Prayer has mostly been studied in connection with medicine. It seems like a good combination; the improvement (or not) of a condition can be objectively measured.

Brandeis University’s Wendy Cadge is an assistant professor of sociology. She also writes for ReligionDispatches.org.

She notes a series of studies.

Between 1965 and 2006, about 75 researchers working in small teams published eighteen research articles in English language medical literature reporting on intercessory prayer studies.

She links to two with positive outcomes:

Intercessory prayer studies first gained broad media attention in the United States in 1988 when Dr. Robert Byrd published an article, “Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population,” in the Southern Medical Journal.

The study included 393 people admitted to the cardiac care unit at San Francisco General Hospital, half of whom were prayed for by born-again Christians who were active in local churches. Each intercessor was given the assigned patients’ names, diagnoses, and general conditions, and asked to pray for “rapid recovery” and for “prevention of complications and death.” After analyzing the data gathered, Byrd concluded that “intercessory prayer to the Judeo-Christian God has a beneficial therapeutic effect in patients admitted to the CCU [cardiac care unit].”

Patients who were prayed for by born-again Christians they had never met, he argued, had better health outcomes than those who were not the subjects of prayer. A later study, “A Randomized Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit,” led by William H. Harris and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 1999, claimed to confirm these positive findings.

While Cadge notes that other studies had inconclusive or negative results, she only links to the Big Study, released in 2006, which ran almost ten years and involved 1,800 people:

Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.

And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.

The study method?

The researchers asked the members of three congregations — St. Paul’s Monastery in St. Paul; the Community of Teresian Carmelites in Worcester, Mass.; and Silent Unity, a Missouri prayer ministry near Kansas City — to deliver the prayers, using the patients’ first names and the first initials of their last names.

The congregations were told that they could pray in their own ways, but they were instructed to include the phrase, “for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications.”

Analyzing complications in the 30 days after the operations, the researchers found no differences between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not.

How about the results?

In another of the study’s findings, a significantly higher number of the patients who knew that they were being prayed for — 59 percent — suffered complications, compared with 51 percent of those who were uncertain. The authors left open the possibility that this was a chance finding. But they said that being aware of the strangers’ prayers also may have caused some of the patients a kind of performance anxiety.

“It may have made them uncertain, wondering am I so sick they had to call in their prayer team?” Dr. Bethea said.

The study also found that more patients in the uninformed prayer group — 18 percent — suffered major complications, like heart attack or stroke, compared with 13 percent in the group that did not receive prayers. In their report, the researchers suggested that this finding might also be a result of chance.

The study authors seem easily able to explain why people being prayed for had more complications, why people not being prayed for had more serious complications. But they add more reasons:

the study could not overcome perhaps the largest obstacle to prayer study: the unknown amount of prayer each person received from friends, families, and congregations around the world who pray daily for the sick and dying.

Reaction of “pray-ers”?

Bob Barth, the spiritual director of Silent Unity, the Missouri prayer ministry, said the findings would not affect the ministry’s mission.

“A person of faith would say that this study is interesting,” Mr. Barth said, “but we’ve been praying a long time and we’ve seen prayer work, we know it works, and the research on prayer and spirituality is just getting started.”

There is an interesting difference between this unsuccessful study and the successful studies, which many may jump at. Who did the praying?

Silent Unity describes itself as:

Unity is a positive, practical, progressive approach to Christianity based on the teachings of Jesus and the power of prayer. Unity honors the universal truths in all religions and respects each individual’s right to choose a spiritual path.

Not born-again Christian, but “interfaith”.

The Teresian Carmelites?

We are a Carmelite community of consecrated men, women and lay members who live in allegiance to Jesus Christ. As sons and daughters of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, we are faithful to the magisterial teachings of the Catholic Church. The call to prayer embraces our whole life, sustained by the Word of God and the Eucharistic Liturgy. We look to Mary, the Mother of God, as our model in the Christian life.

Catholics. Not born-again Christians.

St. Paul’s Monastery?

Our Vision
We, the sisters of St. Paul’s Monastery, are a community who live the Rule of St. Benedict based on Gospel values. Through our liturgical life and wise stewardship, we create sacred space from which we respond to the needs and challenges of church and society.

Catholics. Not born-again Christians.

My point is not to say that born-again Christians have a line to God’s ear while Catholics and “interfaith” sorts do not. I’m merely pointing out the difference between the studies.

What do you think? Post a comment here, or on the thread in the discussion forum!