c. 2003 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) For many believers, kneeling is nearly synonymous with prayer, a physical humbling of one’s body even as one submits his soul to the Almighty.

It wasn’t always so.

Jewish believers in ancient times prayed while standing, for the most part. The Gospels note, too, that Jesus expected believers to assume such a posture during prayer.

Yet “when the occasion was one of special solemnity, or the petition very urgent, or the prayer made with exceptional fervor,” supplicants knelt, according to The Catholic Encyclopedia.

In time, the “kneeling posture for prayer speedily became habitual among the faithful,” the encyclopedia says, to the point that St. James’ knees were said to have become as “callous as those of a camel.”

Today, said the Rev. W. Murray Bullock, interim rector at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Mobile, Ala., kneeling is traditional in liturgical churches. For him, the posture is important as it serves as “another way of humbling oneself at the altar.”

DEA END CAMPBELL