James records in his gospel that “the prayer of
faith shall save the sick” 1, and according to the U.S. Centre for
disease control and prevention, 45% of adults use prayer for personal health
reasons in the modern age.2 Unfortunately, it is very difficult to
measure the power of prayer as a part of the treatment of someone, for quite a
number of reasons: firstly, because some religious groups claim that praying as
part of a scientific study is artificial, so the prayers will not be answered.
There are also various confounding variables, such as ability to pray
(according to some, prayer is a skill to be learned )3
and fervour of prayer (this may affect the effectiveness of prayer)4.
Another reason that it is difficult to study is that it receives very little
funding; according to the Washington Post, “about $5 million is spent worldwide
on such research”5. Critics of scientific study of prayer argue that
part of the point of prayer is that it is not always answered, and that god is
not a mechanism that responds in a way that is predictable, or even measurable,
by humans. For these reasons, and because in such a religiously charged
subject, some studies are bound to be biased, research into prayer is still
very much being refined, and there are conflicting results at the moment.
There have been three main types of prayer studied scientifically to
gauge their efficacy. The most obvious one is second person prayer, which is
performed by someone who knows the person they are praying about. Second person
prayers directly ask a higher power for the person to be helped, as do third
person prayers, which are performed by a stranger. First person prayer not only
includes the petition to god but also can include self-meditation beforehand,
and is a separate type of prayer.
