Prayer or Sorcery?

At this year’s Greenbelt Festival, I went to a conversation hosted by Shibboleth magazine on the nature of prayer. At one point they played an audio clip from a woman reflecting on her fertility journey. Friends and fellow Christians had told her, with all sincerity, that they were praying she would conceive. More troublingly, some told her that they had “heard from God” that she would. Rather than comforting her, these assurances weighed heavily. She was not only facing the profound personal struggle of infertility, but now bore the burden of other people’s expectations of God on her behalf.

I was struck by how prayer in this story had become not a gift but a pressure, not a comfort but a burden. It raised a deeply uncomfortable question: might much of what passes for Christian prayer be little more than a Christianised form of sorcery?

The Hebrew Bible repeatedly forbids sorcery:

“You shall not practice augury or witchcraft” (Leviticus 19.26).
“There shall not be found among you… anyone who practices divination or sorcery” (Deuteronomy 18.10).

Why this strict prohibition? Sorcery, in its ancient context, meant seeking to control the gods through rituals, words, or incantations. It was about bending divine power to human will. And it seems to me that the prohibition exists precisely because such attempts damage relationships—both with God and with others. If I declare that my words have secured God’s action, I place myself in power over you, demanding that your life now conform to my “answered prayer.”

And yet, isn’t this how Christians often pray? We tack on the phrase “in Jesus’ name” as though it were a magic spell. We claim God has “answered” us with certainties about what will happen. We sometimes present prayer as a mechanism: if enough faith is applied, the outcome is guaranteed. In these moments, prayer becomes manipulative rather than liberating.

Jesus himself warned against this kind of prayer. “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard because of their many words” (Matthew 6.7). His model of prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, is strikingly un-magical. It does not manipulate God into delivering what we want. It begins instead with re-orientation: your kingdom come, your will be done. Prayer here is not about control but surrender.

This brings me back to the Greenbelt conversation. What if prayer is not about changing God’s mind, or bending God’s will, but about opening ourselves to a different world? When I pray for someone, even if nothing in their external circumstances shifts immediately, I have already shifted. For a moment, my attention has moved beyond myself and towards them, and towards God. The world after that prayer is not the same as it was before, because it contains that moment of attention, compassion, and love.

In that sense, prayer is the opposite of sorcery. Sorcery seeks to control; prayer seeks to release. Sorcery says: “Let the world conform to my will.” Prayer says: “Let me be conformed to God’s will.” Sorcery burdens others with my expectations. Prayer frees me from my own self-centredness.

Does this mean God is unaffected? I don’t think so. The God we meet in scripture is not static but dynamic, engaging in living relationship with humanity. When Moses intercedes for Israel in the wilderness, “the Lord changed his mind about the disaster he planned to bring” (Exodus 32.14). When the people of Nineveh repent, God “changed his mind” and spared the city (Jonah 3.10). In prayer, as we change, so too God is changed—but not by being manipulated, rather by being encountered.

A world in which a prayer has been prayed is always a better world than one in which no prayer has been prayed. Not because the words unlock heaven like a spell, but because prayer opens up space for God’s Spirit to work through us, the body of Christ. That is a mystery far greater than any magic.