Confession
Naming what has gone wrong, privately or in a congregation.
Prayer admitting wrongdoing and asking forgiveness. Liturgical churches include a corporate confession in regular worship, often followed by words of assurance or absolution. In some branches individual confession in the presence of a priest is a sacramental rite; in most Protestant churches confession is direct and personal. Honesty paired with expected mercy is the common core.
Confession names wrongdoing before God, and depending on the tradition it happens silently, in a congregational prayer said together, or to a priest.
Liturgical traditions place a general confession early in a service, so the congregation says it together before anything else happens. That collective form is deliberately unspecific, which lets everyone say it honestly.
The private and sacramental forms differ sharply between traditions, and the differences are among the sharper ones in Christianity.
Does it have a text?
The congregational forms are fixed texts belonging to particular liturgies, and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer versions are out of copyright. This site does not currently publish one, though the prayer book material it does hold comes from that volume.
When it comes up
Other forms of prayer in Christian
- Praise and adoration — Prayer that addresses God for who God is rather than asking for anything.
- Thanksgiving — Prayer that names what has been received.
- Petition — Asking for oneself.
- Intercession — Asking on behalf of someone else.
- Set and free prayer — The long argument between prayer that is written down and prayer that is not.
This page describes a practice. It does not tell you how to perform it, or whether you should. Practice varies by region, community and household far more than a page like this can carry, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed anything here. The full dossier names its sources.