Faith In Healing Research Articles

Healing faith: knowledge, learning and social relationships of healers from Araripe plateau, Brazil

We investigated the practice of healing in three rural communities in Brazil (Ceará) to understand the diseases that are treated, the plants known and used, the ways in which knowledge of the blessing practices and medicinal plants is gained, and the relationships among the healers. We interviewed 41 healers, who treat approximately 20 diseases with blessings and know several species of medicinal plants. Six plants are most often associated with blessing. The transmission of knowledge occurs mainly through people who have kinship. The popularity of a healer was not influenced by the number of therapeutic plants known or the number of diseases treated through blessing. In two communities, the best-known healers are also the most sought after by other healers for the exchange of information and blessings. The results of this study can assist in the establishment of public actions aimed at the enhancement and the recognition of blessing practices.

What Medicine Could Not Cure: Faith Healings at the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation, Carey, Ohio

Called “America’s Lourdes,” the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Carey, Ohio, has been the site of dozens of reported physical healings. Beginning in 1875 and peaking in the first decades of the twentieth century, the reports of healings brought thousands of pilgrims to the shrine, many of them seeking cures. This study observes the development of the shrine at a time of significant medical advances and argues that any attempt to understand the cures reported to have taken place there must be viewed against the backdrop of scientific progress. While the reported healings may have appeared to challenge science by reasserting illness as mysterious and divinely-sanctioned, the pilgrims and those who promoted the cures were not often antagonists to medical progress but believed they served as witnesses to the role of religious faith in healing what medicine could not cure.

Faith healing and faith in healing.

Sarkar and Seshadri have presented an interesting paper in this issue on the ethical approach that a physician should take when faced with requests for faith healing (1). The paper describes four approaches that the physician can take. These are rejecting the request, keeping oneself detached from the issue, endorsing the request and trying to understand the practices concerned so as to make a reasoned decision. This commentary attempts to explore the issue of faith healing further, from the point of view of clinical care. It shall discuss five important dimensions which can supplement the arguments by Sarkar and Seshadri. These are the concepts of faith, spirituality and religion and faith healing; the difference between cure and healing; patient-centred care; the various factors influencing a doctor's response to requests for faith healing; and finally, the ethical issues to be considered while making a decision. Before launching into the discussion, it should be made clear that this commentary refers mainly to those faith healing practices which are not overtly harmful, such as prayers, and wearing rings and amulets.

Overcoming fragmentation and waste in health care systems in Africa: Collaboration of health care professionals with pastoral caregivers

This article explores the possibility and limits of collaboration between medical professionals and pastoral caregivers with a view to overcoming fragmentation and waste in the African hospital care sector. It argues that the quality of health and health care in many African countries is poor. Therefore, a purposeful reform of health care delivery systems in Africa is necessary. Building on the World Health Organization’s statement that the medical model that focuses on medicine and surgery and ignores the factors of belief and faith in healing is no longer satisfactory, it further argues that the medical model (including the bio-psychosocial model) is not sufficient for holistic hospital care; it therefore needs to accommodate complementary approaches (such as pastoral care) and include these as collaborative treatments. The connection of collaboration with quality, value, relationships and the ending of life implies that collaboration is an ethical process of reflection – which could have a legal implication.

Determinants of patients’ attitudes toward patient-centered care: A cross-sectional study in Greece

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to investigate – for the first time in Greece – patients’ attitudes toward patient-centered care, by identifying the impact of socio-demographic factors, health condition, social support and religious beliefs. Methods454 Hospitalized patients were interviewed on the first day of their scheduled admission, answering demographic questions and the following questionnaires: Patient–Practitioner Orientation Scale (PPOS), Autonomy Preference Index (API), Short Form SF-12v2 Health Survey, God Locus of Health Control (GLHC) and Perceived Available Support (PAS). ResultsMean PPOS and API scores were: PPOS Sharing 3.4 (sd=0.69), Caring 3.99 (sd=0.76), API Information-Seeking 88.32 (sd=9.35) and Decision-Making 51.19 (sd=9.27). Higher desire for information was associated with younger age, more years of education, weaker spiritual faith in healing and worse subjective health status. Higher expectations for caring physicians were correlated with older age, more years of education, higher perceived social support and weaker spiritual faith in healing. ConclusionAge, years of education, health status, social support and religious beliefs are determinants of patient-centered attitudes. Practice implicationsPatients expect to be informed, although they do not equally want to be involved in decision-making. Religious faith and perceived social support should be taken into consideration to further understand patients’ needs.

Development and Validation of Measures of Religious Involvement and the Cancer Experience among African Americans

Research indicates that African Americans diagnosed with cancer tend to use religion in coping. However less is known about the specific role that religion plays in the coping process. Based on previous qualitative work, five instruments were developed to assess the role of religious involvement in cancer coping: God as helper, God as healer, Faith in healing, Control over cancer and New perspective. The instruments were administered to 100 African Americans with cancer. Each exhibited high internal reliability, and concurrent and discriminant validity. These instruments may have applied value for the development of church-based cancer support/survivorship interventions.

Prescribing Faith: Medicine, Media, and Religion in American Culture by Claire Hoertz Badaracco and In a New Light: Spirituality and the Media Arts by Ron Austin

Prescribing Faith: Medicine, Media, and Religion in American Culture Claire Hoertz Badaracco. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007. In a New Light: Spirituality and Media Arts Ron Austin. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007. The popular press frequently deals with faith, spirituality, or a mind-body connection in looking at issues of health and wellness and health and disease. Claire Hoertz Badaracco's Prescribing Faith: Medicine, Media, and Religion in American Culture looks at the mediated public debate about science and religion. She seeks to understand better public conversation about and religion, within its historical frame, and clarify tension between current medical practices and trend toward alternative and complementary medicine, within which flourish ideas about healing power of (6). The book asks readers to think about such controversial subjects as marketing health care as a commodity, condition advertising by Big Pharma, and creation of anxiety about illness, aging, and death with a corresponding need for faith-based products to alleviate this anxiety in what she refers to as medicated public square (3, 4, 155). Badaracco first looks at how a patient is to behave in face of suffering. She provides a case study by looking at two nineteenthcentury Transcendentalists, Sophia Peabody, painter and illustrator who married Nathaniel Hawthorne, and doctor, Walter Channing, a founder of Harvard Medical School. As a practitioner of medicine Channing prescribed mercury and arsenic for Peabody's headaches and other afflictions. She took his medicines and she accepted advice from him on how to control emotions. In addition, she sought refuge in religion from suffering from headaches and medicines' adverse affects. Badaracco sees Peabody developing a theology of suffering, accepting dosage as part of God's will for her (38). She finally recovered from long illness when Channing further prescribed a trip to warmer climate of Cuba where she quit taking mercury and arsenic and kept a travel journal. Badaracco contrasts Channing's heroic approach to health and disease with other alternatives that were available to American public in early nineteenth century from quackery to homeopathy. Chapter two examines life of Mary Baker Eddy and lifework of establishing a religion built on ideas of biblically based healing through prayerful connection with Divine Mind, without drugs of any kind (60). Badaracco believes that Eddy's Christian Science intersects with American literary history, in New England Transcendentalism and she argues that Eddy articulated many of ideas current in twenty-first century mind-body and complementary and alternative medicine (87, 89). Eddy's Christian Science is portrayed as very much in opposition to heroic of Channing and his colleagues. Badaracco especially focuses on importance of how Eddy built a newspaper business (The Christian Science Journal) and how she earned a living by pursuing readers directly without aid of booksellers and agents with publication of Science and Health with Key to Scriptures. Badaracco is especially fascinated with how Eddy was able to make religious book a required product for many American consumers (9). For popular culture scholars, Badaracco also notes that Christian Science prospered in twentieth century with Hollywood celebrities where First Church of Christ Scientist in Pasadena attracted movies stars from Joan Crawford to Henry Fonda. The book's third chapter is more concerned with how researchers have looked at role of prayer and faith in healing. Her major focus is on how integrated has gained presence in major medical institutions in their medical school curriculum and in actual treatment of patients. …

The spirit of the age and the spirit of ageing

Abstract(Adapted from paper presented at 5th International Conference on Faith in Healing & Health Care Provision, St Martin's College, Lancaster, July 2002)In a cultural milieu that prizes perfection over defects, fitness over frailty, youth over old age, what is the essence or the spirit of ageing? This paper draws a distinction between the ‘spirit of the age’ and the ‘spirit of ageing’ to concentrate on the transforming power of relationships and interdependence. The ‘false spirit of the age’ suggests that to age well is to be freed from deficits, dependency and imperfection, while the ‘true spirit of ageing’ suggests a more dialectical understanding. To flesh out this ‘spirit’, two examples from residential aged care are offered and the notion of narrative is highlighted, indicating that our life is formed in community, not in isolation. Christian Trinitarian theology reminds us we are called into relationship, we are blessed by the spirit and grace of God who calls us to enjoy our full humanity at every stage of our created existence. Copyright © 2003 Whurr Publishers Ltd.

The doctor as God's mechanic? Beliefs in the Southeastern United States

Spiritual practice and beliefs related to healing are described using data from a telephone survey. Questions in the survey address the practice of prayer and spiritual beliefs related to healing. Questions explore belief in miracles, that God acts through religious healers, the importance of God's will in healing, and that God acts through physicians. Questions also ask whether people discuss spiritual concerns with their physician and whether they would want to if seriously ill. We create a composite index to compare religious faith in healing across race, gender, education, income denomination, and health status. Logistic regression predicts types of patients who believe God acts through physicians and those inclined to discuss spiritual concerns when ill. The most important findings are that: 80% of respondents believe God acts through physicians to cure illness, 40% believe God's will is the most important factor in recovery, and spiritual faith in healing is stronger among women, African-Americans, Evangelical Protestants, the poorer, sicker, and less educated. Those who believe that God acts through physicians are more likely to be African-American than White (OR=1.9) and 55 or older (OR=3.5). Those who discuss spiritual concerns with a physician are more likely to be female (OR=1.9) and in poor health (OR=2.1). Although 69% say they would want to speak to someone about spiritual concerns if seriously ill, only 3% would choose to speak to a physician. We conclude that religious faith in healing is prevalent and strong in the southern United States and that most people believe that God acts through doctors. Knowledge of the phenomena and variation across the population can guide inquiry into the spiritual concerns of patients.

Should academic medical centers conduct clinical trials of the efficacy of intercessory prayer?

Intercessory prayers for health or healing are requests to an object of worship for the preservation or restoration of health. There has been a recent proliferation of clinical trials that compare the health outcome of a group of prayed-for patients with that of controls, to test the efficacy of intercessory prayer. In this essay, the author defines the concept of intercessory prayer, contrasts it with other forms of prayer, and reviews the literature concerning clinical trials of its efficacy. The arguments put forward in favor of conducting such trials and those against are described and the reader is invited to consider their relative merits. The author concludes by discussing the potential power of faith in healing, reviewing the philosophical basis and pitfalls of clinical trials of intercessory prayer, and urging readers to weigh the arguments for and against such trials in academic medicine.

Faith in Healing and Health Care Provision

Faith in Healing and Health Care Provision

Healing Faith: An Annotated Bibliography of Christian Self-Help Books

Healing Faith: An Annotated Bibliography of Christian Self-Help Books