One cannot long discuss prayer without probing the much larger and currently popular subject of spirituality. But ‘spirituality’ turns out to be a notoriously slippery word. The government of the Republic of China can speak quite eloquently of ‘spiritual culture’, but ‘spiritual’ in such a context has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, nor with the Bible, but with psychological well-being and aesthetic values. Even if we restrict ourselves to the dominant world religions, ‘spirituality’ turns out