Informationally-- since I coordinate the "prayer chain" and I don't want people confused by an uninformed use of the term--

There is no "prayer chain" in the threads. There IS an email prayer chain a lot of Catters belong to, and from time to time, notices about the operation of the chain are posted in the BS section. Not the prayer needs, or who's in the chain of people who pray about them, but the OPERATION of it. The current FAQ for it is viewable at the Annexe and people have to agree to it before they are added to the mailing list.

The prayer requests section at the Annexe usually contains much the same stuff as requests people post here in the Mudcat BS threads. Not every Mudcat BS thread about prayer needs appears at the Annexe, and not every prayer need posted at the Annexe is posted here, but they are usually pretty similar as to content and depth, and sometimes the request is a copy-paste from one site to the other.

Depth? What do I mean, DEPTH? I'm not sure-- maybe it isn't the right word-- but what I mean is that the EMAIL prayer chain tends to get requests more personal, more in need of privacy, in nature.... stuff people don't tend to talk about publicly, sometimes goes only to the prayer chain. Also, the mailing list includes a few non-Mudcat members, people recomended by chain members as folk of sound, mature judgment. We have never had a complaint that a prayer request get loose as gossip, and I have never had to bounce a member off the mailig list for violating the policies in the FAQ.

I don't think there is any more mention of "prayer," BTW, then there is of pagan practices, candle-lightings, etc., nor has there ever been. In short, Mudcat remains a reflection of the diversity of its membership and of the extent to which people of different belief systems interrelate, or don't interrelate, in general.

Sometimes I wonder if we need the prayer chain anymore, because it's been a long time since a flamewar blew up over the matter, and people have been posting a lot of stuff that had been inhibited, IMO, by the flamewars. I've wondered whether the BS division has made the chain obsolete. It makes me wonder if I should bother, or just expect to see such things here in the BS threads. But when I remember that we get requests that are NOT posted in the threads, I decide to keep it open, as long as people IN it are responding prayerfully and as long as the addys can be confirmed as existing addy's. And as long as I can find the time to keep it current.

~Susan