Healing after Prayer, an interdisciplinary case study
Authors:   , Kruijthoff Dirk Johan 
Published: March 2023

Healing after prayer, an interdisciplinary case study

This study is the result of curiosity evoked by events in general medical practice.
The aim is to investigate reports of healing after prayer (HP), with the following research questions:
1. What are the medical and experiential findings? Do we find medically remarkable and/or scientifically unexplained healings?
2. Which explanatory frameworks (multidisciplinary) can help us to understand the findings?

Best evidence for unexplained cures in individual cases is from Lourdes and Rome, where reported healings are meticulously investigated and reviewed by medical assessment committees. Global Medical Research Institute in the USA adopted a similar procedure. Other HP related healings were recorded by medical doctors, but without a set procedure and without confirmation by a group of medical colleagues.

The research questions were investigated along several lines.
- Exploration of the field (see above)
- Case study research: medical data was obtained before and after prayer. An independent medical assessment team determined whether a healing could be considered as ‘medically remarkable’ or ‘unexplained’.
- The participants’ experiences were studied by means of in-depth interviews, using a qualitative research methodology.
- Findings were interpreted in the context of transdisciplinary discussions including medical, biopsychosocial and theological perspectives.

Results
83 HP reports were received, of which 27 were selected for evaluation by the medical assessment team. None was evaluated as ‘unexplained’. However, eleven healings were considered to be ‘medically remarkable’. In particular, there were sudden cures of serious chronic diseases when the best possible prognosis would be one of gradual regression, such as Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease.
Apart from the above the most significant finding was a similarity between the experiences accompanying many healing, whether they were evaluated as medically remarkable or not. A dominant pattern emerged: instantaneity and unexpectedness of healing, strong physical and emotional manifestations, and a sense of ‘being overwhelmed’ or ‘touched’. Not a ‘normal’ cure, but a transformative experience, interpreted as an act of God, involving the person-as-a-whole.
In some instances lasting healings with gross functional improvements were found without changes in medical investigations such as scans, audiometry or coloscopy. Surprisingly the ‘objective’ measurements did not reflect functional improvements in daily life where-as ‘subjective’ experiential data did.
The qualitative part of the research includes a thematic analysis of 14 in-depth interviews. For the participants their healings were much more than a repair of a bodily function. A horizontal epistemology, valuing different kinds of knowledge equally (medical, psychosocial, spiritual), is needed to understand them.

Theological reflection
Theology seems to have a ‘vocabulary’ for the HP experiences. There is an analogy between the instantaneous and multidimensional healing experiences in our study and the healings which occurred during the ministry of Jesus Christ and throughout the history of the church. Also, theology has an idiom articulating the experiences of the participants when they speak about their recoveries as ‘sign’, ‘gift’ or ‘act of God’ (charism).

General discussion
In the final chapter an attempt is made to find explanatory frameworks. Due to the nature of the results we were unable to fit the data into a biomedical model. Other perspectives were evaluated. There were similarities between what our participants said and what was found in the literature about ‘transcendent healing experiences’, ‘inscription in the lived body’ and a ‘powerful touch’. These concepts refer to intense events, occurring momentarily and with profound effects on health and personality, and to models transcending the usual mind-body duality. When positioning the HP experiences in the science-religion debate there are ample reasons for dialogue. A lot can be learnt when carefully studying and listening to these healing narratives.