Haven’t studies proven that prayer doesn’t make any difference? | Lee Strobel & Mark Mittelberg
Haven’t studies proven that prayer doesn’t
make any difference?
By Lee Strobel & Mark Mittelberg
Haven’t studies proven that prayer doesn’t make any difference?
The Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP), conducted under the auspices of the Harvard Medical School, is a well-known study that seemed to say just that. It was a ten-year clinical trial of the effects of prayer on 1,802 cardiac bypass patients at six hospitals—costing a whopping $2.4 million!
The study focused on people who were undergoing cardiac bypass surgery. They were separated into three groups: one that was prayed for and a second that was not, though neither of them knew whether or not they were being prayed for. A third group was prayed for and was told so. Then the team kept track of who had complications from their surgeries.
“The results were very revealing,” said skeptic Michael Shermer. “There was no difference in the rate of complications for patients who were prayed for and those who were not. Nothing. Zero. In fact, those who knew they were being prayed for had more complications. So when you get beyond anecdotes and use the scientific method, there’s no evidence for the miraculous.”
Seems sobering, but let’s look deeper.
I interviewed a professor of religious studies at Indiana University, Candy Gunther Brown, who earned her doctorate at Harvard and wrote Testing Prayer: Science and Healing, published by Harvard University Press. I asked Brown about the STEP study.
“If you’re going to study prayer,” she replied, “wouldn’t it be important who was praying, who they were praying to, and how they were praying?”
It turns out the people doing the praying in that study were members of the so-called Unity School of Christianity in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. This is a sect that denies biblical teachings on the divinity of Jesus, sin and salvation, the Trinity, the Bible, and just about every other key Christian doctrine.
What’s more, Brown told me, “Unity leaders have long denied that prayer works miracles and have even called petitionary prayers ‘useless.’”
So this much-touted study, which seems to discredit the power of prayer, is actually a discredited study of what happens when people who don’t believe in prayer mouth “prayers” for others!
“In the end,” I asked, “does this study tell us anything that’s helpful?”
“Well,” Brown replied, “it is instructive on how not to conduct a study of Christian prayer.”
Lee Strobel is founding director of The Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University. He is the New York Times best-selling author of The Case for Christ and three dozen other books.
Mark Mittelberg is a bestselling author, speaker and apologist. He is the Executive Director of the Lee Strobel Center at Colorado Christian University.
This is an excerpt from The Miracles Answer Book by Lee Strobel & Mark Mittelberg. Used with permission.