Religion, Health and Healing: Findings from a Southern City

Abstract

During the last decade the traditional Christian practice offaith healing has reemerged in a number of mainline denominations. Most of the recent social science investigation of healing has been qualitative in nature. The present study explored healing practices in the context of a larger survey research project on education and health care. A sample of 586 adult respondents in the Richmond, VA SMSA were asked about their use of prayer in dealing with physical illness. The single most striking finding was that 14 percent of the respondents reported having experienced a healing which they attributed to prayer or regarded as a divine healing. Reported instances offaith healing probably would have been higher had the item wording encouraged reporting of multiple incidents and of non-physical healings. Multivariate analysis suggests thatfaith healing is not concentrated among deprived populations but rather is widely diffused through a broad range of churches and segments of the general population. The history of the relationship between religion and health is nearly as long as the history of humankind. Indeed, healing, divine healing, or healing in answer to prayer, has been an element of many religious traditions. Within Christianity, belief in and practice of healing (used here in a generic sense rather than in reference to the faith healing movement) has been present in every period of church history since the ministry of Jesus, although its acceptance and popularity have varied in different historical eras. Earlier in the twentieth century healing assumed a truly multi-denominational character but then declined in the years following World War I. For over a quarter of a century the Pentecostals and a few small sects and independent churches were the primary practitioners of healing in the United States. In the decades following World War II, however, there was a resurgence in the practice of healing. Healing revivals became popular in the 1950's and routinely attracted crowds of several thousand in the major cities. Established denominations began exploring the resurgence of healing and drafting position