Relearning the Lord's Prayer

The archbishop of Canterbury suggests that learning the Lord's Prayer in school might not be a bad idea.

"Children are now half as likely to know the text of the Lord's Prayer than they were 40 years ago."

That's the lead of an article in the British newspaper The Telegraph, published in March 2012. It was reporting the findings of a survey of 1,000 children ages 6-12 and 1,000 adults who were in that age group 40 years ago. It found that 92 percent of the adults said they knew the Lord's Prayer as a child, while only 55 percent of today's children knew it.

While the survey about the Lord's Prayer was conducted in Britain, we suspect that a similar poll in this country would yield similar results, for secularization is a feature of our society as well. But perhaps that makes it all the more important that children be taught the Lord's Prayer. While many of us who grew up attending church may find it easy to frame our own sentences in our mind and send them God-ward, not all church attendees find it so easy, and some people with little or no religious training find the whole idea of praying ...