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Introduction: What is the Connection Between Faith & Health?

 

Americans have long recognized the healing power of faith and prayer. In fact, 82 percent of Americans believe in the healing power of prayer, 64 percent think doctors should pray with those patients who request it, and 63 percent of patients want their doctors to discuss matters of faith. Close to 99 percent of physicians say religious beliefs can make a positive contribution to the healing process. Yet, until recently, most medical studies failed to consider the impact of spirituality in disease prevention or the healing process. Faith was the forgotten factor that was relegated by healthcare providers to the chaplain’s office.

 

Fortunately, things are beginning to change. Scientists are finally catching up with what people already know--a personal relationship with God helps us make sense out of illness. It gives hope. It changes health-related behavior and thus reduces the risk of disease.

 

But faith has an even greater impact. Studies have revealed that faith improves the immune system, enhances healing, reduces complications during major illnesses and much more.

 

This revolution is impacting the way your healthcare will be delivered, the way your doctor will be trained and the way spiritual issues are addressed at the bedside. And like most revolutions, it started with one person. A faithful Christian, husband, father and CMDA member, David Larson transformed the field of faith and medicine as Director of the National Institutes of Healthcare Research.

 

 

Faith’s New Legitmacy in Healthcare

 

The late David Larson of the National Institute of Healthcare Research

Dr. David Larson and the National Institute of Healthcare Research catalyzed a new interest in faith and health and brought it into the mainstream of medicine in the 1990’s. Today more than half of U.S. medical schools have courses in spirituality and medicine, many of which are required. Medical school curricula include¹ :

 

• Teaching students to make a spiritual assessment
• Viewing and collaborating with chaplains as a relevant part of the health care team
• Showing students how to care for dying patients – even when disease specific treatment is no longer available
• Exploring major religions to identify aspects that might affect health care choices, illness coping or social support value

 

Medicine has not always recognized the importance of faith. Some have labeled religion as:

 

• “A psychotic episode.”²
• “Temporal lobe dysfunction.”³
• “A universal obsessional neurosis…infantile helplessness…a regression to primary narcissism.”³
• “Borderline psychosis…a regression, an escape, a projection upon the world of a primitive infantile state.”⁴

 

Secular Definitions of Health

Secular definitions of health tend to incorporate both mental and physical well-being, conspicuously omitting any concept of spiritual health. The World Health Organization states, “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”⁶ Because this view elevates physical health as the ultimate value in human existence, the implications for dealing with birth deformities, handicaps, and end-of-life decisions are profound.

 

Science has aided the modern preoccupation with physical health, evidenced by a surge in health food products, low-fat foods, exercise clubs, and media attention to health issues. Many modern Americans are reminiscent of the ancient Greeks’ in their nearly worshipful view of the body.

 

 

1. History's Battle between Science, Magic & Faith

 

From ancient Egypt to Rome to the modern United States, the history of medicine has been marked by a struggle between the natural and the supernatural. As the following sketch of key historical developments⁷ suggests, the two forces of faith and medicine have never satisfactorily joined hands to promote a whole-person perspective on health and healing.

 

Mesopotamia to Rome (to 450 AD)
Early health practitioners blamed demons for many maladies. Popular treatments included chants, dances, magic, and charms—or even worse for the patient, beatings, tortures, and starvings. However, notable success was obtained through the use of plant extracts, many of which continue to be used today.

 

Egyptian records indicate two main bodies of medicine: the magical/religious and the empirical/rational. Limited in their knowledge of anatomy, the Egyptians’ medicine was typically limited to common diseases of the eyes and skin and seldom encompassed surgical procedures. Other disorders got the magical/religious treatment.

 

The biblical commands of the Old Testament proved remarkable in their emphasis on preventive medicine, and Jewish practices stood in stark contrast to the prevailing practices of their neighbors. Many of these practices show a scientific basis not understood until thousands of years later.

 

Hindus in ancient India attained a high level of skill in surgery. Buddhists, however, prohibited the study of anatomy, and religious prohibitions in China against dissection retarded the development of knowledge in the areas of body structure and function. Muslim conquests reinforced restrictions against medical study, and the practice of medicine declined.

 

While early Greek medicine revolved around magic, by the sixth century BC, Greek medicine stressed observation and experience. The Hippocratic Collection, attributed to Hippocrates of Kos and his followers, provided ethical standards that retain an influential, though declining, impact upon medicine today. In addition to his contribution to philosophy, Aristotle made significant contributions to medicine through dissections, and is regarded as the founder of comparative anatomy.

 

The Greek physician Galen of Pergamum rivals Hippocrates in contributions to the development of scientific medicine. He contributed much in the areas of infectious disease and pharmacology. He also propounded the theory that blood carried the pneuma, or life spirit. His writings transmitted Greek medical knowledge to the Western world through the Arabs.

 

Middle Ages (450-1300 AD)
The invasion of the Roman world by barbarian tribes stopped the scientific development of medicine. Folklore and magic, coupled with moral and intellectual decline, set healthcare back centuries.

 

Arabs, however, learned of Greek medicine from preserved Greek texts, which led to a scientific revival led by the Arabists. The Arabists instituted professional standards including examinations and licensing for physicians.

 

In Europe , the Church filled the void left by organized medicine. Monastic infirmities and other charitable institutions ministered to patients inflicted with leprosy and other diseases. By the ninth century, Charlemagne re-introduced medicine into the curriculum of cathedral schools. However, at the same time, Church leaders like Bernard of Clairvaux forbade monks to study medicine and insisted on relying solely on prayer for healing.

 

By the thirteenth century, dissection was permitted and stricter public health measures were introduced. In 1348, Guy de Chauliac (c. 1300-68), the father of French surgery, first recognized the plague. The plague was widely viewed at the time as an agent of God’s judgment.

 

Renaissance and Enlightenment (1300-1800 AD)
During the Renaissance and the Enlightenment periods, the study of medicine and the scientific method were divorced from faith and religion. The impressive discoveries and theories of pioneers like Galileo, Newton, Descartes and others gave science new credibility. New philosophies and discoveries brought the Church’s power and authority under new scrutiny. Meanwhile, the entrenched Church took a dogmatic, authoritarian position that left little room for inquiry—even though faith and the Bible would have allowed it.

 

Consider, for example, Joshua 10:13, which reveals how the Lord intervened for Israel in battle:

"So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies. . . . And the sun stopped in the middle of the sky, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day." (NAS)

 

To the biblical reader ignorant of the earth’s orbit around the sun as we understand it today, to say that the earth stood still would have made no sense whatsoever. The point of the passage was not to identify the sun as the center of the universe, but God. The event demonstrated that an all-powerful God intervened over natural forces on behalf of His people.

 

However, seventeenth-century church authorities interpreted such biblical references to physical phenomena as unequivocal statements of scientific fact, rather than as expressing concepts in terms the biblical audience would understand. The Church’s dogmatism produced an historic conflict with Galileo, a brilliant scientist and mathematician who held to Copernican theories of astronomy. The church hierarchy ultimately tried Galileo for heresy and burned one of his key works.

 

The church’s defensive reaction to scientific study and freedom of inquiry marked a deep and lasting split between science and religion. Instead of science developing alongside religion, it developed along a separate and often hostile track. Instead of ecclesiastical leaders realizing that “all truth is God’s truth,” they attempted to retain authority through ignorance. As a result, the Church lost credibility and science lost its moral moorings and holistic perspective.

 

However, it was individual men and women of faith who understood that a creator God formed our world based on order and scientific principles. That perspective provided the motivation to discover those principles. Christian scientists provided manpower for the Enlightenment.

 

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the rationalist religious philosophy of Deism suggested that God had put certain natural principles in charge of the world. Correctly understanding and applying these natural laws would lead to health and progress. English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) stated the new “enlightened” view of health: “A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”⁸

 

By exclusively emphasizing experience, the philosophy of empiricists like John Locke led scientists even further away from religious and spiritual matters. Rationalists like René Descartes argued that the mind could rationally understand things apart from experience. Finally, Immanuel Kant attempted a synthesis of the two competing philosophies by propounding transcendentalism, which taught that God was outside the realm of human experience and therefore unknowable. Hegel’s development of Kant’s teachings provided a foundation for communism. Each of these philosophies elevated man’s knowledge over God’s and His revelation.

 

Modern medicine (1800 AD - present)
With contemplative philosophy playing the background music, a series of remarkable discoveries launched medicine into a brave new world. German pathologist Rudolf Virchow uncovered the cell as the seat of disease. Ignaz Semmelweis traced mother’s mortality after childbirth to infectious agents carried by unwashed hands during examinations. Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch launched tremendous advances in bacteriology.

 

Discoveries such as these helped stop the spread of leprosy, tuberculosis, and the plague—each long-standing enemies. In the 20th century, vaccines, antibiotics and more healthful living conditions helped vanquish many infectious diseases. Progress in areas of genetics, transplants, and drug therapies, coupled with technological advances including the CAT scan and ultrasound, injected new optimism in the battle to free humanity from disease.

 

Then, in the early 1980’s, a new plague—autoimmune deficiency virus (AIDS)—quelled the optimism. West Nile, SARS, Legionairres’ disease and others still leave scientists baffled. Some healthcare consumers, disenchanted with the rigidity and limitations of scientific medicine, turned elsewhere for answers about health. The spiritual side of existence, for so long neglected, attracted new attention.

 

 

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