anthropology and comparative religion.
What the article should not focus on, by WP:SS:
prayer healing: this is a very specific subtopic, mostly limited to the past century or so, mostly limited to the Western or Christian sphere. The thing already has its own page
juxtaposition of religious traditions: Christian prayer etc. These are useless unless there is comparative material based on scholarly literature. Otherwise, just use "see also: Christian prayer".
What the article should provide:
definitions of the term by academic field. This is not easy, as the term means vastly different things in different fields.
I have noticed that the lead has been significantly truncated recently, with information about the efficacy of prayer and history of prayer omitted. I can't date this change but I note there was no discussion on the talk page about rewriting the lead? I can understand rationale - to avoid controversial statements - however the lead must summarise all sections of the article, per WP:LEAD. I have reincorporated a couple of sentences that I believe address several topics within the article. I would appreciate some discussion here before these revisions are reverted. --Hazhk (talk) 15:49, 26 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The traditional posture of prayer in medieval Europe is kneeling or supine with clasped hands. Was supine (laying on your back) really a traditional prayer stance? The only illustrations I've seen of someone apparently praying in that position is effigies on tombs, which I expect is an artistic convention rather than an example of how they actually prayed. A quick Google search for medieval images of people praying returns almost exclusively kneeling (on one knee or two), and a few standing. I'm sure I've also seen images of people praying prostrate as well, but they didn't show up in the search. Did people actually pray in a supine position, or is this an error (possibly a confusion between supine and prone)? Iapetus (talk) 21:47, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]