The Power of Prayer

New research published in the American Heart Journal suggests that praying for sick people can have an effect - but not necessarily the intended one.

The research is titled "Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: A multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer". It was funded by the John Templeton Foundation and headed by Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School.

1800 patients were studied. A third of these received intercessionary prayer and were made aware of it. A third received intercessionary prayer without being certain they were receiving it. The final group received no planned intercessionary prayer although they were not sure whether they were receiving it or not.

The results were surprising. There was no significant advantage to patients receiving the prayers. In fact, the group who knew they were being prayed for ended up developing more complications than the other groups!

The original researchers did not try to explain these results. Others have suggested that the negative effects of prayer might be due to extra stress experienced by the patients knowing there were people praying for them.



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