Does prayer, offered by someone at a distance, help a sick person to get better? Can my talking with God on behalf of a friend in another place help heal that friend?

Surprisingly, these questions currently interest scientists. Some researchers around the country are busy trying to measure whether religious activity can influence bodily recovery.

Our federal government has funded several such studies, spending more than two million dollars to support them. This expenditure, initiated by the Bush administration, has drawn fire from some critics who call it a waste of public money, but supporters consider it an innovative way to test the effects of intercessory prayer.

My interest in a connection between prayer and healing has been heightened by a recent illness. During this time, friends galore promised me spiritual assistance for my recovery. “You’ll be in my prayers,” they typically assured me; at least one of them even told me to count on the prayers of a group to which she belongs.

I warmly welcome these offerings of spiritual support. It gladdens my heart to realize how many people care enough to make mention of me in their prayers. It pleases me to receive backing from people for whom the spiritual life has crucial importance.

But what, exactly, does this backing imply? Is there an implied message that praying for the sick will lead to improvement through divine action? Can I believe in the same hope of intervention by God?

I do not ask the questions that way, however. The most important issue for me is not whether the prayer of friends has the power to change my health for the better. I do not expect direct divine action to improve the functioning of my bodily organs.

Rather, I believe in the efforts of my physicians and other health care professionals to serve as intermediaries, directing toward me the goodness of God. Similarly, I look to family members who provide me with marvelous loving care at home; they embody divine providence toward me. So do visiting nurses and others who work for my healing.  

My approach finds support in a newly published book entitled Prayer: A History.

Its authors, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, survey the practices of people around the globe. It is common for people to offer prayers in the hope of changing things for themselves and those they care about.

The writers offer many examples of traditional prayer that is integrated with a larger culture. This they contrast with the kind of prayer that is associated with modernity and considered a form of therapy. Deeply individualistic, it seems valued to the extent that it works.

With respect to prayer directed toward bodily healing, these authors emphasize its connection with community. “Healing prayer, we submit, is a work of repair, reknitting the social fabric that is frayed by illness or ruptured by death. It is a divine work, but its natural medium is a flourishing religious culture with a robust sense of communion between self and society, between society and the transcendent. Failing that sense of communion, healing prayer often takes on the appearance of a strange embellishment or an oddball obsession.”

I, too, see prayer as a divine work made meaningful by its connection with a culture and a community. This kind of prayer has graced every stage of my life. The community of faith has blessed all of the significant turning points of my life with prayers appropriate for the occasion.

Thus, as a Christian, I have received the traditional seven sacraments to prepare me for new situations. These prayers of the church continue to enhance my life in my eighth decade.

Countless members of this community, acting as individuals, have also offered prayers on my behalf throughout the years. To have been included by them has made me part of an extended world. I look back with pleasure on the many occasions when I have joined with people of other nations and traditions as we have stood together in raising up our needs to God.

Prayer thus strikes me as a fine remedy for isolation. At its best, it brings us into contact with many other people, a community much larger than our own, one made up of those who focus on spiritual gifts such as hope and love. I feel happy to be associated with those who pray for me and, if they are among the saints who will someday come marching in, I would like to be of their number.

As to the questions about prayer’s effects that scientists are studying, I await their findings with some interest. But I do not need for these researchers to demonstrate prayer’s value in quantitative terms.

I also take note of the Zaleskis’ sober conclusion that “the studies so far devised have proved inadequate to the task, not least because they depend on an unsophisticated understanding of God and prayer.”

Richard Griffin