The Cautious Dance of Science, Politics and Prayer

On this National Day of Prayer, an age-old debate over the separation of church and state rages on in the courts, and in Washington — while the scientific community continues to offer fascinating findings (and new questions) about the power and nature of prayer itself.

I'm not much of a praying man, but if I were, I'd pray that I can avoid affront or offense to anyone in the course of writing this article on prayer.

It's an inescapably touchy and sensitive subject — one we tend to steer clear from for precisely that reason. But with the Federal Courts having put the matter squarely in the news after a Wisconsin District Court determined that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional, we decided to approach the subject, gingerly, and from a somewhat different angle.

As the first Thursday in May, today (May 6) would be the National Day of Prayer — whose observance was officially established in 1952. And just one week following the Wisconsin court's decision, the Obama Justice Department has filed an appeal, and President Obama has announced his intent to recognize the occasion. So the legal and political issues involved are far from settled.

So what does the scientific community have to say on the matter of prayer? At first blush, one may take the view that matters of faith and spirituality and those of science interact as readily as oil and water. Scientific knowledge arises through careful, repeatable observation and measurement; divine force is a seemingly poor subject for that sort of inquiry. But in spite of that (and perhaps precisely because of that), the subject of prayer has engaged the attention and efforts of scientists keen to tease out a sense for the power and effectiveness of inner spiritual practice as they may be observed and measured by our outer, material-plane existence.

As a result, a significant and still-growing body of scientific research on the power of prayer exists, and can permit those with hardened positions — the skeptic and the believer alike — to find evidence supporting each viewpoint.

So the body of evidence is inconclusive. After all, what procedures are best for measuring a higher power? Additionally, it's not clear if the positive results that have been observed are tied to a particular religious practice, or if we're observing the same effects that accrue from, say, meditation, whose quiet contemplation and stillness-of-mind has been associated with cardiovascular and mental health benefits. Still, here are five examples of how the scientific community has weighed in on prayer and its effects.

1. A 2006 medical study, long-awaited owing to the 1,800 person sample size and its ten-year duration, did not find conclusive evidence for the benefits on heart patients by prayers made by strangers on their behalf. Surprisingly, those who knew that they were being prayed for demonstrated a higher incidence of complications.
2. As part of a 2009 series on science and spirituality, NPR highlighted the research of University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Andrew Newberg whose work explored functional and structural changes that take place in the brain (the frontal and parietal lobes in particular) as a result of prayer.
3. In a study published earlier this year, Florida State University psychologist Nathaniel Lambert found a positive impact for prayer in our relationships. For those who are wronged, prayer was seen to result in a increased sense of forgiveness and decreased sense of hurt toward the person who committed the offense.
4. In the early 1980s, a double blind study conducted at the San Francisco General Hospital’s Coronary Care Unit found a small but measurable decrease in the need for CPR, use of ventilators, and medication among those who were the subject of prayer compared to those who were not.
5. A 1998 Duke University study involving of 4,000 senior citizens found lower incidence of high blood pressure among those who regularly prayed or attended church service compared to those who did not.

Science may well never neatly pin down a conclusive answer, but precisely because the scientific method is so well crafted to dig into very difficult and seemingly unsolvable questions, we can expect researchers to continue to explore if and how our individual spiritual practice may make its presence known in the outer world.

As for when we'll have a conclusive answer to the political and legal question of the constitutionality of a National Day of Prayer? Heaven only knows.

Photo by Antoine Taveneaux via Wikimedia Commons.