A non-believing anthropologist sees evangelical prayer practice as therapy and explains why mainliners and Roman Catholics don’t get the same benefit from it.
I saw the same thing at another church, where a young couple lost a child in a late miscarriage. Some months later I spent several hours with them. Clearly numbed, they told me they did not understand why God had allowed the child to die. But they never gave a theological explanation for what happened. They blamed neither their own wickedness nor demons. Instead, they talked about how important it was to know that God had stood by their side. The husband quoted from memory a passage in the Gospel of John, where many followers abandon Jesus because his teachings don’t make sense to them. Jesus says sadly to his disciples, “You do not want to leave, too, do you?” and Peter responds, “Lord, to whom shall we go?”
This approach to the age-old problem of theodicy is not really available to mainstream Protestants and Catholics, who do not imagine a God so intimate, so loving, so much like a person. That may help to explain why it is evangelical Christianity that has grown so much in the last 40 years.
It can seem puzzling that evangelical Christians sidestep the apparent contradiction of why bad things happen to good people. But for them, God is a relationship, not an explanation.
John Meunier 
When bad/terrible things happen we may never know or understand the why. But one thing we can know is that God walks through it all with us, side by side. When we realize this the why becomes unimportant.
I suspect it is because we are not reading Scripture or praying the daily office. A person who is deep in the Bible and practices the discipline of daily prayer should have no reason at all to believe that God is distant, or merely an idea. No more, that is, than an evangelical. Perhaps the primary difference is that evangelicals put emphasis on living out their disciplines.
You identified him as a non-believing anthropologist. Should add that he is a non-understanding one as well. Those who do not believe should refrain from offering comments on theological matters as it is impossible to understand without the benefit of knowing.