Does prayer heal the sick?; One in three Americans say prayer is responsible for curing their illnesses. Now, doctors are studying whether prayer might be useful as a treatment.
The Spectator
Sat 10 Apr 2004
Page: F11
Section: Focus
Byline: Bob Ivry
Source: Knight Ridder
Something was wrong with Lorice Greer's unborn baby.
She was devastated. But she knew what to do. She prayed.
"Oh, please, God, don't let it be so."
Lorice prayed with her husband Wayne. They linked hands. They shut their eyes. "Please, Lord, please."
Lorice and Wayne prayed with Wayne's mother Lorlene. They prayed with their pastor. They prayed with the entire congregation of the Greater Faith of the Abundance Church in Paterson, N.J., everyone joining hands and calling on God to heal the unborn son of Lorice and Wayne Greer.
Can prayer heal? Ask Lorice Greer and she'll flip through her Bible to John 14:14: "If ye shall ask anything in my name, that will I do."
In a time when medicine offers ever more awe-inspiring remedies, 30 per cent of Americans say prayer is responsible for healing their illnesses, a Gallup Poll says. Eight in 10 believe God works miracles. In one study, three- quarters of breast cancer patients reported asking God to help rid them of it.
Does prayer work? It's so effective that doctors who don't use it may be guilty of malpractice, says Dr. Larry Dossey, author of Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine.
In fact, medical schools now teach students to treat "whole" patients, their bodies and their souls.
Research has shown that prayer can relieve stress and stress-related ailments. The act of praying -- of Catholics saying the rosary, Jews rocking in fervent prayer, Buddhists breathing "om" -- can reduce blood pressure, lower heart rate and bestow a feeling of well-being, even the most skeptical scientists agree.
But results of other studies are more controversial, particularly those concerning whether praying for someone else can heal.
The possible link between faith and healing has so intrigued U.S. health officials that they're spending millions to study the effect of healing touch on newborns and whether praying for breast cancer survivors can prevent a recurrence.
"We should all be looking for the truth, whether we're believers or not," says Dr. Gary Posner, a Tampa, Fla., scientist who doubts prayer has any healing power. "If it does work, nonbelievers like me will become believers."
Randall Lassiter, Lorice and Wayne Greer's pastor, says he's seen with his own eyes God's power to heal.
Every Sunday, Lassiter's Greater Faith Church of the Abundance meets in a room at the YMCA in downtown Paterson. "For we walk by faith, not by sight," reads a velvet banner hanging over the pulpit.
After singers have praised Jesus, Lassiter, dressed in a purple robe, invites congregants to the altar.
Lassiter lays hands on his flock but he says God heals them.
"Even after I became a minister, I was a doubting Thomas about the laying on of hands," Lassiter says. "Then I experienced it myself about 10 years ago.
"The pastor put his hand on me and I felt so peaceful. I felt a tingle. I fell down. I don't remember going down and I don't know how long I was down. But I do know I felt the power of God."
Lorlene Greer believes. As music plays on a recent Sunday morning, Lorlene - - Lorice Greer's mother-in-law -- makes her way to the altar along with a dozen others. Minister Carolyn Stokes takes the microphone from Lassiter to beseech God.
"Break the angry yoke," Stokes cries out. "We welcome you, Holy Spirit."
Lassiter moves forward into a sea of congregants with his arms stretched out in front, as if feeling his way in the darkness -- "by faith, not by sight."
Lorlene Greer closes her eyes, raises her hands, and screams, "Hallelujah."
Lassiter places his hands on a man's forehead and the man jerks back. He places his hands on another forehead, and another, both hands now bringing down the power to heal.
"We will walk in the spirit. We will walk in the spirit. We're going to walk. With our God."
Lorlene Greer shrieks. Ushers -- all women dressed in white -- link arms around her, to protect her in case she falls. Lorlene cries "Hallelujah" and leans back, back, back, palms up, arms outstretched, face toward heaven.
"Obedience!" shouts Minister Stokes. "Obedience! Obedience!"
Swaying in the crowd swarming around Lassiter is Lorice Greer. Her eyes are closed. Dozing in her arms is her son, Josiah.
Doctors had said Josiah would have Down's syndrome. But he was born, 14 months ago, perfect.
A perfect baby boy.
Skeptics say talk of medical miracles is snake oil. In a case like that of baby Josiah Greer, they would say it's likely the doctor made an incorrect diagnosis. They point out the many people who are prayed over but die, and the many people who make spectacular recoveries without the benefit of prayer.
Since 1989, Posner, a physician who founded a group of scientists called the Tampa Bay Skeptics, has kept a $1,000 cheque in his wallet to give to anyone who demonstrates a verifiable faith healing.
"What we'd like to see is, one time, just one time, if someone had a broken arm -- a broken arm, you could see on a fluoroscope, an unmistakably broken bone -- and then the arm is prayed over and, say, within an hour, take another fluoroscope and, without any medical intervention, the bone is healed. There would have to be only one instance of that for me to believe it," he says.
Some effects of faith, however, can be measured by scientists. Researchers have documented that the laying on of hands can help heal ailments caused by stress, says Dr. Herbert Benson, president of the Harvard Mind/ Body Medical Institute and author of The Relaxation Response.
Healing touch triggers the release of nitric oxide into the bloodstream, he says. Nitric oxide counteracts fight-or-flight hormones, which cause stress and can lead to depression, insomnia, menstrual pain, stroke and other problems.
The immediate effects: decreased blood pressure, slower heart rate and calmer breathing.
The question is whether the hand of God is actually intervening or whether patients get better because, as in the placebo effect, they simply believe that touch will cure them.
"It doesn't matter," Benson says. Belief, he says, makes the healing possible.
It wasn't that long ago that a scientist risked career suicide by putting God under the microscope. Now, the National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health is spending $6.2 million over two years on prayer-health links.
While scientists debate intercessory prayer, believers continue to form "prayer chains" on behalf of sick strangers. Lists of the ailing are read in houses of worship and frequently are posted on the Web.
Every day, Rivka Lewin and other members of Chevra Tehillim, a Jewish group based in Teaneck, pray for the ill by reciting tehillim, or psalms.
To Lewin, healing miracles happen all the time.
There's the young man in Bergen County who she says was roused out of a coma by prayer. There's Lewin's father, with a leg injury so painful that "to sit down or stand up, he would scream." After reciting tehillim, his leg improved so fast "the doctor himself said it was a miracle," she says.
"God answers the prayers of people who pray for others before he answers prayers of people who pray for themselves," says Rabbi Menachem Kaplan of the Wayne Chabad Center. He says that belief originated with Genesis 25:21: "Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived."
Lorice Greer knows. No doctors or nursescould help her unborn son. Her prayers and the prayers of her pastor healed her child -- and they healed her.
