In this issue
Power of prayer may be found in patient proximity
Zygon Center appoints director

Power of prayer may be found in patient proximity
A new study published in the Southern Medical Journal found that if the one praying is physically near the person being prayed for there can be a measurable outcome.

The study of “proximal intercessory prayer” focuses on auditory and visual impairments of patients in Mozambique and in Brazil. The improvements in vision and hearing of those being prayed for is said to have been measurable, although the study does not attempt to explain the mechanisms by which these outcomes occurred.

Candy Gunther Brown, an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, led the study project which focused on the type of prayer done by Pentecostals and Charismatic Christians. “When people feel they have a serious need for healing, they are willing to try almost anything,” Brown said. “If they feel that a particular religious or spiritual practice healed them, they are much more likely to become an adherent. This phenomenon, more than any other, accounts for the growth of these Christian subgroups globally.” Pentecostals and charismatics may account for as many as 500 million Christians, according to Brown.

Brown and her colleagues carried out the study as part of a larger research program, funded by the John Templeton Foundation Flame of Love Project, on the cultural significance and experience of spiritual healing practices. As editor of a forthcoming book on Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing (Oxford University Press, scheduled for release January 2011), Brown has made an in-depth, seven-year study of how Pentecostals worldwide pray for healing.

Brown and her colleagues studied the activities of the healing groups Iris Ministries and Global Awakening in Mozambique and Brazil because of their reputation as hotspots of specialized prayer for those with hearing and vision impairments. The researchers used an audiometer and vision charts to evaluate 14 rural Mozambican subjects who reported impaired hearing and 11 who reported impaired vision, both before and after the subjects received proximal intercessory prayer. The study focused on hearing and vision because it is possible to measure them with hearing machines and vision charts, allowing a more direct measure of improvement than simply asking people whether they feel better.

Subjects exhibited improved hearing and vision that was statistically significant after nearby prayer was practiced. Two subjects with impaired hearing reduced the threshold at which they could detect sound by 50 decibels. Three subjects had their tested vision improve from 20/400 or worse to 20/80 or better. These improvements are much larger than those typically found in suggestion and hypnosis studies.

Brown recounted that one subject, an elderly Mozambican woman named Maryam, initially reported that she could not see a person's hand, with two upraised fingers, from a distance of one foot. A healing practitioner put her hand on Maryam's eyes, hugged her and prayed for less than a minute; then the person held five fingers in front of Maryam, who was able to count them and even read the 20/125 line on a vision chart.

Supplemental digital content for the published study reports on a follow-up study with similar findings conducted by the same researchers in urban Brazil. Co-authors include physicians Stephen C. Mory of Nashville, Tenn., and Rebecca Williams of Johannesburg, South Africa, and Michael J. McClymond, associate professor of theological studies at Saint Louis University.

Scientific research on intercessory prayer has in recent decades generated a firestorm of controversy, with critics charging that attempts to study the efficacy of prayer are inherently unscientific and should be abandoned because the mechanisms are poorly understood. Several studies have produced contradictory findings.

The title of the current study makes reference to the widely discussed 2006 "STEP" (study of the therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer) paper, which concluded that prayer itself had no effect, but certainty of receiving prayer adversely affected health. However, the STEP study, like most previous research on the efficacy of prayer, focused on distant intercessory prayer rather than proximal prayer. It also included only one group of Protestant intercessors: Silent Unity, a "New Thought" group whose leaders have explicitly rejected prayers of supplication or petition as "useless."

Dr. John Peteet, a professor at Harvard Medical School, commented in an editorial in the current issue of the Southern Medical Journal: "Whatever their views about the efficacy of healing prayer and about whether it belongs in the armamentarium of medicine, clinicians and believers share core commitments to healing whenever it is possible, and to meaningful acceptance when it is not."

Zygon Center appoints director
Dr. Lea F. Schweitz was appointed director of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science, after serving two years as associate director at the Chicago-based center.

In her new role, Schweitz will continue to work with Dr. Gayle Woloschak who continues as associate director of the Zygon Center. Woloschak, professor of cell and molecular biology, radiation oncology and radiology at Northwestern University, served as director for the last two years. “In this appointment the Zygon Center continues a long tradition of theologians and scientists in collegial leadership,” noted Woloschak.

Schweitz is assistant professor of systematic theology/religion and science at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, where the Zygon Center is housed. Schweitz launched the Student Symposium on Science and Spirituality, an annual conference gathering graduate students from across the continent with distinguished faculty for research and professional development.

Her doctoral work focused on understandings of human nature in early modern philosophy, exploring how thinkers like Leibniz and others can contribute to our contemporary views of personhood. The Zygon Center is a partnership of the Lutheran School of Theology and the Center for Advanced Study in Religion and Science. The Zygon Center offers research conferences, public lectures and graduate level courses in addition to student society sponsorship.