Pick of the Crop

Does prayer have health benefits?

Bryant Stamford, professor and director of the Health Promotion Center at the University of Louisville, writes in The (Louisville) Courier-Journal to defend the benefits of prayer as part of medical practice. He notes that the critics do have a point:

I was blasted by a few naysayers who tore apart the scientific studies, citing inadequacies and poor research controls. They claimed bias, in other words, and screamed that any positive impact that prayer might bring forth was caused only by a placebo (sugar pill) effect.

This means if I take a sugar pill believing it can cure my headache, it very well may, simply because I believe it will, and not because it possesses any particular healing attributes.

Both sides make valid points. If a group of folks pray for two people suffering from advanced cancer, and one dies and the other doesn't, did prayer work? Did it save one person, but not the other? If so, why?

You can see the problems associated with trying to quantify and scientifically evaluate the impact of prayer.

Why is there a divide over the power of prayer, or its lack thereof? Stamford detects a larger philosophical, even religious, divide at work. The real issue, he notes, is whether one believes in miracles:

It occurs to me that much of the controversy surrounding prayer, health and healing, is due, at least in part, to the expectation that prayer is supposed to produce miracles and produce them on demand to fit our exact requirements.

And, if those requirements are not met, it is concluded that prayer has failed. This characterization from the negative side is, of course, unfair, and it stacks the deck against "proving" that prayer promotes health and healing.

So, for the moment, let's set aside the need to "prove" through scientific inquiry that prayer works. Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying here. I'm not saying that studies on this issue are not important. They are, because before prayer can invade the bastion of medicine at all levels, unequivocal scientific proof no doubt will be required.

This is reasonable up to a point, but, frankly, there are times when I think my mother had it right when she read my last column about prayer, smiled and said, "Son, I don't think God really cares much one way or the other what scientists say about prayer."

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