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ABC Medical Expert: 'Faith Can Influence Health'
CHICAGO (January 28, 2001) - By Donald L. Meyer
Can one's religious faith affect the healing process and the medical outcome in a particular health situation?
That was one of the core questions at the center of a presentation Saturday evening by Dr. G. Timothy Johnson, ABC Television medical editor, as he addressed a group of some 80 individuals attending the Faith and Health: Making the Connection conference co-sponsored by North Park Theological Seminary and Swedish Covenant Hospital.
Johnson's address opened the two-day conference, the first of its kind offered by the two Evangelical Covenant Church institutions. The conference is under the direction of Mary Chase-Ziolek, director of health and ministry programs and assistant professor of health ministries at the seminary.
Of particular interest to Johnson is the manner in which secular institutions, especially the media, handle the mixture of faith, medicine and health when it comes to news coverage, the conduct of scientific studies at they attempt to measure the impact of religious faith on health outcomes, and the manner in which health professionals integrate spirituality into the delivery of health care services. He is well equipped to deal with this issue, given his training not only as a physician, but also as an ordained minister in the Evangelical Covenant Church. His observations reflect an interesting blend of the two disciplines.
Three levels of relationship between religious beliefs and health were examined during his address on Faith and Health in the News:
- The connection between general religious practices and general health indices
- The connection between prayer and improvements in the outcomes in health (often referred to as "faith healing")
- The association between faith, defined as the sum total of one's beliefs, and health, defined as the sum total of one's well-being
One highlight of his presentation was a video presentation of an April 1999 special report that aired on ABC Television, a story about a program developed by Massachusetts General Hospital to teach health care professionals how to integrate spirituality with the medical duties they perform. It is a six-month program, requiring four staff people at a time to spend one day a week with hospital chaplains in an intensive program of study and training.
The program touches areas of the physical, emotional and spiritual, Johnson noted. His report reviewed various studies that attempted to scientifically explore the relationship between religious beliefs and improvement in health outcomes.
"Some studies show spiritual treatment can have a powerful influence in the recovery process," Johnson said, noting that "the walls between spirituality and medicine are slowly coming down." The hospital program attempts to teach health care professionals how to help patients bring into the open their fears and how they relate to spiritual issues and concerns.
At one point in the ABC report, a ward nurse is shown praying with a terminally ill patient who has indicated that faith in God is of importance in dealing with the threat of death. In another scene, a counselor asks the patient if faith is of importance, only to be told that the patient prefers self-reliance to a belief in some other power. The focus of the hospital program is to train health care professionals how to respond to a wide range of patient interests and concerns as they relate to religious faith, beliefs and practice.
"This is a subject that has become mainstream in the secular media," Johnson told his listeners, most of whom are engaged in the health care profession and are attending a series of workshops addressing various faith and health care themes. He candidly suggested that ABC might have aired the 1999 report as a personal favor to him. However, when the response to the ABC report started rolling in, he said the network was delighted with its decision as the report obviously touched on a subject of considerable interest to a large number of viewers.
The medical editor advised caution in evaluating the merits of faith-health integration, however, noting that not all medical professionals are convinced of the value of mixing faith and health in the manner of Massachusetts General. "They (the critics) generally raise three questions," he said:
- Is there empirical evidence of a relationship between faith and health?
- Should physicians recommend (prescribe) religious activity as a means of providing comfort?
- Do patients want religious matters incorporated into their medical care?
"There are many variables involved in studies," Johnson observed. "To isolate one and control the others is a problem." Even the critics of the faith-health approach will acknowledge that some studies appear to have value, but they question if such findings go so far as to justify prescriptive attendance at church (or other religious activity) as a means of improving health.
Common sense suggests there is a value, even if clinical trials are inconclusive, Johnson quoted some physicians as believing. "There are legitimate questions about dispensing spiritual advice in a medical setting by staff who may not be adequately trained," Johnson said.
In a more pointed focus on what many refer to as the "faith healing" phenomenon, Johnson issued a word of caution before jumping to conclusions, noting that the subject "raises profound theological, professional and personal questions." He cited one study, for example, that called for 75 " devout Christians" to pray for more than 400 patients to experience improvement in their health, while another control group of patients received no similar prayer support. The study found a 10 percent improvement in the prayer-supported group. Johnson suggested such efforts should be viewed with healthy skepticism.
One theological issue that surfaces in "faith healing" discussions concerns the question of how God relates to His creation in the midst of pain and suffering, and how we deal with that issue. Professionals struggle with the tension of desiring to do the very best for patients, while realizing their limitations. "The model of Jesus helps us understand the power of faith," Johnson said. But, he also observed that "Jesus wasn't frantically trying to heal everyone."
Personal questions also surface in discussions of "faith healing," none perhaps more profound than the fear of one's own mortality.
"How do we deal with this?" Johnson asked. He declined to suggest an answer, but did offer three observations:
- The ritual of faith healing is not of great concern. "Ritual and setting are of less importance than the power of the Holy Spirit."
- To try to relate healing results with the presence or absence of faith is a dangerous thing. "Be careful to avoid this," Johnson advised, noting that "Saint Paul's monumental faith did not get rid of his thorn."
- There is a mystery about how healing knowledge unfolds - "how God works in the unfolding of scientific knowledge." In response to a listener's question about the patient who refuses medical help because of religious belief, Johnson said, "I tell them that God works through science, too," even suggesting to some that such refusal could be viewed as "an affront to God."
Johnson concluded with a call to be open-minded to new developments in the area of faith and health and the manner in which faith can influence health outcomes. "I have seen a change in attitude from one of cynicism to an attitude of cooperation," Johnson observed. "People are more receptive than they were 40 years ago, and I'm thankful to God."
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