Christianity Today Interviewer: I read a few interviews with you in Christian publications, spanning about 20 years, and in each one the interviewer has a fascination with whether and where you are going to church. Is it prying to ask if you are attending a church now?

Garrison Keillor

Keillor: That’s not prying at all. Yes, I go to St. John the Evangelist Episcopal church in St. Paul. My wife is Episcopalian. I went to a Lutheran church in New York, which I really loved. Being Lutheran in New York City is an experience. But I like St. John’s, its low church, it’s in the neighborhood, it’s a walk away. They’re very friendly. My daughter loves it there; she sings in the choir and it’s really lovely and low key.

Having grown up in the Evangelical, sort of free-form fundamentalist church, I love the liturgical church where we say words together that are not my words and not your words. That really means a lot to me. I grew up listening to men stand up and invent prayers and the idea was that the Spirit was leading them, but in fact they were composing them in their heads and they were writing in a kind of faux King James style big prayers and they were impressive, and they were seeking to impress, there is just is no other way around it.

And in the name of Devotion they were doing these big set-piece prayers in which they were bringing in stories from Scripture and admonishing people that’s not prayer. But, when we kneel down and go through a list, and we begin with prayers for leaders of our country and for the nations of the world and then we come down to prayers for other churches and for bishops and priests, and then we come down to those who are in need and those who are sick and we think or we speak their names to me this is prayer. This is prayer in which one throws oneself before God without a heroic pose

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