Saying your prayers, constructing your religions: Medical studies of intercessory prayer

Journal of Religion

Volumn 89, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 299-327

  Cadge, Wendy ^a  

^a BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 68649100927     PISSN: 00224189     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/597818     Document Type: Review

References (101)

1. For the study, see Herbert Benson, Jeffrey A. Dusek, Jane B. Sherwood, Peter Lam, Charles F. Bethea, William Carpenter, Sidney Levitsky, Peter C. Hill, Donald W. Clem Jr., Manoj K. Jain, David Drumel, Stephen L. Kopecky, Paul S. Mueller, Dean Marek, Sue Rollins, and Patricia L. Hibberd, "Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in Cardiac Bypass Patients: A Multicenter Randomized Trial of Uncertainty and Certainty of Receiving Intercessory Prayer," American Heart Journal 151, no.4 (2006): 934-942
2. See Thomas Gieryn, Cultural Boundaries of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999);
3. Andrew Abbot, The System of Professions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
4. See, e.g., Robert Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985),
5. and "Is the Study of Lived Religion Irrelevant to the World We Live In?" Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42 (2003): 169-74;
6. Wade Clark Roof, A Generation of Seekers (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1993);
7. Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).
8. See Meredith McGuire and Otto Maduro, "Introduction," Social Compass 52 (2005): 411-15;
9. Pamela Klassen, "Ritual Appropriations and Appropriate Ritual: Christian Healing and Adaptations of Asian Religions," History and Anthropology 16 (2005): 377-91;
10. David Hall, Lived Religion in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
11. For example, Amanda Porterfield, Healing in the History of Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005);
12. Linda L. Barnes and Susan S. Sered, eds., Religion and Healing in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005);
13. Edward Shorter, From Paralysis to Fatigue (New York: Free Press, 1992);
14. Tom Lutz, American Nervousness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991).
15. See Pamela E. Klassen, Blessed Events (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001);
16. Sharon R. Kaufman, And a Time to Die (New York: Scribner, 2005);
17. Sharon R. Kaufman and Lynn M. Morgan, "The Anthropology of the Beginnings and Ends of Life," Annual Review of Anthropology 34 (2005): 317-41;
18. Richard W. Wertz and Dorothy Wertz, Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989).
19. For instance, Margery Fox, "Conflict to Coexistence: Christian Science and Medicine," Medical Anthropology 8 (1984): 292-301;
20. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, God and Nature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986);
21. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., When Science and Christianity Meet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
22. See Robert Bruce Mullin, Miracles and the Modern Religious Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).
23. See Peter Conrad, "Medicalization and Social Control," Annual Review of Sociology 18 (1992): 209-32;
24. Peter Conrad and Joseph W. Schneider, Deviance and Medicalization (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992);
25. Simon Williams and Michael Calnan, "The 'Limits' of Medicalization? Modern Medicine and the Lay Populace in 'Late' Modernity," Social Science and Medicine 42 (1996): 1609-1620
26. See Hall, Lived Religion in America.
27. See Jonathan Z. Smith, Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
28. See Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, Handbook of Qualitative Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000).
29. For an example outside of religious studies, see Emily Martin, "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles," Signs 16 (1991): 485-501. In teaching, this article might help instructors and students talk about the assumptions different people (i.e., scholars, politicians, people who post on Internet prayer chains, etc.) make about prayer by comparing their assumptions and conceptions to those made by the researchers in this article.
30. See Guenter B. Risse, Mending Bodies, Saving Souls (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999);
31. Charles E. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers (New York: Basic, 1987).
32. See Francis Galton, "Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer," Fortnightly Review 12 (1872): 125-35, 125.
33. See Gieryn, Cultural Boundaries of Science;
34. Robert Bruce Mullin, "Science, Miracles, and the Prayer Gauge Debate," in Lindberg and Numbers, When Science and Christianity Meet, 203-24.
35. For additional history of the "prayer gauge" debate, see Keith S. Thomson, "The Revival of Experiments on Prayer," American Scientist 84 (1996): 532-35;
36. Mark A. Clarfield, "An Old Prayer for Modern Medicine," Canadian Medical Association Journal 167 (2002): 1365-67;
37. Thomas F. Gieryn, "Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non- Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists," American Sociological Review 48 (1983): 781-795
38. See L. Roberts, I. Ahmed, and S. Hall, "Intercessory Prayer for the Alleviation of Ill Health (Review)," Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (online database) 4 (2004).
39. As a research team they were a "self described skeptic and believer" (C. R. B. Joyce and R. M. C. Welldon, "The Objective Efficacy of Prayer: A Double-Blind Clinical Trial," Journal of Chronic Diseases 18 [1965]: 370-71, 375).
40. See Platon J. Collipp, "The Efficacy of Prayer: A Triple-Blind Study," Medical Times 97 (1969): 202.
41. See Jonathan Imber, "Religious Sources for Debates in Bioethics," in Society and Medicine, ed. Carla M. Messikomer, Judith P. Swazey, and Allen Glicksman (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003), 211-26;
42. and Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
43. See, e.g., Porterfield, Healing in the History of Christianity;
44. William R. Hutchinson, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992);
45. Stefan Timmermans, The Gold Standard (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003).
46. See Robert Orsi, Thank You, St. Jude (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).
47. See Randolph C. Byrd and John Sherrill, "The Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer," Journal of Christian Nursing 12 (1995): 21-23.
48. See Randolph C. Byrd, "Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population," Southern Medical Journal 81 (1988): 826-829
49. See Timmermans, The Gold Standard.
50. Christopher J. Kauffman, Ministry and Meaning (New York: Crossroads, 1995).
51. Byrd himself pointed to the scientific problems and limitations of the study in the article while holding to his belief that prayer can be studied following this approach. For example, in a standard clinical trial one group receives the new treatment and the second does not. That was impossible in a "pure" sense here because there was no way to assure that those not in the prayer group did not receive prayers from relatives or friends in addition to the intercessors. "How God acted in this situation is unknown," Byrd explained while arguing that it would be unethical to completely restrict prayers to people in a study (Byrd, "Positive Therapeutic Effects," 829).
52. Also, Byrd was not able to assess whether the patients prayed themselves and how their own personal religious beliefs may have influenced their health outcomes. He discussed how this independent variable could have had an effect and would need to be measured in future studies. Perhaps anticipating the ferment Byrd's article would cause in the medical community, the Southern Medical Journal published it alongside a supportive commentary by Dr. William Wilson, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at DukeMedical Center, under the heading "Religion and Healing."
53. Rather than trying to downplay or doubt the results, Wilson highlighted the limits of medical science rather than of this particular study, writing that the "problem is the challenge of the theory of quantum mechanics to our cosmology. It has changed our mechanistic view of the universe" (William P. Wilson, "Religion and Healing," Southern Medical Journal 81, no.7 [1988]: 819).
54. Rather than doubting Byrd's data, in other words, Wilson doubted the epistemologies traditionally used to understand them. While Wilson could have placed Byrd's topic and question firmly outside the bounds of medical science, he did just the opposite, calling the questions Byrd investigates "valid ones for scientific inquiry" and calling on science to expand its vision so as to ask and answer them. "It seems to me that we in medicine who claim a holistic approach to diagnosing and treating the whole man should throw away our deterministic prejudices, expand our knowledge, and enlarge our therapeutic armamentarium. We need not only a change in the way we think [i.e., an expansion of medical science] but also more research on the role of religion in healing," he wrote (820).
55. Critics of Byrd's study (and this entire issue of the SouthernMedical Journal) were quick to counter Wilson's effort to expand the boundaries of medical science, articulating the boundaries of medicine in ways that placed the ideas of both Wilson and Byrd firmly outside. "Medicine's greatest accomplishments since the Age of Enlightenment," Steven Kreisman, an emergency room physician in North Carolina, wrote in a letter to the editor, "were made possible by the fundamental characteristics of that age: a respect for reason" (SouthernMedical Journal 81, no. 12 [1988]: 1598).
56. Quoting Dr. Leonard Peikoff in The Ominous Parallels (Briarcliff Manor, NY, 1982), Kreisman argued that medicine since the eighteenth century has abided by an epistemology based on scientific laws which "permit no miracles and which are intelligible without reference to the supernatural.
57. " Refusing even to acknowledge Byrd's claims about the medical scientific basis of his work, Kreisman argued that these articles do a "disservice to the science of medicine . . . by trying to undermine reason and by giving credence to faith as a valid epistemology." He called on the Southern Medical Journal to no longer permit articles "of this kind," arguing, in the name of scientific progress, that they are an "attempt to return medicine to the Dark Ages, and to reduce physicians to the same status as witch doctors and faith healers." Asserting his authority as a gatekeeper and his refusal to categorically limit or deny any authors access to the journal, the journal editor responded by explaining that the papers in question were medical science that had been subjected to the usual peer review process "and judged to report properly designed and executed scientific investigation, with a recommendation for publication" ("Editor's Note," Southern Medical Journal 81, no. 12 [1988]: 1598).
58. See Steven Epstein, Inclusion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
59. See Scott Walker, J. Scott Tonigan, William R. Miller, Stephen Comer, and Linda Kahlich, "Intercessory Prayer in the Treatment of Alcohol Abuse and Dependence: A Pilot Investigation," Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 3 (1997): 79-86.
60. See Sean O'Laoire, "An Experimental Study of the Effects of Distant, Intercessory Prayer on Self-Esteem, Anxiety, and Depression," Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 3 (1997): 38-53.
61. See Robert Wuthnow, America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
62. See William S. Harris, Manohar Gowda, Jerry W. Kolb, Christopher P. Strychacz, James L. Vacek, Phillips G. Jones, Allen Forker, James H. O'Keefe, and Ben D. McCallister, "A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit," Archives of Internal Medicine 159 (1999): 2273-78, 2274.
63. The authors found a significant effect of prayer when they examined MAHI-CCU scores as a dependent variable. When they mimicked the dependent variable examined by Byrd (a different summary measure of health) they did not find prayer to have a significant effect. So while they argue that their findings are consistent with Byrd's when the same measure of health was used, the findings were actually different (significant in the Byrd paper, "Positive Therapeutic Effects,"
64. and not in the Harris paper, "A Randomized, Controlled Trial").
65. See Harris et al., "A Randomized, Controlled Trial," 2278. The authors situated their discussion squarely in the realm of what is knowable scientifically. "Natural" explanations they posited "would attribute the beneficial effects of intercessory prayer to 'real' but currently unknown physical forces that are 'generated' by the intercessors and 'received' by the patients" (2277). The kinds of explanations posited by Harris and colleagues, they argue, are within the realm of science even if they are not currently well understood. Much as James Lind aboard the HMS Salisbury in 1753 determined that lemons and limes cured scurvy, they argue, even though explanations about nutrients and ascorbic acid were centuries away from being articulated, Harris and colleagues argued that the inability to know why intercessory prayer influences health does not invalidate their observations, findings, or the appropriateness of studying the issue scientifically (2277).
66. Critics commented on the measures and levels of statistical significance, possible errors in the analysis, the independence of observations, the randomization process, and alternative explanations for the findings presented. Overall, they dismissed the study's conclusions on methodological grounds with comments like this one: "As the hypothesis tested by this study is an extraordinary one, a high standard of evidence is required for it to be believed. This study did not achieve this standard" (Jennifer G. Smith and Richard Fisher MBBS, "The Effect of Remote Intercessory Prayer on Clinical Outcomes [Editor's Correspondence]," Archives of Internal Medicine 160, no. 12 [June 26, 2000]: 1876).
67. This is one of many ethical issues raised by critics of these studies, both in the letters to the editor reviewed here and in other publications in the medical literature. Some studies, such as that of John Mathai and Angela Bourne, "Pilot Study Investigating the Effect of Intercessory Prayer in the Treatment of Child Psychiatric Disorders," Australian Psychiatry 12 (2004): 386-89, were approved by institutional review panels or ethics boards that permitted them to proceed without the consent of the patients involved because the "negative effects" of prayer "were considered negligible and no one associated with the patients knew that prayer was happening" (387).
68. While each letter writer articulated the limits of the scientific method as used in this study differently, they were unified in the claim and self-consciousness about the fact that Harris and colleagues were trying to use scientific tools to study something that may not be knowable using them. After pointing to issues with construct validity and measurement scales in the study, Richard Sloan and Emilia Bagiella, for example, argued that "religion does not need medical science to validate its rituals. To attempt this trivializes religion" (letter to the editor, Archives of Internal Medicine 160, no.12 [June 26, 2000]: 1870).
69. Similarly, physician Fred Rosner asked, "Does the efficacy of prayer have to be scientifically proven?" before outlining the many ways he believed prayer may help people when they are ill that are not likely to be evident scientifically (letter to the editor, Archives of Internal Medicine 160, no.2000]: ibid., 1875).
70. Physician Mitchell Galishoff pondered in his letter why God should "allow the patients who received the remote intercessory prayer" to do better than the control group before concluding that the real conclusion from this study is that "God's grace is greater than our skills and immeasurable by our tools. Like many before them, the investigators may have missed the real message of their 'study:' that despite our arrogance, God's omnipotence is beyond our ability to add or detract" (letter to the editor, Archives of Internal Medicine 160, no.2000]: ibid., 1877). What God is and the way God works, Galishoff explained, at least in this case, are beyond the ability of humans to know using the tools of scientific inquiry.
71. Dale Hammerschmidt, letter to the editor, Archives of Internal Medicine 160, no.2000]: ibid., 1874-1875;
72. Prakash Pande, letter to the editor, Archives of Internal Medicine 160, no.2000]: ibid., 1873-1874
73. See Epstein, Inclusion.
74. See Dale A. Matthews, Sally M. Marlowe, and Francis S. MacNutt, "Effects of Intercessory Prayer on Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis," Southern Medical Journal 93 (2000): 1177-86;
75. Kwang Y. Cha, Daniel P. Wirth, and Rogerio A. Lobo, "Does Prayer Influence the Success of In Vitro Fertilization-Embryo Transfer? Report of a Masked, Randomized Trial," Journal of Reproductive Medicine 46 (2001): 781-87;
76. William J. Matthews, James M. Conti, and Stephen G. Sireci, "The Effects of Intercessory Prayer, Positive Visualization, and Expectancy of the Well-Being of Kidney Dialysis Patients," Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 7 (2001): 42-52;
77. Jennifer M. Aviles, Sr. Ellen Whelan, Debra A. Hernk, Brent A. Williams, Kathleen E. Kenny,W.Michael O'Fallon, and Stephen L. Kopecky, "Intercessory Prayer and Cardiovascular Disease Progression in a Coronary Care Unit Population: A Randomized Controlled Trial," Mayo Clinic Proceedings 76 (2001): 1192-98;
78. Raymond F. Palmer, David Katerndahl, and Jayne Morgan-Kidd, "A Randomized Trial of the Effects of Remote Intercessory Prayer: Interactions with Personal Beliefs on Problem-Specific Outcomes and Functional Status," Journal of Alternative and ComplementaryMedicine 10 (2004): 438-48;
79. Mathai and Bourne, "Pilot Study";
80. Benson et al., "Study of the Therapeutic Effects."
81. Aviles et al., "Intercessory Prayer," 1196.
82. See Jeffrey A. Dusek, Jane B. Sherwood, Richard Friedman, Patricia Myers, Charles F. Bethea, Sidney Levitsky, Peter C. Hill, Manoj K. Jain, Stephen L. Kopecky, Paul S. Mueller, Peter Lam, Herbert Benson, and Patricia L. Hibberd, "Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP): Study Design and Research Methods," American Heart Journal 143 (2002): 577-584
83. See Mitchell W. Krucoff, Suzanne W. Crater, Cindy L. Green, Arthur C. Maas, Jon E. Seskevich, James D. Lane, Karen A. Loeffler, Kenneth Morris, Thomas M. Bashore, andHarold G. Koenig, "Integrative Noetic Therapies as Adjuncts to Percutaneous Intervention during Unstable Coronary Syndromes: Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Training (MANTRA) Feasibility Pilot," American Heart Journal 142 (2001): 760-69, 761.
84. and Mitchell W. Krucoff, Suzanne W. Crater, Dianne Gallup, James C. Blankenship, Michael Cuffe, Mimi Guarneri, Richard A. Krieger, Vib R. Kshettry, Kenneth Morris, Mehmet Oz, Augusti Pichard, Michael H. Sketch Jr., Harold G. Koenig, Daniel Mark, and Kerry L. Lee, "Music, Imagery, Touch, and Prayer as Adjuncts to Interventional Cardiac Care: The Monitoring and Actualisation of Noetic Training (MANTRA) II Randomised Study," Lancet 366 (2005): 211-217
85. See Harold G. Koenig, Michael E. McCullough, and David B. Larson, Handbook of Religion and Health (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
86. See John T. Chibnall, Joseph M. Jeral, and Michael A. Cerullo, "Experiments on Distant Intercessory Prayer: God, Science, and the Lesson of Massah," Archives of Internal Medicine 161 (2001): 2529-36, 2530.
87. See Jeffrey P. Bishop, "Prayer, Science, and the Moral Life of Medicine," Archives of Internal Medicine 163 (2003): 1405-8, 1408.
88. See Edward C. Halperin, "Should Academic Medical Centers Conduct Clinical Trials of the Efficacy of Intercessory Prayer?" Academic Medicine 76 (2001): 791-97;
89. Brian D. Kavanagh, "Clinical Trials of Intercessory Prayer," Academic Medicine 77 (2002): 109.
90. See Leonard Leibovici, "Effects of Remote, Retroactive Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients with Bloodstream Infection: Randomised Controlled Trial," British Medical Journal 323 (2001): 1450-51, 1450.
91. Leonard Leibovici, "Author's Reply," British Medical Journal 324 (April 27, 2002): 1038-1039
92. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers; Risse, Mending Bodies, Saving Souls;
93. Barnes and Sered, Religion and Healing in America;
94. Shorter, From Paralysis to Fatigue;
95. Lutz, American Nervousness.
96. See McGuire and Maduro, "Introduction";
97. Klassen, "Ritual Appropriations and Appropriate Ritual";
98. Several studies focus on the health of the people doing the praying, but I am not examining them here. I also exclude Daniel P. Wirth and Barbara J. Mitchell, "Complementary Healing for Patients with Type I Diabetes Mellitus," Journal of Scientific Exploration 8 (1994): 367-377, because this study does not isolate intercessory prayer but studies intercessory prayer as combined with noncontact therapeutic touch. In a few of the studies examined intercessory prayer was conducted at a distance as well as in person. I focus in those studies on the results gathered from distant intercessory prayer.
99. For overviews of studies of distance healing, see John A. Astin, Elaine Harkness, and Edzard Ernst, "The Efficacy of 'Distant Healing': A Systematic Review of Randomized Trials," Annals of Internal Medicine 132 (2000): 903-10;
100. Neil C. Abbot, "Healing as a Therapy for Human Disease: A Systematic Review," Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 6 (2000): 159-69;
101. Cindy C. Crawford, Andrew G. Sparber, and Wayne B. Jonas, "A Systematic Review of the Quality of Research on Hands-On and Distance Healing: Clinical and Laboratory Studies," Alternative Therapies 9 (2003): A96-A104.