Feeling is Believing: Pentecostal Prayer and Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Abstract

Sensory experience is pivotal to postmodern culture. A globalized world seems newly interconnected, yet individuals may feel more isolated than ever before. Scientific technologies and modern medicine have achieved remarkable triumphs and exhibited devastating limitations that leave people unsatisfied and searching for “more.” Modernization has not resulted in secularization, but sources of religious knowing—revealed Scripture, inherited tradition, institutional authority—have become unsettled. Postmoderns want more than intellectual certainty; they long for direct experiences of what is really real. In the United States and globally, many postmodern Christians combine “scientific” medicine with diverse touch-oriented “religious” and “spiritual” healing practices to find healing, reassurance that God is present with them personally, and hope for their future lives on earth and in the world to come. This essay draws on ten years of ethnographic research, in the United States and across globally diffuse social networks, on Christian prayer for divine healing and participation in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). I argue that touch-oriented healing practices attract adherents by promising sensory experience of the sacred. Bodily experiences in turn shape religious perceptions and may open a revolving door between religious worldviews. Ethnographic rE s E arch on p ray E r and c ompl E m E ntary and a lt E rnativ E mE dicin E Since 2003, I have been studying the global spread of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity through what I call “proximal intercessory prayer” for divine healing. The practice involves getting up close to a sick person, laying hands on their head, shoulder , or diseased body part, empathizing with their sufferings, petitioning God to heal, and commanding healing in the name and authority of Jesus of Nazareth. Many of the Christians I surveyed, interviewed, and observed sought prayer for healing both because they had physical and emotional needs and because they wanted evidence of God’s personal love and active intervention on their behalf. The pentecostal network at the center of my research—Christians influenced by the Toronto Blessing revivals of the