Faith healing is the superstitious practice of prayer and gestures (such as laying on of hands) that are believed by some to elicit divine intervention in spiritual and physical healing, especially the Christian practice. Citing Believers assert that the healing of disease and disability can be brought about by religious faith through prayer or other rituals that, according to adherents, can stimulate a divine presence and power. Religious belief in divine intervention does not depend on empirical evidence of an evidence-based outcome achieved via faith healing. Virtually all scientists and philosophers dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience.See also:
Claims that "a myriad of techniques" such as prayer, divine intervention, or the ministrations of an individual healer can cure illness have been popular throughout history. There have been claims that faith can cure blindness, deafness, cancer, HIV/AIDS, developmental disorders, anemia, arthritis, corns, defective speech, multiple sclerosis, skin rashes, total body paralysis, and various injuries. Recoveries have been attributed to many techniques commonly classified as faith healing. It can involve prayer, a visit to a religious shrine, or simply a strong belief in a supreme being.
Many Christians interpret the Christian Bible, especially the New Testament, as teaching belief in, and the practice of, faith healing. According to a 2004 Newsweek poll, 72 percent of Americans said they believe that praying to God can cure someone, even if science says the person has an incurable disease. Unlike faith healing, advocates of spiritual healing make no attempt to seek divine intervention, instead believing in divine energy. The increased interest in alternative medicine at the end of the 20th century has given rise to a parallel interest among sociologists in the relationship of religion to health.
Faith healing can be classified as a spiritual, supernatural, or paranormal topic, and, in some cases, belief in faith healing can be classified as magical thinking. The American Cancer Society states "available scientific evidence does not support claims that faith healing can actually cure physical ailments". "Death, disability, and other unwanted outcomes have occurred when faith healing was elected instead of medical care for serious injuries or illnesses." When parents have practiced faith healing but not medical care, many children have died that otherwise would have been expected to live. Similar results are found in adults.
In various belief systems
Christianity
Overview
Regarded as a Christian belief that God heals people through the power of the Holy Spirit, faith healing often involves the laying on of hands. It is also called supernatural healing, divine healing, and miracle healing, among other things. Healing in the Christian Bible is often associated with the ministry of specific individuals, including Elijah, Jesus, and Paul of Tarsus.
Christian physician Reginald B. Cherry views faith healing as a pathway of healing in which God uses both the natural and the supernatural to heal. Citing: and . Being healed has been described as a privilege of accepting Jesus's redemption on the cross. Pentecostal writer Wilfred Graves Jr. views the healing of the body as a physical expression of salvation. After relating a story of Jesus's exorcising an individual and healing ill individuals who approached him, the author of the book of Matthew states that the miracles were a fulfillment of a prophecy from Isaiah 53:5.
Christian writers who believe in faith healing do not necessarily believe that an individual's faith presently brings about the desired healing. "[Y]our faith does not effect your healing now. When you are healed rests entirely on what the sovereign purposes of the Healer are," argues Larry Keefauver. Keefauver cautions against allowing enthusiasm for faith healing to stir up false hopes: "Just believing hard enough, long enough or strong enough will not strengthen you or prompt your healing. Doing mental gymnastics to 'hold on to your miracle' will not cause your healing to manifest now." Those who actively lay hands on others and pray with them to be healed are usually aware that healing may not always follow immediately. Proponents of faith healing argue that it may come later, if at all, in this life. Keefauver argues that "the truth is that your healing may manifest in eternity, not in time".
New Testament The New Testament relates that it was only after Jesus healed a blind man that his status was recognized, argues Bart D. Ehrman. Four of the seven miracles performed in the book of John that the author uses to indicate that Jesus was sent from God were acts of healing or resurrection. Jesus heals a Capernaumite official's son, heals a paralyzed man by a pool in Bethsaida, heals a man born blind, and resurrects Lazarus of Bethany.Ehrman, B. D. (2016). The New Testament: a historical introduction to the early Christian writings (6th ed.) New York: Oxford University Press. 171–172.
Jesus told his followers to heal the sick and stated that signs such as healing are evidence of faith.Crossan, J. D. (1994). Jesus: a revolutionary biography. New York: HarperOne. 119–123. The apostle Paul believed healing is one of the special gifts of the Holy Spirit,Harris, S. L. (2015). The New Testament: a student's introduction (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Education. 345. and that the possibility exists that certain persons may possess this gift to an extraordinarily high degree. The New Testament says that during Jesus's ministry and after his Resurrection, the apostles healed the sick and cast out demons, made lame men walk, raised the dead and performed other miracles. The apostles are described as men given supernatural powers by God, including the ability to heal.Pilch, J. J. (2004). Visions and healing in the Acts of the Apostles: how the early believers experienced God. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 40. For example, in the book of Acts 3:1–10, Saint Peter is recounted healing a disabled man.Harris, S. L. (2015). The New Testament: a student's introduction (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Education. 292–293.
Early Christian church Accounts or references to healing appear in the writings of many Ante-Nicene Fathers, although many of these mentions are very general and do not include specifics.
Catholicism
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes two "not mutually exclusive" kinds of healing, one justified by science and one justified by faith: healing by human "natural means through the practice of medicine" which emphasizes that the theological virtue of "charity demands that we not neglect natural means of healing people who are ill" and the cardinal virtue of prudence forewarns not "to employ a technique that has no scientific support (or even plausibility)". healing by divine grace "interceded on behalf of the sick through the invocation of the name of the Lord Jesus, asking for healing through the power of the Holy Spirit, whether in the form of the sacramental laying on of hands and anointing with oil or of simple prayers for healing, which often include an appeal to the saints for their aid".
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "the Holy Spirit gives to some a special charism of healing" but also that "the most intense prayers do not always obtain the healing of all illnesses" by which it cites Paul the Apostle as a biblical example of someone who found meaning in their own suffering.
In 2000, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued "Instruction on prayers for healing," with specific norms regarding prayer meetings for healing, which presents the Catholic Church's doctrines on sickness and healing.
It accepts "that there may be means of natural healing that have not yet been understood or recognized by science", but it rejects superstitious practices which are neither compatible with Christian teaching nor compatible with scientific evidence.
Faith healing is reported by Catholics as the result of intercessory prayer to a saint or to a person with the gift of healing. According to U.S. Catholic magazine, "Even in this skeptical, postmodern, scientific agemiracles really are possible." According to a Newsweek poll, three-fourths of American Catholics say they pray for "miracles" of some sort.
According to John Cavadini, when healing is granted, "The miracle is not primarily for the person healed, but for all people, as a sign of God's work in the ultimate healing called 'salvation', or a sign of the kingdom that is coming." Some might view their own healing as a sign they are particularly worthy or holy, while others do not deserve it.
The Catholic Church has a special Congregation dedicated to the careful investigation of the validity of alleged miracles attributed to prospective saints. Pope Francis tightened the rules on money and miracles in the canonization process. Since Catholic Christians believe the lives of canonized saints in the Church will reflect Christ's, many have come to expect healing miracles. While the popular conception of a miracle can be wide-ranging, the Catholic Church has a specific definition for the kind of miracle formally recognized in a canonization process.
According to Catholic Encyclopedia, it is often said that cures at shrines and during Christian pilgrimages are mainly due to psychotherapypartly to confident trust in Divine providence, and partly to the strong expectancy of cure that comes over suggestible persons at these times and places.
Among the best-known accounts by Catholics of faith healings are those attributed to the miraculous intercession of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary known as Our Lady of Lourdes at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France and the remissions of life-threatening disease claimed by those who have applied for aid to Saint Jude, who is known as the "patron saint of lost causes".
, Catholic medics have asserted that there have been 67 miracles and 7,000 unexplainable medical cures at Lourdes since 1858. Citing In a 1908 book, it says these cures were subjected to intense medical scrutiny and were only recognized as authentic spiritual cures after a commission of doctors and scientists, called the Lourdes Medical Bureau, had ruled out any physical mechanism for the patient's recovery.
Evangelicalism
In some Pentecostal and Charismatic Evangelical churches, a special place is thus reserved for faith healings with laying on of hands during worship services or for campaigns of evangelization.Cecil M. Robeck, Jr, Amos Yong, The Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2014, p. 138Béatrice Mohr et Isabelle Nussbaum, Rock, miracles & Saint-Esprit , rts.ch, Switzerland, April 21, 2011 Faith healing or divine healing is considered to be an inheritance of Jesus acquired by his death and resurrection.Randall Herbert Balmer, Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism: Revised and expanded edition, Baylor University Press, US, 2004, p. 212 Biblical inerrancy asserts that the miracles and healings described in the Bible are possible, and therefore may be believed to be still relevant and present in the life of the believer.Sébastien Fath, Du ghetto au réseau: Le protestantisme évangélique en France, 1800–2005, Édition Labor et Fides, Genève, 2005, p. 28
At the beginning of the 20th century, the new Pentecostal movement drew participants from the Holiness movement and other movements in America that already believed in divine healing. By the 1930s, several faith healers drew large crowds and established worldwide followings.
The first Pentecostals in the modern sense appeared in Topeka, Kansas, in a Bible school conducted by Charles Fox Parham, a holiness teacher and former Methodist pastor. Pentecostalism achieved worldwide attention in 1906 through the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles led by William Joseph Seymour.