Abstract
This paper compares and analyzes instrumental prayers contained in the prayer books of Christ Embassy and NASFAT: ‘Rhapsody of Reality’ and the ‘NASFAT Prayer Book’ respectively. Christ Embassy is one of the major Pentecostal churches that are rapidly growing in Nigerian urban centres. NASFAT is among the largest Muslim organizations attempting to respond to the Pentecostal tendency to dominate the public sphere. The production and distribution of the written versions of the ‘Rhapsody of Reality’ and NASFAT’s ‘Prayer Book’ provide parts of the funding necessary to run the bureaucracies of these two movements. At the same time, they offer members authoritative and canonized prayers believed to facilitate easy access to the spiritual realm as well providing mechanisms for addressing the challenges of urban environments. The interesting aspect of this paper is grounded on taken the textual practices of the two groups as starting point for comparison. This is because the contents of Rhapsody of Reality and NASFAT’s ‘Prayer Book’ are drawn from the holy books of the two groups—Bible and the Qur’an. Moreover, comparing prayer practices in Christ Embassy and NASFAT would reveal fluid boundaries that exist between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria which sometimes generate dynamics of inter-religious borrowing and mutual influences. The comparison will also critically interrogate the longstanding stance in academia to treat Christians and Muslims as self-contained entities that hardly influence each other except in areas of conflict.