Does Prayer Heal ?

The other day, I was at a function organized by the Christian Medical Association of India an umbrella of close to 300 plus non profit Christian Hospitals, many of them close to a century old and some older. They were observing World AIDS Day and the topic of discussion was the unique contribution that a community of faith can bring to the table. By now, every one sort of knows that HIV & AIDS is not a medical issue alone – there are myriad dimensions to it – social, economic, gender being some. The issue of the discrimination that those who are HIV positive flashes across our media radar all the time, be it children thrown out of schools, widows thrown out of their marital homes, or HIV positive men losing their jobs.

So the question was can religious institutions, in this case, specifically the church contribute anything? Hospitals provide treatment, activist groups lobby for access and availability of treatment and reduction of stigma, donors like Bill Gates and others can give money, so what can a faith community provide? Many people said many things, like sponsoring families which have people who living with the virus, or financial aid to those who have lost jobs, providing training to women who have lost their husbands so that they can find a niche in the job market. The final conclusion though was that a community of faith’s niche was – well faith. Defining health in integral terms meant that physical, social, economic, emotional and spiritual concerns needed to be addressed to address healing concerns fully, and who better to address spiritual dimensions of health than religious institutions?

I returned home thinking and asking a question that I have asked myself many time before. Does faith make any meaningful difference to the quantum of healing really or is it a warm, fuzzy feeling that makes you feel good when there is nothing to feel good about? I have been to many funerals and heard many eulogies where it was said that the faith of this and that person made a lot of difference to the way they handled their diseases and I am sure that is all true. But still that does not make any wiser than before. So I came back and did some reading on the subject of faith, prayer and healing.

TIME magazine which has published numerous essays exploring the relationship between faith, prayer and healing says that even a couple of decades ago, the scientific community would not have dared to propose a double-blind, controlled study of something as intangible as prayer because the scientific temper is all about trying to ridding yourself of remnants of mysticism and obscurantism which is what many people think faith and prayer is – a lot of mumbo jumbo.

But what I found in TIME is interesting. “According to Dr. Harold Koenig, a co-director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University, from 2000 to 2002 more than 1,000 scholarly articles on the relationship between religion and mental health were published in academic journals--as opposed to just 100 from 1980 to 1982. Such studies indicate that religion buffers its adherents from worry. Religious people are less depressed, less anxious and less suicidal than nonreligious people. And they are better able to cope with such crises as illness, divorce and bereavement. Even if you compare two people who have symptoms of depression, says Michael McCullough, an associate professor of psychology and religious studies at the University of Miami, "the more religious person will be a little less sad.” The BBC cites another study conducted at the University of Kansas that finds that patients admitted to hospital with heart trouble fare better if some one is praying for them. The study does not make sweeping claims but claims “We have not proven that God answers prayer or that God even exists. It was intercessory prayer, not the existence of God that was tested”.

But coming back to Dr. Koenig and his research, The American Journal of Psychiatry, while reviewing his book “The Healing Power of Faith: Science Explores Medicine’s Last Great Frontier” comments that the book could be summed up in the singular observation that that “although fear of death was a major stress factor in the lives of many older people, his patients who were religious seemed to have less fear of death even when seriously ill. He found that elderly people who were "very likely" to rely on religious faith and prayer when they were under stress were less likely to report a strong fear of death.” Nothing more really needs to be said. Considering that one of the singular work in working with those who are HIV positive lies in introducing them to the fullness of life that is still possible and in alleviating their fears and anxieties, it would seem that the communities of faith have their work fairly well cut out.