Theologies of Medicine and Miracles

Michael J. Balboni and Tracy A. Balboni, Hostility to Hospitality: Spirituality and Professional Socialization within Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

Candy Gunther Brown, Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion? (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019); Brown, The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Donna Gillin, “The Opt-In vs. Opt-Out Debate,” Insights Association, February 28, 2001. http://​www.​insightsassociat​ion.​org/​article/​opt-vs-opt-out-debate.

Crystal L. Park, Kristen. E. Riley, Elena Bedesin, and V. Michelle Stewart, “Why Practice Yoga? Practitioners’ Motivations for Adopting and Maintaining Yoga Practice,” Journal of Health Psychology 21.6 (2016): 887–96; Jeffrey M. Greeson, Daniel M. Webber, Moria J. Smoski, Jeffrey G. Brantley, Andrew G. Ekblad, Edward C. Suarez, and Ruth Quillian Wolever, “Changes in Spirituality Partly Explain Health-Related Quality of Life Outcomes after Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction,” Journal of Behavioral Medicine 34.6 (2011): 508–18.

National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, The Belmont Report, April 18, 1979. https://​www.​hhs.​gov/​ohrp/​regulations-and-policy/​belmont-report/​index.​html.

John Calvin (1509–64) developed the doctrine of cessationism in response to Catholic demands that Protestants produce miracles to confirm their novel theology; Princeton theologian Benjamin Warfield (1887–1921), author of Counterfeit Miracles (1918), was the most influential twentieth-century proponent of cessationism. For an insightful analysis (by a well-read, laicized Dominican priest influential in the twentieth-century Charismatic movement) of historical and theological reasons for rises and falls in Christian emphasis on healing prayer, see Francis MacNutt, The Healing Reawakening: Reclaiming Our Lost Inheritance (Grand Rapids: MI: Chosen, 2006).

For examples of such research, see Robert Byrd, “Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population,” Southern Medical Journal 81 (July 1988): 826–829; Dale A. Matthews, Sally M. Marlowe, and Francis S. MacNutt, “Effects of Intercessory Prayer on Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis,” Southern Medical Journal 93 (Dec. 2000): 1177–86; Herbert Benson, et al., “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in Cardiac Bypass Patients: A Multicenter Randomized Trial of Uncertainty and Certainty of Receiving Intercessory Prayer,” American Heart Journal 151 (April 2006): 934–942; Leanne Roberts, et al., “Intercessory Prayer for the Alleviation of Ill Health,” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2009) Issue 2. Art. No.: CD000368. DOI: https://​doi.​org/​10.​1002/​14651858.​CD000368.​pub3; Candy Gunther Brown, et al., “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Proximal Intercessory Prayer (STEPP) on Auditory and Visual Impairments in Rural Mozambique,” Southern Medical Journal (Sept. 2010): 864–869; and the emergent work of the Global Medical Research Institute, https://​www.​globalmri.​org/​ (accessed February 1, 2019). For an assessment of possibilities and limitations of such research, see Brown, Testing Prayer.