[F]aced with dwindling membership and blows to their church’s reputation caused by its intransigence concerning medical treatment, even for children with grave illnesses, Christian Science leaders have recently found a new tolerance for medical care. For more than a year, leaders say, they have been encouraging members to see a physician if they feel it is necessary.

The church generally believes that “sickness is the manifestation of a conflict between “correct” and “incorrect” thinking.” And the national spokesperson “does not believe in germs or the existence of illness”. Christian Science generally “forbids mixing medical care with Christian Science healing, which is a form of transcendental prayer intended to realign a patient’s soul with God.”

William James always comes to mind when I hear about the Church of Christian Science. He was a strong proponent of “healthy mindedness” and used its techniques himself.

Here’s an excerpt from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on James:

James sets out a central distinction of the book in early chapters on “The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness” and “The Sick Soul.” The healthy-minded religious person — Walt Whitman is one of James’s main examples — has a deep sense of “the goodness of life,” (V, 79) and a soul of “sky-blue tint” (V, 80). Healthy-mindedness can be involuntary, just natural to someone, but often comes in more willful forms. Liberal Christianity, for example, represents the triumph of a resolute devotion to healthy-mindedness over a morbid “old hell-fire theology” (V, 91). James also cites the “mind-cure movement” of Mary Baker Eddy, for whom “evil is simply a lie, and any one who mentions it is a liar” (V, 107). For “The Sick Soul,” in contrast, “radical evil gets its innings” (V, 163). No matter how secure one may feel, the sick soul finds that “[u]nsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy….” These states are not simply unpleasant sensations, for they bring “a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness” (V, 136).  James’s main examples are Leo Tolstoy’s “My Confession,” John Bunyan’s autobiography, and a report of terrifying “dread” — allegedly from a French correspondent but actually from James himself. Some sick souls never get well, while others recover or even triumph: these are the “twice-born.” In chapters on “The Divided Self, and the Process of Its Unification” and on “Conversion,” James discusses St. Augustine, Henry Alline, Bunyan, Tolstoy, and a range of popular evangelists, focusing on what he calls “the state of assurance” (V, 247) they achieve. Central to this state is “the loss of all the worry, the sense that all is ultimately well with one, the peace, the harmony, the willingness to be, even though the outer conditions should remain the same” (V, 248).

The new study, published in the journal Psychological Science, draws data from 119 people over two experiments.

In the first, participants assigned to say a single prayer for their romantic partner reported a greater willingness to be forgiving of that person than did participants who were asked to describe their partner to a recording device “as if they were (talking) to a parent.”

The second study was more revealing, with participants – all of whom were comfortable with prayer – split into three groups: those asked to pray for a friend, those asked to pray about any topic, and those asked to think positive thoughts about a friend every day for four weeks.

People in the first group were much more likely to be forgiving of that friend than those in either of the latter two groups, which notably showed no significant differences between them. The first group also expressed more “selfless concern” during the testing period.

Is it just me or do these experiments seem rather silly? Why wouldn’t you be more forgiving of a person rather than a thing posing as a person (the recorder). Similarly, the connection one has with a friend is usually stronger than one has with a “topic” with which one is concerned.

The researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 30 academic pediatricians and pediatric oncologists at 13 leading academic medical centers around the country. They found that families most frequently raise the topic of prayer in response to a seriously ill or dying child.

The study found that pediatricians respond to requests for prayer in one of four ways: they participate in the prayers; they accommodate the prayers but don’t participate; they reframe the prayers, or they direct the families and patients to other religious and spiritual resources like hospital chaplains.

A little background: Republican senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma – a medical doctor by the way! -  implored people to pray that a Democratic Senator would be unable to vote on the health care bill on Sunday. The likely “target” was Sen. Byrd from West Virginia. He’s 92 and in poor health.

A caller into a CSPAN show was worried that the prayer may have backfired:

“Our small tea bag group here in Waycross, we got our vigil together and took Dr. Coburn’s instructions and prayed real hard that Sen. Byrd would either die or couldn’t show up at the vote the other night,” the caller said.

“How hard did you pray because I see one of our members was missing this morning. Did it backfire on us? One of our members died? How hard did you pray senator? Did you pray hard enough?” he continued, his voice breaking.

Watch:

Whew! Sen. Inhoff wasn’t slain by the terrible sword of the Lord by mistake.

But seriously, I have some compassion for the caller. I remember in the 5th grade during our daily morning class, Beth prayed that we would all do as well on the exam to the degree in which we studied for it.

We were stunned! Most of us gasped. How could she have prayed that? Out loud?

A pall descended upon us as we sat, hands folded on our desks, heads bowed, eyes closed. We … were … DOOMED! Oh the humanity! We really believed that Beth’s prayer would be answered.

Can the gates of Heaven, can God’s ears be petitioned the way we assault Congress with faxes and emails? The group that sends the most faxes wins? Is prayer like that?