The Work
Richard J. Foster's Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home was published by HarperCollins (HarperSanFrancisco) in 1992, fourteen years after his breakthrough work Celebration of Discipline (1978). It is the most comprehensive of Foster's books, organizing the entire Christian tradition of prayer into twenty-one distinct types arranged in three movements: the inward journey (prayers of adoration, simple prayer, covenant prayer, and so on), the upward journey (communal prayer, prayers of rest, prayers of suffering), and the outward journey (intercessory prayer, healing prayer, prayers of command, authoritative prayer). The book represents the mature synthesis of Foster's lifelong engagement with the spiritual formation tradition across denominational and historical boundaries.
Foster's Celebration of Discipline had introduced a generation of evangelical readers to the classical spiritual disciplines of the Christian tradition - meditation, fasting, study, simplicity, service, confession, worship, guidance, celebration - and placed them in a Quaker context that emphasized both the inward work of the Spirit and the practical transformation of community life. Prayer extends this project specifically to the practice of prayer, drawing on the tradition from Origen and Chrysostom through medieval contemplatives (Julian of Norwich, The Cloud of Unknowing, John of the Cross), Puritan divines (John Owen, Richard Baxter), and modern practitioners (Frank Laubach, Evelyn Underhill, Thomas Kelly).
Biblical Engagement
Matthew 7:7 ('Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you') is the foundational dominical warrant for Foster's entire project: the invitation to prayer as a practice that produces results. Foster takes Jesus's promise seriously and specifically, arguing that prayer is not merely a spiritual exercise but a genuine engagement with a God who responds, who gives, who opens. His treatment of petitionary prayer - often undervalued in contemplative traditions - is shaped by this verse and by the confidence it warrants.
Psalm 88:14 ('Lord, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?') is the text behind Foster's chapter on the 'dark night of the soul' - the experience of divine absence and spiritual desolation that John of the Cross had named and analyzed in the sixteenth century. Foster argues that this experience is not a sign of spiritual failure but of spiritual progress: it is the stripping away of consolations that have been mistaken for God himself, in order that the soul might learn to seek God for God's sake rather than for the gifts God gives. Psalm 88 - the only psalm that ends without resolution, in pure darkness - is the biblical warrant for taking this experience seriously.
Luke 18:1 ('And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint') is the text Jesus introduces the parable of the persistent widow with, and it is one of Foster's governing principles: perseverance in prayer despite discouragement, delay, and apparent divine silence. The parable is not merely a piece of advice about prayer technique but a theological claim about the character of God: the God who appears to be the unjust judge in the parable is actually far more willing to respond than that judge, and the persistence the parable requires is not an attempt to overcome divine reluctance but a discipline that opens the human heart to receive what God is already willing to give.
Romans 8:26 ('Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered') is the Pauline text that undergirds Foster's treatment of contemplative prayer - prayer that goes beyond words into the Spirit's groaning that transcends human articulation. Foster draws on this verse to sanction both the apophatic tradition of the Cloud of Unknowing (prayer that abandons images and concepts) and the charismatic tradition of tongues as a form of Spirit-led prayer that bypasses the limitations of the conscious mind.
Author and Context
Richard Foster was born on May 29, 1942, in Lordsburg, New Mexico, and raised in a Quaker family. He was educated at George Fox College (now George Fox University), a Quaker institution in Newberg, Oregon, and took his doctorate in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. His formation within the Friends (Quaker) tradition gave him a deep appreciation for the inward work of the Spirit and for practices of contemplative listening that distinguished him from the more activist strands of evangelical Christianity.
Foster founded the Renovaré movement in 1988 - a resource for spiritual renewal that draws on the full breadth of the Christian spiritual tradition and deliberately crosses denominational lines - which has provided the institutional context for his work since. Renovaré's model of the 'six streams' of Christian spiritual tradition (the contemplative, the holiness, the charismatic, the social justice, the evangelical, and the incarnational) is an expression of the same inclusive ecumenism that characterizes Foster's approach to prayer.
Prayer was written as a mature complement to Celebration of Discipline and is more theologically sophisticated and more personally vulnerable than his earlier work. Foster acknowledges his own struggles with prayer - the times of aridity, the questions about unanswered prayer, the difficulty of maintaining a consistent practice - with a honesty that distinguishes the book from more programmatic guides.
The Twenty-One Types of Prayer
Foster's twenty-one types represent a comprehensive attempt to map the entire territory of Christian prayer practice, ancient and modern. They include types well-known in the evangelical tradition (simple prayer, intercessory prayer, prayers of adoration) and types less familiar to many readers (apophatic prayer, centering prayer, meditative prayer, sacramental prayer). The organization into three movements - inward, upward, outward - is not hierarchical but developmental: each movement builds on the previous and all three are necessary for a complete prayer life.
The most controversial of Foster's chapters for evangelical readers is his treatment of 'contemplative prayer,' which draws on the Roman Catholic mystical tradition (Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thomas Merton) and contemporary Centering Prayer practice. Some evangelical critics have accused Foster of importing practices that are incompatible with Protestant theology; Foster responds that the contemplative tradition represents not a distinctive Catholic theology but the common inheritance of the whole church, recovered from the spiritual poverty that excessive activism has imposed.
Critical Reception
The book was warmly received across denominational lines: Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox reviewers praised its breadth and its integration of the contemplative and the active. Evangelical critics were more divided: some welcomed the recovery of the full tradition, while others expressed concern about the Catholic and mystical influences.
Dallas Willard, who wrote the foreword to Celebration of Discipline and shared Foster's interest in spiritual formation, praised the book for its comprehensive and non-reductive approach to prayer. Eugene Peterson, whose A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (1980) shared Foster's concern with sustained practice over quick fixes, commended it enthusiastically.
Theological Significance
The book's theological significance lies in its demonstration that the full range of Christian prayer traditions - contemplative and charismatic, individual and communal, silent and verbal, liturgical and spontaneous - is available to contemporary Christians and belongs to the common heritage of the church. Foster's synthesis challenges both the narrowness of evangelical prayer practice (which often privileges extemporary petitionary prayer above other forms) and the narrowness of liberal Protestant practice (which often privileges liturgical prayer above the more charismatic forms).
Legacy
Foster's work on spiritual formation - Celebration of Discipline, Prayer, The Challenge of the Disciplined Life, and the Renovaré Bible - has shaped the spiritual formation movement within American evangelicalism more than any other single body of work. His influence on subsequent spiritual formation writers - Dallas Willard, Eugene Peterson, Ruth Haley Barton, Mark Buchanan - has been formative. Prayer remains the most comprehensive single guide to Christian prayer practice available in English.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should work with Matthew 6:5-15 (the Lord's Prayer as model), Luke 18:1-14 (persistent prayer and humble prayer), John 17 (Jesus's high priestly prayer), Psalm 139 (God's intimate knowledge), Romans 8:26-27 (the Spirit's intercession), and 1 John 5:14-15 (confidence in prayer according to God's will).
Further Reading
- Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline (1978) - the essential companion, establishing the broader spiritual formation context within which prayer is one discipline among several. - Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines (1988) - the most theologically rigorous companion to Foster's more practical approach. - Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion (1941) - the Quaker classic that most directly shaped Foster's spiritual vision.