against illness, and almost three-quarters attributed their illness to a sin against
God. Some religions stress prayer as the way to mobilize self-healing and believe
that biomedical interventions, such as surgery or blood transfusions, are harmful or
sinful.
In some situations, religion may have a negative impact on people’s lives. Religious
participation can lead to more, not fewer, problems when unscrupulous leaders
coerce or manipulate others to give up all personal autonomy. Problems also can
occur when religion fosters excessive guilt or shame or encourages people to avoid
dealing with life’s problems. Some religious groups urge their members to avoid all
conventional medical care, which can lead to life-threatening situations.
How Does Spiritual Healing Work?
No one really knows how praying for others works. Skeptics say it cannot happen,
because no accepted scientific theory explains it. In the development of theories,
however, empirical facts often lead to the development of an explanatory theory. For
example, it was well known that penicillin worked before anyone discovered how it
worked. The debate has now shifted from whether prayer works to how prayer
works.
Prayer: Much More Than a Chat with God
Prayer is most often defined simply as a form of communication and fellowship with
the Deity or Creator. The universality of prayer is evidenced in all cultures having
some form of prayer. Prayer has been and continues to be used in times of difficulty
and illness even in the most secular societies. A common image of prayer in the
United States is something like this: “Prayer is talking aloud to yourself, to a white,
male, cosmic parent figure, who prefers to be addressed in English.” This cultural
view of prayer fails to encompass how prayer is regarded by many people through-
out the world. For some, prayer is more a state of being than of doing; for others,
prayer is silence rather than words; for some, prayer is a thought or a desire of the
heart; others pray to a female Goddess or a Divine Being who looks like they do.
Buddhists do not believe in a personal God as creator and ruler of the world. Yet
prayers, offered to the universe, are central to the Buddhist tradition. Prayer may be
simply being still and knowing that God is God.
Prayer is part of many religious traditions and rituals and may be individual or
communal, public or private. Dr. Larry Dossey, who is a private practicing physician
and the leading researcher and practitioner studying the integration of spirituality
and western medicine, provides a broad definition of prayer: “Prayer is communica-
tion with the Absolute. This definition is inclusive, not exclusive; it affirms religious
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