It allows for silent communication (a squeeze of the hand) during the prayer.When praying with small children, it ensures small hands are not making mischief while eyes are (theoretically) closed.(This can be helpful when praying at a restaurant to avoid the awkward situation of a server interrupting a prayer.) It shows who is participating in the prayer.It symbolizes that we are all equal before God and creates a sense of unity.When it comes to holding hands in prayer, I think there are several practical purposes: (Culture and the rejection thereof have a lot more to do with these attitudes than any sort of solid theology.) So while you will still find Christians who think God only hears music accompanied by some sort of keyboard and that guitars are from the devil, most of us are more relaxed about the whole thing. Churches are removing organs (the musical instrument, I mean) because it's getting harder to find decent organists. For instance, as far as I know the only reason we have lots of guitar in our worship services is that it's an easy instrument to learn well enough to make some semblance of music to accompany singing. There's a lot of stuff that Christians (and Protestants in particular) do for strictly practical reasons. So the goto source for Protestants seems to be silent on this issue except that the posture of the hands can be important somehow. We get a hint of the idea of holding hands from this mention in one of Paul's letters:Īnd when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.-Galatians 2:9 ( ESV)Īgain, this sounds more like a handshake than a prayer circle. Of course, praying while putting one's hands on another isn't the same thing as joining hands. That practice has roots in the life of Jesus and in Hebrew culture. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.-Acts 6:6 ( ESV) Laying hands on a person (especially when they are sent off to perform some ministry) has strong support in the practice of the early church. I doubt either of these will be satisfactory to you, but maybe the sociological aspects will be of interest. protest that the custom is not binding (and we can stop at any time).When we do observe some custom, we are very likely to either: We've inherited from Paul a suspicion of traditional rites and practices. Since I've seen a variety of folk in my branch of Christianity hold hands during prayer, I'll assume you've been observing my people. I'm coming at this answer from a Protestant perspective.
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