Divine Healing Part 1 - Observations and Research

An Exploration of Divine Healing Among Christians

Divine healing is an act attributed to God that creates a healthy state in a person who was born with an impairment or who has been restored to a healthy state following an impairment. The attribution of healing to God as the one who heals is usually because someone prayed for healing before the healing occurred.

I studied the divine healing literature when I wrote Counseling and Psychotherapy with Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian (2020). In this post, I summarize some of that research and consider a way to organize various teachings about divine healing.

Christians draw on numerous reports of Jews and some non-Jews being healed in the Bible. The Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) contains stories of healing (e.g., Genesis 20. 17,18; 1 Kings 13.6). The gospel writers reported that Jesus healed a number of people (e.g., Mark 1.41; Mark 8.22; Luke 8.54). Although contemporary accounts of healing are often associated with charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity (e.g., Village, 2005), Christians in the major groups (e.g., Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) have reported being healed by God for centuries.

Types of Divine Healing Claims

Healing may be considered divine by a Christian as long as someone has prayed to God for healing, although, some attribute healing to God even when no specific prayer was mentioned. I consider the terms supernatural healing and faith healing as equivalent to divine healing when used by Christians. We may consider four basic types and one complex type of divine healing. I refer to the first type as miraculous healing.

1. Condition ⇒ Prayer⇒ healed

2. Condition ⇒ Prayer + medical treatment ⇒ healed

3. Condition ⇒ Prayer + natural treatment ⇒ healed

4. Condition ⇒ healed (attributed to God)

5. Condition ⇒ Prayer + medical treatment + natural treatment ⇒ healed

Divine Healing Concepts

In classical Pentecostal services, only Type I was considered divine healing. Typically, a person with a condition would kneel at an altar and be anointed with olive oil. Church leaders would gather around the person and place one hand on the person. Others might stand nearby with hands raised to God. The pastor or another person would plead with God for healing or in some cases make loud affirmative statements like “In the name of Jesus, be healed!” The expectation would be for immediate healing. If the healing occurred, God would be praised and the healing would be considered a miracle because the outcome could not be attributed to other interventions.

As medical interventions became more and more successful, Pentecostals joined others in seeking medical treatment. Perhaps fearing lawsuits, most clergy were reluctant to advise people against seeking professional medical care. Some Christians still recommend natural treatments along with prayer. I suspect the complex Type 5 is the more common basis for reports of divine healing--that is, combine prayer with medical and natural treatments and thank God for being healed.

Conditions. I have used the word condition because I did not want to exclude something for which people seek healing. Consider examples of conditions:

Cancer, stroke, heart disease, kidney disease

Impairments such as vision, hearing, speech

Inability to have a child

Cognitive impairments such as Intellectual and learning disabilities, dementias

Dependence on alcohol or other substances

Mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depressive disorders, anxiety disorders

Memories of trauma

Relationships

Medical treatments. I suppose the term medical treatments can be vague as well. I mean an evidence-based treatment provided by, or recommended by, a licensed medical professional. The most obvious treatments would be such things as surgical removal of a tumor or cyst, a regimen of chemotherapy for cancer, or a prescription of antibiotics.

Natural treatments. These can vary widely. I am including those items people buy in natural food stores even though people have taken a natural ingredient and made it into a pill or liquid. Some use plants or visit natural springs. Others turn to massage. In some ways, physical, occupational, and speech therapy may be considered natural treatments even though they are provided by licensed professionals. I won’t quibble if you would prefer to consider them medical treatments. Finally, I included the passage of time that allows for natural healing such as the normal repair following bruises and cuts, and so forth.

Psychotherapies. I am going to talk about mental health interventions in a separate post because healing of mental disorders and other kinds of healing appear to be different in kind.

Other healings. Christians use the word healing as a metaphor. For example, they may pray for healing of a relationship or for spiritual healing. Some write about emotional healing, which may be a focus of prayer with or without psychotherapy.

Divine Healing Plus Medical Healing

As I mentioned previously, the days of refusing general medical care in favor of divine healing appear to have faded as advances in medical science have resulted in saving or extending many lives. Many Christians post on social media requests for prayer as they or a loved one is in a hospital or undergoing medical treatment. Often they report thanks to God when the loved one has recovered. This seems to suggest a nuanced meaning of divine healing in that God can heal directly or through a medical procedure. It is also possible that Christians would call such healing a miracle.

A 2002 study found that 80% of a sample in North Carolina believed God acts through medical doctors to treat illness. Also, 40% believed that a recovery outcome depended on God's will (Mansfield et al., 2002).

Divine Healing and the Pandemic

While some clergy rejected procedures like canceling church to stay safe proclaiming that God would either keep them safe or heal them if they became infected, most Christians followed medical advice up to a point. Some rejected vaccines. Some rejected additional precautions saying "I’ve been vaccinated and I trust God to take care of the rest." In these cases we see a mix of divine protection and the traditional sense of divine healing.

Divine Healing Beliefs and Actions

Barna reported the results of a survey that asked about beliefs that God can heal supernaturally. The analyses revealed the Christian divide.

Evangelical[1] beliefs: 87% strongly believe

Protestants in general: 55% believe

Catholics: 19% believe

There is also an education factor. Americans with a college degree endorsed supernatural healing at the low level of 27%.

If you flip the responses to look at disbelief, then you see the strongest disagreement among Americans is among the young (26%) compared to the elderly (13%).

Strongly held beliefs in supernatural healing are strongest among Black Americans (55%) compared to Hispanic (26%) or White (29%) Americans.

Prayers

On social media, it is common to see comments with the one word “prayers” or “praying for you” when a Christian requests prayer. What do the data indicate? According to the same Barna report, 68% of Americans have prayed for someone to be healed—most of the praying people are women and most of those had a high school education or less.

You can count on evangelicals to pray for you—95% reported praying for someone’s healing. However, most Christians come through with 84% of Protestants and 76% of Catholics.

Miracles

Following Barna, a miraculous healing is one that could not be explained by medical intervention or natural processes. The results revealed that 27% of Americans reported miraculous healing. The rates are higher for women and those educated at the high school level or below. Not surprisingly, given the other data, Evangelicals report a high percentage of miraculous healing at 48%. Other Protestants were at 41% and Catholics at 18%. Note. See The Barna study completed in 2016.

Scientific Evidence for Miracles

The data from the Barna study is surprising in the sense that nearly half of their sample reported the type of divine healing that could be considered miraculous. Unfortunately, responses to a survey do not include the medical evidence to substantiate the claims.

What would be reasonable evidence of a miracle? I expect people will argue about this one. But let me try to offer an example of evidence for a miracle.

A person loses their hearing. A hearing test documents the extent of the loss. There is documentation that the person sought prayer for healing. Following prayer, they could suddenly hear again. Despite the excitement, they obtain another test, which documents normal hearing that is far above the level on the previous exam. This type of evidence would be amazing. If this scenario were repeated with the same person and other people with similar and other medical conditions on a routine basis, then we would have objective evidence that divine healing of the miraculous type routinely follows prayer to God. Such evidence would support claims that faith healing is a reliable method of treatment but, strictly speaking, it would not prove that an unobservable act of God was responsible for the healing.

Section Summary

Christians are divided in their beliefs about divine healing which is equivalent with the terms supernatural healing and faith healing used in other articles. Despite the division, there is unity in that most believe God can heal and continues to heal in response to prayer. Although few would risk their health by relying on God without adding medical or natural interventions, Christians have broadened their beliefs about divine healing to include God at work through physicians, medical treatments, and natural remedies. In this way, most Christians have integrated faith and science. That is, regardless of how the healing occurred, God is in some way responsible for the healing.

Survey evidence indicates that large percentages of Christians believe in divine or supernatural healing, report praying for others to be healed, and report their personal experience of a miraculous healing.

Given the evidence, we can expect large numbers of Christians to believe in divine healing for years to come. This belief is evident in the personal practice of prayer, asking others to pray for them, and reports of healing.

Although the divide over divine healing is most evident between Evangelicals and non-Evangelicals, a large number of Christians who do not identify as Evangelicals believe in divine healing and report miraculous healings as well.

Medical evidence for consistent divine healing without medical or nonmedical treatments is not available in the literature.

Beliefs in divine healing cannot be a test of who is a Christian but it is rare to find an Evangelical or Pentecostal [2] who does not believe in divine healing.

More topics in this series- links will be added when they are published

Part 2 When prayers for healing fail

Part 3 Divine healing and mental health

Part 4: Divine Healing and LGBTQIA+

References

See the hyperlinks in the text for sources.

Other references

Brown, C. G. (2012). Testing prayer: Science and healing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Mansfield, C. J., Mitchell, J., & King, D. E. (2002). The doctor as God's mechanic? Beliefs in the Southeastern United States. Social Science and Medicine, 54, 399-409.

Sutton, G. W. (2021). Counseling and psychotherapy with Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians: Culture & Research | Assessment & Practice. Springfield, MO: Sunflower. ISBN-13 : 979-8681036524 AMAZON

Village, A. (2005). Dimensions of belief about miraculous healing. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 8(2), 97–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/1367467042000240374

[1] See the Barna reference for the way they define Evangelicals and for other study details.

[2] Some, but not all, evangelicals identify as Pentecostals.