When sickness strikes, people around the world pray for healing. Many of the faithful claim that prayer has cured them of blindness, deafness and metastasized cancers, and some believe they have been resurrected from the dead.
Can, and should, science test such claims? A number of scientists say no, concerned that empirical studies of prayer will be misused to advance religious agendas. And some religious practitioners agree with this restraint, worrying that scientific testing could undermine faith.
If prayer affects health -- for better or for worse -- then patients, doctors and policymakers should all want to know. Scientific research has returned mixed results. Some studies conclude that prayer improves health, while others show no effect -- or suggest that prayer may lead to worsening health.
Part of the confusion stems from how prayer is studied. Most research is on distant intercessory prayer. Intercessors are given the first name and condition of someone they do not know and told to pray. Researchers set up double-blinded trials -- because this is how they are accustomed to studying health interventions -- and base conclusions on the efficacy of prayer solely on whether subjects in the experimental group exhibit better health than those in the control group.
But when people actually pray for healing, they usually get up close to someone they know, touch the person and empathize with their sufferings -- what I call proximal intercessory prayer, or PIP. Double-blinded, controlled trials are not the only -- or even the best -- way to gauge the effects of this kind of prayer practice.
I have spent the past eight years studying PIP by Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians -- the groups most likely to pray for healing and claim that their prayers work -- in the United States, Canada, Brazil and Mozambique. And I used multiple methods, each one suited to answering a particular question about prayer for healing. Each method is like a different type of camera, offering complementary perspectives on how prayer affects health.
Camera 1: Medical Records: Are healing claims documented?
Comparison of medical records from before and after prayer provides a check on whether people claiming healing exhibited improvements for which there is no obvious explanation. For example, in the course of my research, I met Daisy, who had worn hearing aids for 30 years. She had a progressively worsening, hereditary inner-ear problem. In 1999, tests showed moderate hearing loss; by 2004, Daisy's hearing loss was moderately severe to severe. In 2008, Daisy received PIP and "felt my fingers on fire and the warmth of the Holy Spirit inside of me," after which she could hear without hearing aids. She had her hearing retested two weeks later, showing normal thresholds in lower frequencies with moderate loss in higher frequencies. A 2010 screening still showed normal hearing in speech frequencies. Medical records do not prove that "God" healed Daisy through prayer, but do confirm Daisy's claim of improved hearing.
I also came across Frank, who claimed improved vision after prayer. He produced an optometrist's note stating that "On 02" his left eye uncorrected visual acuity was "20/200"; in 2007, it was "NOW 20/40." I followed up with Frank's optometrist, who revealed that the record had been "altered." The phrases "On 02" and "Now 20/40" had been added. The unaltered record shows visual acuity of 20/200 in 2007 -- after Frank's supposed healing. Such cases of apparent fraud do not seem to be common, but medical records are one way of sifting out which claims are less credible.
Camera 2: Surveys: How do sufferers perceive healing prayer?
Surveys shed light on how supplicants perceive sickness, prayer and healing. In one set of surveys I carried out, 72 percent of respondents had a current need for healing; the most common complaint was pain. Fifty-two percent reported healing. Few "claimed healing by faith," instead defining healing as noticeable improvement of symptoms. Those who self-reported high faith were no more likely to experience healing than those who admitted weak faith. Most received multiple prayers for the same problem, noting progressive improvements with each prayer. Most also went to doctors, viewing prayer and medicine as complementary.
Camera 3: Clinical Trials: Can health outcomes of prayer be measured?
Clinical trials can show whether PIP results in measurable changes in health markers. In a prospective study of hearing and vision in Mozambique, I found highly significant improvements in hearing and statistically significant improvements in vision following PIP. Two of 11 hearing subjects had thresholds reduced by over 50 dBHL. One subject, Jordan, was presented as deaf and mute since birth and made no responses to sounds at 100 dBHL; after PIP, he responded to 60 dBHL tones, imitating sounds in a hoarse, raspy voice. Three of 11 vision subjects improved from 20/400 or worse to 20/80 or better. Before prayer, Maryam could not count fingers from one foot away; after one minute of PIP, she was reading the 20/125 line on a vision chart.
Camera 4: Follow-up: Do healing experiences produce lasting effects?
Multi-year observations and interviews assess whether changes are temporary or enduring. Many informants -- such as George, who reported healing from an untreatable brain tumor through prayer alone -- claimed they were still healed as many as eight years later. George and others had subsequently prayed for others who in turn reported healing, and this new cohort prayed for still others, sometimes traveling to other countries to do so. Such ripple effects of healing prayer largely account for the wildfire spread of global pentecostalism.
Bringing these four cameras into focus produces a more complete picture of how prayer affects health than using any single study method. Can science prove the healing power of prayer? Science cannot prove the existence or nonexistence of a suprahuman force or whether such an entity answers prayer. But it is an empirical question how prayer practices affect health. And we can -- and should -- use empirical methods to answer this question.
Candy Gunther Brown, author of Testing Prayer: Science and Healing (Harvard University Press, 2012).
Follow Candy Gunther Brown, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/candygbrown
hasn't this last generation been exposed to every kind of open sex you can think of, including abuse?
Cover with the blood of Jesus. Amen.
"Rethinking Prayer and Health Research: An Exploratory Inquiry on Prayer’s Psychological Dimension".
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, Vol. 30, Nos. 1-2, pp. 23-47,2011
This journal/article is available online for free, in case some of you are interested...
Y V Chawla
2. In a typical study, a control group are asked to pray for a specific thing for a control group, with success being determined if that request was answered. However, Scriptural prayer presumes a communion with God in which He inspires who and what to pray for, and we can be impressed to pray for a different outcome. While the Christian is to pray, in Scripture and in my experience, the prayers that i have found most efficacious are those which He inspires.
3. Groups in a typical study were asked to pray for a large group of souls and compared with a another group, but they were not allowed to visit or see them (and were only given a first name and last name initial.) However, while this can take place as per the above, yet this degree of restriction is overall contrary to community, which normally prayer is not divorced from, and usually fosters, versus perfunctory or rote prayer. (Only in one case i think was anyone physically healed by Jesus Himself without a personal encounter)
1. You imply your god will only answer the prayers of people who worship him properly. What an egomaniac he must be.
2. You imply that your god will only answer your prayers if you pray for something he told you to pray for. In other words, he'll only help you if he feels like it and you beg him .
3. You imply that your god only listens if you get a bunch of people together and even then, he will act only if the benificiaries are part of the group. So prayer itself is useless unless the beneficiary is one of the proper worshippers.
Three great rreasons why a study that shows prayer to be ineffective (and there have been many already), doesn't count.
2. Your interpretation misunderstands what is taught. Mere feelings are not determinative of God's will as God operates according to love, righteousness and wisdom, doing what he knows is ultimately best, even if you think your idea of how to build the universe might be better.
As for begging, rather than being an egomaniac as elitist atheistic thinking imagines, God is constantly giving, and would save himself a lot of grief and trouble if we were all robots.
Worshiping Him is not something He needs, as God needs nothing, (Acts 17:25) nor does a parent necessarily require attention or obedience because they need ego fulfillment. But In contrast to created things which men will worship otherwise, as God alone is infinite, omnipotent perfect and eternal, and it is right and best for man that He and not finite creative things be our God. And many atheists think it is best for men to listen to them and their objectively baseless reasoning.
As for heart requirements of humility, love and faith, these are because God values character, that we be like Christ, God manifest in the flesh.
2b ctnd
2) Our God answers all prayers... we need only pay attention to the real signs and clues He'll send.
3) Our God will take prayer anytime, anywhere. You can go to Him for anything. I said, anything.
My dear friend, someone gave you poor information. I "almost" had breast cancer. It took 5 days of not ceasing in gentle morning prayer. On the 5th day I got this feeling to "stop". My doctors are amazed. I have the X-rays to prove it.
This isn't a carnival act. Try prayer before you go to sleep; saying a simple prayer or anything you like; talk to Him. .... then wait. for a real answer...
Peace be with you.
As for prayer not being effective, that is what is pompous, as anyone who has lived in such a way of faith that prayers had to be answered can tell you, in which the answers cumulatively overall deny reasonable naturalistic explanations. I can give you some examples if you want.
1) coincedence (I prayed that I'd win the lottery, and I won the lottery)
2) self-fulfillment (we all prayed for pizza and then Dave ordered a pizza)
3) statistical significance (every time I take a plane I pray it won't crash, and I've never been in a plane crash; or less selfishly, I prayed for 100 people to recover from cancer, and 51 did - if 50 is the normal survival rate)
4) false attribution to prayer (my house was on fire, so I prayed for it to be put out, and along came the fire department and put out the fire).
There may be other factors; I just came up with those off the top of my head.
Fire away!
Let me begin by saying that in 1986 I left a good job and steady pay and home (I was single, and paid rent) to serve the Lord full-time, without pay. This was due to a call I strongly felt the Lord placed upon my life. I simply prayed that if this was God's will he would take care of what I needed to do His work.
In all the years since have I never received a salary, nor government support, nor lived by engaging in solicitation of the public or of churches, but as needed God has and does bring me to encounter a few isolated ( typically) individuals or couples from time to time who offer to help, though i rarely asked. Yet i lived from year to year with no certain income, but seeing God provide. He is simply merciful and faithful.
I say this to say that we have honestly had to see God literally work, and often have in profound ways, as well as faced challenges in which I my faith was tried, which is also entirely consistent with his word — as is suffering correction when I tried (and I do sometimes) to take an easier road than the way of the cross.
Then pray for the lightening to strike someone else who you know really deserves it. You can optionally also throw in a prayer that the lightening not strike near you.
Within 100 tries at this, your prayer is bound to be answered, one way or another.
prayer is never prayer if it is a request for harm to befall another
But I'll work with you on this. Stand in the wheat field in the steady thunderstorms. By the flagpole. Then pray all night for a cure for cancer. Repeat this process as long as it takes to see some sort of tangible result, one way or another.
I'm a servant of God. but I'm not going anywhere unless I hear from HIM. first..
(sarcasm font here)