298 mind
giving people the health benefits they want. Though the argument rarely is so
explicit as to actually say so, what we are meant to understand is that, when
religion becomes medicine, it is no longer about truth; it is about utility.
Matters are different when it comes to discussions about the efficacy of
prayer. The fact that most of the most widely publicized studies to date have
tested the efficacy ofChristianprayer has not been lost on at least some people
(not withstanding that one prominent 1998 study that claimed to find positive
results was self-consciously interfaith in its study design).^33 One Christian fun-
damentalist Web site devoted to posting evidence from science for the reality
of the Judeo-Christian God has crowed: “No other religion has succeeded in
scientifically demonstrating that prayer to their God has any efficacy in heal-
ing.” The Web site authors go on:
Obviously, science has demonstrated in three separate studies the ef-
ficacy of Christian prayer in medical studies. There is no “scientific”
(non-spiritual) explanation for thecauseof the medical effects dem-
onstrated in these studies. The only logical, but not testable, expla-
nation is that God exists and answers the prayers of Christians.^34Better Health through Religion: What Kind of Alliance Is This?
The claim that religion is good for one’s health is itself neither good news nor
bad; neither to be celebrated nor rejected out of hand. My aim here has been
to be analytical rather than polemical (there is enough polemic in this field
already). In the first instance, I have wanted to insist that the four working
parts of the argument actually add up to a far more unwieldy whole than its
more uncritical advocates generally realize. In the course of this essay, I have
already reviewed some of the specific instabilities and largely unanalyzed agen-
das lurking in one or another of the individual pieces.
Let me see what I can now say about the effort nevertheless to promote
these four different arguments in the service of the common, larger claim for
better health through religion. What should we think? In asking this question,
I do not mean, what should we think of the argument asmedical science(i.e.,
what do we think of the data, how good do we find the study designs);^35 nor
what should we think of it astheology(i.e., how consistent is the vision of
religion as good medicine with other understandings of the value of religion),^36
but rather what should we think of it as acultural vision of a new sort of alliance
between religion and medicine. What are we signing on to, if we sign on to
this alliance?
I began this essay by observing that there already exist in our society several
important ways of conceptualizing relations between religion and medicine in
the modern world. These other perspectives are grounded, not in the authority