Feeling Is Believing: Pentecostal Prayer and Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Feeling Is Believing: Pentecostal Prayer and Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Feeling Is Believing: Pentecostal Prayer and Complementary and Alternative Medicine
SPIRITUS | 14.1 Spiritus 14 (2014): 6067 2014 by Johns Hopkins University Press
1990semphasized that healing is often an immediately tangible experience.
Practitioners deliver words of knowledgea gift of the Holy Spirit which
communicates that God wants to heal a particular condition nowexperi-
enced as sympathetic pains that disappear once the word is shared. People
testify to healing if, during or after prayer, they feel at least an eighty percent
reduction in symptoms such as pain or an increase in mobility that allows them
to do something they could not do before. People also point to sensory percep-
tions of heat, tingling, vibrating, or sensations akin to electricity as evidence
that the Holy Spirit is present and at work to bring healing, whether or not an
improvement in symptoms can yet be perceived.1
I asked Christians whether they did anything besides pray when they 61
needed healing. Few informants rejected modern medicine, but many expressed
ambivalence: wanting benefits of drugs and procedures, but disliking the side
effects, failures, costs, impersonal approach, and materialistic assumptions. In-
formants also described their love for complementary and alternative medicine,
or CAM. I was surprised, because most of my informants are theologically
conservative Christians who eschew religious pluralism. Yet many of the CAM
practices they mentioned are closely connected with selective interpretations
of religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism (Daoism), and/or
Western metaphysical spirituality. These practices include yoga, chiropractic,
acupuncture, Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, mindfulness meditation, martial arts,
homeopathy, and certain anticancer regimens. A common denominator among
Christian prayer and CAM is an emphasis on sensory experienceincluding
sensations of heat or tingling and the likeas evidence of the sacred. It seemed
that Christians interpreted similarity in physical sensations as evidence of com-
mon spiritual causation. In other words, if particular sensations indicated the
activity of the Holy Spirit during prayer, and one experienced comparable sen-
sations during a Reiki session, these too could be attributed to the Holy Spirit.
In twenty-first-century American culture, theologically conservative
Christians debate the meanings of sickness and how healing should be pur-
sued. There are cessationist evangelicals (for instance, Calvinist Presbyteri-
ans and Baptists) who affirm biblical miracles, but who believe that miracles
ceased after Bible times because they are no longer needed as confirmation of
the gospel, and sickness can glorify God and produce spiritual sanctification
as sufferers submit to Gods will. Pentecostal and Charismatic continuation-
ists (Protestant and Catholic) believe that gifts of the Holy Spirit, including
healing, are for today; healing is still needed because people are still sick, not
everyone has yet embraced the gospel, and physical and spiritual wholeness are
complements rather than competitors. Until recently, both groups of Chris-
tians associated CAM with Eastern religions or New Age spirituality and
generally rejected CAM as idolatrous. Today, many Christians are motivated
SPIRITUS | 14.1
tarian, universally adoptable spiritualityand may resort to self-censorship,
camouflage, or even deception and fraud. The term spirituality often serves
as a euphemism for religion to avoid negative associations with Christian
dogmatism or to reassure Christians that they can engage in spiritual practices
without committing apostasy. Nevertheless, religion and spirituality share
metaphysical assumptions about the nature of reality, function to address
ultimate questions, and offer purpose, meaning, and hope. Spirituality, like re-
ligion, often involves bodily practices perceived as connecting individuals with
suprahuman energies, beings, or transcendent realities or inducing heightened
spiritual awareness or virtues of ethical and moral character. For definitional
purposes, spirituality is better understood as one kind of religion rather than as 63
something other than religion.
SPIRITUS | 14.1
New Age, it is Christian. Christians can be defensive about their therapeutic
combinations because they strongly desire to participate in therapies that they
perceive as beneficial, yet conservatives still do not want to become tainted by
New Age or Eastern religion or to have others question their orthodoxy.
Notes
1. Candy Gunther Brown, Testing Prayer: Science and Healing (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press).
2. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict VXI), Letter to the Bishops of the Catho-
lic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation, 1989, accessed December 21,
2013, www.ewtn.com/library/curia/cdfmed.htm; Pontifical Council for Culture and 67
Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of
Life: A Christian Reflection on the New Age, 2003, accessed December 21, 2013,
www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_
doc_20030203_new-age_en.html; William E. Lori, et al. Guidelines for Evaluating
Reiki as an Alternative Therapy (March 25, 2009), accessed February 26, 2013, old.
usccb.org/doctrine/Evaluation_Guidelines_finaltext_2009-03.pdf.
3. Gary Langer, Poll: Americans Searching for Pain Relief (May 9, 2005), ABC
News, accessed December 21, 2013, abcnews.go.com/Health/PainManagement/
story?id=732395; Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
4. David Chidester, Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2005), 26.
5. Brian Whalen and Ramie Whalen. Holy Ghost Hokie Pokie, 7:198:27 (October
29, 2009), MorningStar Ministries, Fort Mill, SC, accessed December 21, 2013, www.
youtube.com/watch?v=vTPowYQ-jVU.
6. Candy Gunther Brown, The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine
in Christian America (New York: Oxford University Press), 211212.
7. Brown, Healing Gods, 214.
8. Ruth R. Faden and Tom L. Beauchamp, with Nancy M. P. King, A History and Theory
of Informed Consent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 8 and 14; Tom L.
Beachamp, Autonomy and Consent, in The Ethics of Consent: Theory and Practice,
ed. Franklin G. Miller and Alan Wertheimer (New York: Oxford University Press,
2010), 66.