Reinscribing the Lived Body: A Qualitative Study of Extraordinary Religious Healing Experiences in Norwegian Contexts

Anne Austad,Tormod Kleiven,Marianne Rodriguez Nygaard

doi:10.3390/rel11110563

Abstract

Poor health often motivates people to engage in religious and spiritual approaches to healing. However, there is limited research on such experiences from a northern European perspective. This article investigates healing experiences related to Christian faith and practices in Norway by thematic analysis of 25 semi-structured interviews with individuals who have experienced healing of different ailments. In so doing, healing events across diverse contexts are characterised, and the results show that such experiences not only feature practices in which other people are present in prayer, preaching, and the laying on of hands, but also spontaneous extraordinary encounters with a divine being through visions and voices. The healing events are further described as experiences of transformational, powerful touch. In light of the lived body theory, these transformational experiences can be understood as re-inscriptions of health that are manifested in the intertwined bio–psycho–social–spiritual aspects of the body.

Highlights

Previous research has shown that poor health and suffering often motivate people to engage in religious and spiritual healing practices (Ammerman 2013, pp. 250–51; McGuire 2008, p. 120)
Our study relied on this view of the lived body as a theoretical lens for exploring experiences of suffering, healing, and health. This lens allowed us to analyse how suffering and healing are expressed in reported physical, mental, social, and spiritual ailments, as well as in relationships and socio-cultural processes. As these aspects of the human person are seen as distinguishable, but not separate entities, we explored how they are reported to be intertwined in the lived body through healing experiences (Merleau-Ponty 2002, p. 105)
The aim of the present study was to characterise diverse cases of extraordinary religious healing experiences related to Christian faith and practices

Summary

Introduction

Previous research has shown that poor health and suffering often motivate people to engage in religious and spiritual healing practices (Ammerman 2013, pp. 250–51; McGuire 2008, p. 120). It has been found that religious and spiritual encounter experiences like visions and voices have a transformative function (Geels 2014), which, in some cases, has been described as healing (Braud 2012; Nygaard et al 2017). Religious and spiritual healing experiences are diverse in terms of the character of the initial suffering, the type of experience, the religious symbols and practices involved, and the perceived outcome. It is questioned whether such experiences should be referred to as many related experiences and practices, rather than as one phenomenon For instance, case studies of spontaneous remission of specific diseases like cancer (Brown 2012b), studies of distinct practices like healing prayer services (Brown 2012a; Hovi 2015; Hovi and Westerink 2013; Kleiven et al 2019) or personal, distant prayers

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