Harvard Prayer Study doesn't understand the Community of Faith
There's been a great deal of handwringing concerning the Harvard Prayer study that found that having a group of people pray for heart patients whom they didn't know from a distance didn't help their recovery.
From a scientific point of view, that may seem like a fair test of prayer. And, indeed, most of us would think and hope that having individuals from three congregations pray for strangers would have a measurable positive effect.
But the study fails to comprehend the communal aspect of Christianity. Early christians met in each other's home and broke bread together and were intimately acquainted with each other's joys and sorrows. When these people prayed for one another, it was a company of Christian friends uniting in prayer to voice concerns for a beloved brother or sister. And, to a lesser degree, this is still somewhat characteristic of how prayers are raised by churches today. Sure, we also pray vague prayers for the world and for people we've never met, and sometimes we hear details later of how our prayers were answered. But generally, our prayers are more personal, more involved, more heartfelt.
Reformed theology says that the Word isn't given to individuals to use as they please but comes to the community of faith as Scripture is preached in the context of communal worship. If this is our understanding of revelation of the Word,then it would seem that our conceptions of prayer may also be more communal.
This is not to say that praying alone in your prayer closet isn't valid and that these prayers are of no account. But it may be that there is a benefit to praying as a community of faith. Maybe blind prayers from strangers aren't of such benefit to the recipients because they don't "feel" prayed for. I know one goal of the study was to isolate the positive effects of touch which often accompany prayers. Studies have shown that patients who are touched by doctors, nurses, and acquaintances generally heal better. So care was taken to avoid contaminating the data by allowing people to be touched by those who prayed for them. But perhaps prayers are more consequential when people have someone hold their hand or lay hands on them or anoint them with oil when praying because people really "feel" that they have been prayed for. I know personally that on Ash Wednesday, when someone physically touches and marks my forehead with the sign of the cross, I take more seriously the notion that I am but dust and will return to the dust. Maybe people take prayers for them more seriously when they are touched in the process.
Of course, another problem with the study is that it tries to measure the effectiveness of prayers in terms of the percentage of prayer recipients whose health improve while it fails to consider ( though it could not be measured) the effect of these prayers on God. The outcome assumes that by praying for people, their health should improve. But we are not promised in this life that all of our afflictions will be healed. The scriptures tell us instead that "It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgement" and that God makes the sun to rise and set on the godly and the ungodly alike. Good people and wicked people have blessings and curses and so do people who are prayed for and those who are not. The only thing we can be sure of is that we will live and die and account for our lives to God. Certainly God answers prayers, many of them in the affirmative. But what percentage get a "yes" and who are we to ask such a question? Check out the last couple of chapters of Job if you want to hear God address our sense of holding God accountable to such things.
Yes, random prayers for strangers should do some good. I believe they do--whether or not the strangers even know that people are praying for them. But in the end, I would guess that prayers are most powerful for people who experience the prayer as well as the answer.
From a scientific point of view, that may seem like a fair test of prayer. And, indeed, most of us would think and hope that having individuals from three congregations pray for strangers would have a measurable positive effect.
But the study fails to comprehend the communal aspect of Christianity. Early christians met in each other's home and broke bread together and were intimately acquainted with each other's joys and sorrows. When these people prayed for one another, it was a company of Christian friends uniting in prayer to voice concerns for a beloved brother or sister. And, to a lesser degree, this is still somewhat characteristic of how prayers are raised by churches today. Sure, we also pray vague prayers for the world and for people we've never met, and sometimes we hear details later of how our prayers were answered. But generally, our prayers are more personal, more involved, more heartfelt.
Reformed theology says that the Word isn't given to individuals to use as they please but comes to the community of faith as Scripture is preached in the context of communal worship. If this is our understanding of revelation of the Word,then it would seem that our conceptions of prayer may also be more communal.
This is not to say that praying alone in your prayer closet isn't valid and that these prayers are of no account. But it may be that there is a benefit to praying as a community of faith. Maybe blind prayers from strangers aren't of such benefit to the recipients because they don't "feel" prayed for. I know one goal of the study was to isolate the positive effects of touch which often accompany prayers. Studies have shown that patients who are touched by doctors, nurses, and acquaintances generally heal better. So care was taken to avoid contaminating the data by allowing people to be touched by those who prayed for them. But perhaps prayers are more consequential when people have someone hold their hand or lay hands on them or anoint them with oil when praying because people really "feel" that they have been prayed for. I know personally that on Ash Wednesday, when someone physically touches and marks my forehead with the sign of the cross, I take more seriously the notion that I am but dust and will return to the dust. Maybe people take prayers for them more seriously when they are touched in the process.
Of course, another problem with the study is that it tries to measure the effectiveness of prayers in terms of the percentage of prayer recipients whose health improve while it fails to consider ( though it could not be measured) the effect of these prayers on God. The outcome assumes that by praying for people, their health should improve. But we are not promised in this life that all of our afflictions will be healed. The scriptures tell us instead that "It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgement" and that God makes the sun to rise and set on the godly and the ungodly alike. Good people and wicked people have blessings and curses and so do people who are prayed for and those who are not. The only thing we can be sure of is that we will live and die and account for our lives to God. Certainly God answers prayers, many of them in the affirmative. But what percentage get a "yes" and who are we to ask such a question? Check out the last couple of chapters of Job if you want to hear God address our sense of holding God accountable to such things.
Yes, random prayers for strangers should do some good. I believe they do--whether or not the strangers even know that people are praying for them. But in the end, I would guess that prayers are most powerful for people who experience the prayer as well as the answer.
posted by Frank at 1:50 PM
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