Prayer for family and friends: the body and religion in eighteenth-century Britain

This article explores how writers, predominantly adhering to a variety of different Christian denominations but also including Jewish writers, discussed religion and body in letters throughout the long eighteenth century. It draws on a corpus of over 2500 familiar letters written by men and women of different denominations between 1675 and 1820. These letters were not chosen because of their religious content. This, and also that letters are not a genre specifically rooted in devotional practice, makes them a good ‘test’ of the role of faith in everyday understandings of the body. By exploring how lay people used letters to construct understandings of health and bodily experience as directed by God, this article underscores the continued centrality of religious discourse and devotional practice in eighteenth-century everyday life. This article finds that religion was a commonplace register deployed when discussing bodily matters throughout the long eighteenth century. Significantly, this was the case for individuals who otherwise made scant reference to their faith. The physical body encouraged recourse to providence, a public discussion of doctrine and the shared expression of devotion. The ongoing force of religion in people’s lives was thus intimately tied to their embodied experiences. Letters not only expressed but actively maintained this widely shared religious framework for understanding the body. Through letters, men and women created connections between their physically separated bodies, connections which were reinforced by their religious dimension, and which enabled them to provide one another with care and consolation for both body and soul.