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I would almost guarantee that at some point in your life, someone you love has become ill, and you have prayed for God to heal them. You may never have thought about it, but can a scientist test the effectiveness of those prayers? Could they test prayer just like any other new drug? I think they can. And actually, they already have... multiple times. Let me explain.
When testing a new drug, a pretty basic experimental design is followed to show if it is effective or not. Take two randomly assigned groups of people. Give one of them the drug, and the other a placebo. You measure their health prior to beginning the trial and measure their health outcomes over some period of time. If the results are statistically significant (meaning it is not just chance that patients taking the new drug had better outcomes) then you know the new drug really works. It really is effective.
This same basic experimental design has been done, substituting prayer for the drug. Intercessory prayer (IP) is a petitionary prayer for the benefit of another. IP can come in two major forms, distant (DIP) or proximal (PIP). The terms are meant to distinguish the location of the intercessor with relation to the individual being prayed for. Distant means that the intercessor is not in physical contact with the person they are praying for. Proximal means that they are. There have been several “gold standard” peer reviewed studies done on the effects of IP.[1] Here I will focus on just four of them. The first three studies tested DIP, and the last tested PIP. What did these studies show? Let’s summarize each one briefly in chronological order.
Distant Intercessory Prayer
Study 1
This study was conducted by Randolph Byrd. He designed a test to see if intercessory prayers to the Judeo-Christian God have any effects on the medical condition of patients in a coronary care unit. His study included 393 patients in the coronary care unit (CCU) of San Francisco General Hospital. Patients were randomly assigned to receive or not receive intercessory prayer and were made aware of the study, but not the group they were in. Of the 393 patients, 192 were part of the test group who would be prayed for by the intercessors, and 201 were part of the control group who would not be prayed for by the intercessors in the study. The intercessors were comprised of both protestants (of various denominations), and Roman Catholics. A minimum of three intercessors were assigned to each patient, and these intercessors were required to pray for patients daily while asking for a rapid recovery and no further complications. The results were statistically significant, showing that patients in the test group (the one being prayed for) had “less congestive heart failure, fewer cardiac arrests, fewer episodes of pneumonia, were less often incubated and ventilated, and needed less diuretic and antibiotic therapy.”[2] Byrd’s study lasted from August 1982 to May 1983. It was peer reviewed and published in the Southern Medical Journal in 1988.[3]
Study 2
This study was conducted by Dr. William Harris and a team of medical doctors. It sought to replicate the Byrd study and verify the results. The experimental design therefore was nearly identical, the key differences being the number of patients involved and that patients were not made aware of the study at all. The experiment involved 1,013 patients in the CCU at Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri. After randomly assigning these patients, 484 were part of the test group who would be prayed for, and 529 were part of the control group. Intercessors were comprised of both protestants (of various denominational backgrounds) and Roman Catholics. To qualify as an intercessor for the study they had to sign and agree to the following statement: “I believe in God. I believe that He is personal and is concerned with individual lives. I further believe that He is responsive to prayers for healing made on behalf of the sick.” Within 24 hours of a patient being admitted to the CCU and assigned to a test group, they would be prayed for by an intercessor outside the hospital for the next 28 days. Harris’ study was conducted over a 12-month period. The results showed again that the group receiving prayer had better outcomes. It was peer reviewed and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 1999.[4]
Study 3
This study has been popularly named “STEP,” short for the Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer. It was conducted by the founder of Harvard Medical School’s Mind/Body Medical Institute and ran continuously for 10 years. It involved 1,802 cardiac bypass patients at six hospitals.[5] The experimental design differed a bit from the previous two studies. Patients were randomly assigned to one of three groups. Two were test groups and one was the control group. The first test group was informed that they were being prayed for (601 patients), and the second test group was not informed that they were being prayed for (604 patients). The control group did not receive prayer from the intercessors (597 patients). Patients were prayed for fourteen consecutive days, with the intercessors required to add the phrase “for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications,” to their usual prayers. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the test group that did not know they were being prayed for and the control group. The results also showed that the test group that knew they were being prayed for actually had more complications. It was peer reviewed and published in the American Heart Journal in 2006.[6]
Assessment of DIP
Those results may confuse you because they conflict. The first two studies showed that DIP had a positive impact on patients’ medical outcome, while the STEP study showed no effect for patients unaware of the fact they were being prayed for, and a negative impact on patients who knew they were being prayed for. How is that possible? Well, much could be said but I will give two basic reasons: a) The STEP study included intercessors whose beliefs oppose God’s intervention, and b) DIP studies have inherent limitations that make them difficult to draw firm conclusions.
a) The only protestants used in the STEP study were from the Silent Unity of Lee’s Summit, Missouri. Not only do their views on essential Christian doctrine differ with orthodox Christianity, but part of Unity’s belief system is that petitionary prayer is useless since God does not perform miracles, which require him to depart from universal law.[7] As Dr. Candy Gunther Brown summarized nicely, “So why do we see different results in STEP? Well, you’ve got different inclusion criteria. Look who’s doing the praying and how they’re doing it. It’s apples and oranges compared to the Byrd and Harris studies.”[8] This difference in inclusion criteria is actually what we find when we look at some of the other studies that conclude intercessory prayer has either no effect or a negative impact. For example, systematic reviews of the peer reviewed literature (such as the Cochrane review of 2009 by Leanne Roberts) make a crucial assumption, namely that “all ‘prayer’ is everywhere and always the same, a kind of uniform energy that either does or does not work.”[9] For this reason those reviews include ‘prayer’ studies based on prana and qi, as well as Jewish and Buddhist prayer.[10]
b) Even if orthodox Christian DIP (especially of a Pentecostal/Charismatic type that expects healing) is studied in isolation, these kinds of studies have several difficulties.
They assume that if prayer does work, we would expect its effects to have equal geographic distribution. But this assumption completely ignores the sociological data we have showing that “healing tends to be clustered in certain geographical areas.”[11] Some reasons for this would be that i) Illiteracy is high in third world regions, and miracles show God’s power without language, ii) People with diverse prior beliefs have difficulty grasping concepts like sin and salvation, but miracles help to demonstrate God’s love and validate the Christian message of redemption, iii) the people often have limited or no medical care, so a miracle is their only hope, and iv) beliefs in spirits and supernatural activity are rich in that culture and so a miracle shows God’s power over these other entities.[12]
These studies don’t take into consideration the claim that certain people are reputed as having “a greater success rate with healing prayer” because they allegedly have a special “anointing.”[13]
There are inherent difficulties in the experimental design. You cannot stop people in a non-intercessory prayer group from praying for themselves, nor control for others praying for them outside of the intercessory prayer group (i.e. family, friends, etc.). This weakens the value of a comparison to the control group.
Fourth, these studies do not test the type of intercessory prayer most frequently practiced in these geographic regions where a greater frequency of miracles are said to occur. In these regions, touch is crucial. Christians “lay hands” on the sick, “anoint them with oil” modeling much of Jesus’ ministry, and following commands like that given in James 5:14.
So, the DIP studies are very interesting, and do suggest overall that distant intercessory prayer to the Judeo-Christian God is beneficial for patient outcomes. However, these studies do have four weaknesses in design, and therefore it would be nice to have a study that accounts for these weaknesses. Fortunately, such studies have been done. Twice.
Proximal Intercessory Prayer
Study 4
This study was named “STEPP,” short for study of the therapeutic effects of proximal intercessory prayer. It was conducted by Dr. Candy Gunther Brown and a team of medical doctors. They conducted the study in rural Mozambique, with the intercessors being leaders in Iris Ministries, an organization led by Heidi Baker, someone of great repute in the global Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, and someone reported as having a “special gifting” for healing. The study observed the effects of PIP on patients with auditory and visual impairments, both of which are rarely susceptible to psychosomatic factors. Tests were conducted at four different evangelistic meetings in four different cities in Mozambique, with a total of 24 subjects (19 male and 5 female). Of those 24 subjects, 14 had auditory impairments, and 11 had visual impairments. One individual reported both auditory and visual impairments. An audiometer, and an eyechart were used to test the auditory and visual impairments respectively, immediately before and after receiving prayer. The results were statistically significant, showing that subjects improved in auditory and visual acuity after PIP. This research was published in Southern Medical Journal in 2010.[14] Brown repeated this study under the ministry of Randy Clark in Brazil, and found similar results.[15]
Assessment of PIP
The STEPP study is very strong because it accounted for several of the factors that make DIP studies so challenging to control/account for. It is also of great evidential value that the results were replicated and verified under a different ministry on a different continent. When coupled with the fact that suggestion and hypnosis studies have failed to demonstrate significant improvements in vision or hearing[16], it seems obvious that something is really happening here.
Conclusion
Both DIP and PIP studies have been peer reviewed, and the results show that when done by orthodox Christians, especially in the charismatic/Pentecostal context, the prayers are correlated with beneficial medical outcomes for patients. You may be tempted to object at this point and say that to try and say that God did it, does not inform us of the actual mechanism by which the recovery is taking place. Fair point, and these studies do not try to offer a mechanism. In fact, they do not even claim that God is the one healing. They are merely showing a correlation, and documenting it as a remarkable phenomenon. You do not need to the know the mechanism in order to know that prayer is in fact effective. A helpful analogy that Harris provides in his paper is that of sailors and scurvy. Sailors did not know the biochemical mechanisms at play when using lemons or limes to avoid development of scurvy. They simply knew the lemons and limes worked. They were effective. Prayer is analogous. However you explain these results, whether trying to identify a natural or supernatural mechanism/explanation, I think we can agree to say that intercessory prayer to the Judeo-Christian God is effective. And I hope that at the very least that makes you pause and reflect. How do you explain this?
I think this evidence is also beneficial in lowering the bar of evidence that skeptics request when discussing miracle claims. For what reason would miracle claims need exceptionally strong evidence if we have studies where prayers to the Judeo-Christian God have beneficial health outcomes? A miracle claim that the Judeo-Christian God answered prayer would be completely in line with the results of these peer reviewed studies. For that reason, normal good evidence would suffice to show that a miracle happened. Of course, one must still weigh that evidence on a case by case basis to see if it is indeed good. I am merely saying that this research makes it more probable that a report of miraculous recovery during or after prayer could be true. In the future, I plan to write a blog documenting strongly evidenced miracles by reliable eyewitnesses with medical documentation pre and post prayer...things most would consider good evidence.
Lastly, I hope that if you are a Christian, these studies motivate you to pray with more boldness more often for the sick. For me personally, the results inspire me to trust God more deeply, knowing that he hears me interceding on behalf of the sick, and responds. Who would have thought that reading “boring” science papers would actually spark greater faith in God to pray for the sick? Read the papers for yourself, and be encouraged.
Footnotes
[1] By “gold standard,” I mean a randomized control trial, the standard experimental design used to test new drugs/chemical therapies. See Brown, Candy G. Testing Prayer: Science and Healing. (Harvard University Press). 2012. Pg. 96.
[2] This pithy summary comes from Candy Gunther Brown. See Strobel, Lee. The Case for Miracles. Pg. 127.
[3] Byrd, R. C. (1988). Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population. Southern Medical Journal, 81(7), 826-829.
[4] Harris, W., Gowda, M., Kolb, J., Strychacz, C., Vacek, J., Jones, P., . . . Mccallister, B. (1999). 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(19), 2273-2278.
[5] Strobel, Lee. The Case for Miracles. Pg. 51, 121.
[6] Benson, Dusek, Sherwood, Lam, Bethea, Carpenter, . . . Hibberd. (2006). 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(4), 934-942.
[7] Strobel, Lee. The Case for Miracles. Pg. 130.
[8] Strobel, Lee. The Case for Miracles. Pg. 131.
[9] Brown, Candy G. Testing Prayer. Pg 92.
[10] Brown, Candy G. Testing Prayer. Pg. 92.
[11] Strobel, Lee. The Case for Miracles. Pg. 132. For evidence of the claim, see Brown, Candy G. Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing. (Oxford University Press). 2011.
[12] Strobel, Lee. The Case for Miracles. Pg. 134.
[13] Strobel, Lee. The Case for Miracles. Pg. 132.
[14] Brown, C. G., Mory, S. C., Williams, R., & McClymond, M. J. (2010). Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Proximal Intercessory Prayer (STEPP) on Auditory and Visual Impairments in Rural Mozambique. Southern Medical Journal, 103(9), 864-869.
[15] Strobel, Lee. The Case for Miracles. Pg. 137.
[16] Brown, Testing Prayer. Pg. 214.