Faith Healing

Christian Science in the nineteenth century

Christian Science was formally established in the late 1870s through the efforts of Mary Baker Eddy. An encyclopedia entry reports that she published Science and Health on 30 October 1875, that the Christian Scientist Association formed in 1876, and that it became the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879. The entry says Eddy taught that disease resulted from a false belief in a material universe and that healing could follow from spiritual understanding and faith.

The same entry states that the movement promoted faith healing as an alternative to conventional medicine, and that debate about parental authority to deny medical care to children became a continuing concern. A paediatric review summarises the teaching differently in emphasis, describing disease as caused by sin, fear or ignorance of God. These are descriptions of one denomination's doctrine, not of faith healing generally.

Divine healing in Pentecostalism

The Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles ran from April 1906 to 1908 under William Joseph Seymour (1870-1922), an African American pastor. According to an encyclopedia entry, its doctrine had five points: salvation, sanctification, speaking in tongues, divine healing and the expected return of Christ. Seymour and Clara Lum published the Apostolic Faith newspaper, which was distributed free to thousands of pastors during the revival's three years.

A review in the journal Child and Adolescent Trauma says many Pentecostal believers hold that the crucifixion was a vicarious atonement for disease as well as sin, and that some pray by 'pleading the blood'. That review focuses on groups that withhold medical care, so it does not describe the beliefs of every Pentecostal or charismatic congregation.

Pilgrimage and shrines: Lourdes

The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France states that more than 7,000 healings have been reported since the apparitions of 1858, and that 70 cases have been recognised by the Church as miraculous. Recognition has two stages: the International Medical Committee of Lourdes votes on whether a recovery is 'unexplained in the present state of our knowledge', and the bishop of the person's home diocese then decides whether to declare a miracle.

A historical paper on the nineteenth-century neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot reports that he accepted that some patients he had failed to improve at La Salpetriere later recovered at Lourdes, but attributed this to autosuggestion operating under the laws of physiology. This shows that natural explanations for reported recoveries were being proposed in the 1800s.

Scope of the historical sources

The sources reviewed for this record do not give a dated account of the origins of healing through prayer in Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam or Indigenous traditions, and no unbroken line from antiquity to current practice is claimed here. The Christian and shrine-based histories above are examples, and a full history would need specialist scholarship in each tradition.

Faith healing and divine healing

Pew Research Center's 2006 survey of pentecostals in ten countries asked about the 'divine healing' of an illness or injury, the wording used within that movement. Researchers studying other settings use 'faith healing' for practices as different as shrine rituals at a Sufi shrine in Sindh, Pakistan, prayer and anointing at Christian centres in Kumasi, Ghana, and healing ministries led by Catholic priests in the Philippines. The label therefore covers distinct traditions that should not be treated as equivalent.

Intercessory prayer and ruqyah

In trial research, intercessory prayer means personal, focused, committed and organised prayer offered on behalf of someone with a health problem, by people who believe they are praying to God or a god. PubMed indexes the Cochrane review and the STEP trial of this prayer under the subject heading 'Faith Healing', even though the interventions studied were prayer offered by others, not healing rituals performed with the patient.

Ruqyah is described in a 2025 Mayo Clinic case report as the act of providing Quranic recitation and prayer in the presence of an ill person to support healing. It is a practice within Islam with its own religious meaning and is not a general synonym for faith healing.

Terms used in child-welfare literature

Paediatric authors describe 'religion-motivated medical neglect' and 'faith-based medical neglect' when parents withhold medical care from a child because of reliance on religious rituals. These terms describe the withholding of care, and they are not names for faith healing itself.

Acts and settings described in studies

A qualitative study of 216 written accounts from the healing ministries of two Catholic priests in the Philippines identified reported sensations of warmth, lightness, an electrifying feeling, heaviness and weeping. The accounts were written voluntarily by the people concerned and supplied by the priests, so they reflect people who chose to write.

Interviews and observation at a Sufi shrine in Sindh, Pakistan, recorded visitors using dream-based healing, overnight stays, lamp oil and salt applied to painful areas, water from the shrine, devotional dance, blessed food, vows and thread-tying. In Kumasi, Ghana, Christian centres used prayer and fasting, holy water and anointing oil, Islamic centres used herbal preparations, and traditional centres combined herbs with libation rituals.

Who takes part

The Mayo Clinic report says ruqyah may be recited by imams, family members or community members, or played as a recording. In the Ghanaian study, healers rarely referred users to hospital except in emergencies, because they held that faith acted faster than medical treatment. The Pakistan study included devotees, caretakers and religious leaders among its participants.

Variation and gaps

No single protocol, session length or training pathway applies across these traditions, and the sources reviewed do not describe a general system of qualification or regulation for faith healing as a whole. Settings range from a home or congregation to a shrine or a hospital bedside, and what a participant experiences depends on the tradition and the person leading it.

Beliefs about healing within traditions

In all ten countries in the Pew survey, majorities of pentecostals agreed that God will grant good health and relief from sickness to believers who have enough faith, and between 56% (South Korea) and 87% (Kenya) said they had personally experienced or witnessed the divine healing of an illness or injury. These are reported beliefs and experiences, not verified clinical outcomes, and the survey dates from 2006.

Reasons people give for seeking it

Visitors to the Pakistani shrine cited economic hardship, lack of local health facilities, distrust after conflicting diagnoses, and explanations of illness such as black magic, the evil eye or possession by djinn. Many combined shrine visits with medical consultations and herbal remedies. In Kumasi, users cited religious belief, the idea that most illnesses begin spiritually, closer personal care than in hospitals, affordability and access, and most consulted faith healers before biomedical providers.

Comfort, coping and reported recoveries

The Philippine accounts described spiritual coping themes: empowering faith, letting God be in control, acceptance and connectedness with God. The Mayo Clinic report says ruqyah may offer comfort to some Muslim patients at the end of life, although it may be misread by clinicians as a failure to accept impending death.

Recoveries described as miraculous are a further claim. At Lourdes, 70 cases out of more than 7,000 reported have been recognised by the Church, after medical review that asks only whether the recovery is unexplained by present knowledge. That finding is a religious declaration after a medical review, not evidence that prayer or pilgrimage caused recovery.

Intercessory prayer: Cochrane review

The Cochrane review by Roberts and colleagues (searches to June 2007; published 2009) included ten randomised trials with 7,646 participants, testing prayer offered by others as an addition to routine care. Pooled across six trials (6,784 people), death was not clearly different (relative risk 0.77, 95% confidence interval 0.51 to 1.16), and the trials disagreed widely (I-squared 83%). General clinical state (five trials, 2,705 people; relative risk 0.98, 0.86 to 1.11) and readmission to coronary care (four trials, 2,644 people; relative risk 1.00, 0.77 to 1.30) also showed no difference.

The authors concluded that the findings were equivocal and did not support a recommendation for or against intercessory prayer. They said they were not convinced that more trials should be run, and that whether prayer relates to the existence of God lies outside the review's scope.

The STEP trial in cardiac bypass surgery

The STEP trial randomised 1,802 patients at six US hospitals having coronary artery bypass surgery. One group was told it might or might not receive prayer and received it, a second was told the same and did not, and a third was told it would receive prayer and did. Prayer was offered for 14 days from the night before surgery. Complications within 30 days occurred in 52% of the first group and 51% of the second (relative risk 1.02, 0.92 to 1.15), and major events and 30-day mortality were similar across groups.

Complications were more frequent, 59%, in the group certain of receiving prayer than in the uncertain, prayed-for group (relative risk 1.14, 1.02 to 1.28). The authors reported this association without establishing an explanation, and it concerns the effect of knowing about the prayer, not the prayer itself.

What these trials do not cover

The trials tested prayer by designated strangers added to hospital care. They did not test a person's own prayer, congregational healing services, shrine pilgrimage or ruqyah, and results should not be transferred to those practices. A PubMed search of records with 'faith healing' in the title returned 92 records at the time of review; the first 25 were qualitative studies, case reports and historical or commentary papers, with no randomised trial of a faith-healing ritual among them.

Qualitative studies explain why people use these practices but do not measure effect. The Ghanaian study notes selection bias and reliance on self-report, and the Pakistani study covers one shrine and does not evaluate clinical outcomes. A report of recovery at Lourdes, or a perceived benefit in an interview, is not a controlled comparison.

Withholding or delaying medical care

Asser and Swan reviewed 172 children in the United States who died between 1975 and 1995 in families where faith healing was used in place of medical care. They estimated that 140 died of conditions with expected survival above 90% with medical care, 18 more had expected survival above 50%, and all but three of the rest would likely have benefited from clinical help. The estimates are retrospective judgements from a case series found through referral and record search, with no count of all children in these groups.

A later review describes a cemetery in Idaho where 63 of 189 graves from 2002 to 2017 (33%) were children or stillbirths, more than ten times the statewide proportion. The Ghanaian study found that healers rarely referred users to hospital except in emergencies, which the authors say may delay necessary medical care. The sources reviewed do not measure how often faith-healing practice in general leads to delay.

Suitability and care boundaries

Faith healing is a belief-based practice, and the sources reviewed identify no clinical conditions for which it has been shown to change outcomes. Prayer, ritual or pilgrimage is not a substitute for assessment, and it should not delay or replace necessary medical care, particularly for a child, for sudden severe symptoms or for a condition already under treatment. Medicines should not be stopped on the basis of a religious practice without advice from the prescriber.

Respect for belief and for medical care can coexist. Participants in the Pakistan and Ghana studies often used both, and the Mayo Clinic report shows how a family's religious request can be misunderstood by a clinical team. The STEP trial also found more complications among patients certain of receiving prayer, so pressure or expectation attached to a practice is worth noticing. The sources reviewed do not cover costs, fraud or safeguarding in healing ministries.