The Social Science Research Council’s Program on Religion and the Public Sphere announces Why Prayer? A Conference on New Directions in the Study of Prayer(February 6-7, 2015).

Elizabeth McAlister has written an op-ed piece for the LA Times on imprecatory prayer and claiming credit for negative events.

In November, Winifred Fallers Sullivan contributed an essay on a case that was currently being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, The Town of Greece v. Galloway.

In the April Issue of Readers Digest, an essay on “How and Why We Pray” quotes two NDSP grantees, Elizabeth Drescher and Tanya Luhrmann. The article, which takes a closer look at prayer practices in various communities around the United States, examines the ways in which prayer practices have evolved more recently. 

In a similar vein as Elizabeth Drescher’s NDSP research, Michelle Boorstein at The Washington Post writes of a documented rise in praying atheists or “nonbelievers.”

In a video lecture for The Floating University, New Directions in the Study of Prayer advisory committee member, Paul Bloom, gives a broad talk on the field of psychology and the science of the human mind. The lecture, titled, The Psychology of Everything: What Compassion, Racism, and Sex tell us about Human Nature, explores the fundamental elements of human nature.

New Directions in the Study of Prayer grantee Ruth Marshall has received a Chancellor Jackman Fellowship in the Humanities from the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto. The fellowship will begin in June 2013.