The Prosociality of Prayer in the Literary Fiction of Felix Timmermans

This paper examines the ways in which Christian prayer in the literary fiction of Felix Timmermans is represented as a spiritual practice that produces behaviour that is prosocial, or in other words, beneficial to others. The authors combine readings of two texts (the short story Triptych of the Three Kings and the novel A Peasant Farmer’s Psalm) with insights stemming from recent sociological debates on prayer and prosociality to show how Felix Timmermans’ prose can prove helpful for understanding how praying transforms individuals by allowing them to behave in a more altruistic way.