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acroyearA math prof from JMU whose opinion and experience I generally value greatly, made the mistake of assuming that in the end all "Christian" faiths must be the same. In this instance, he replied to a New York Times op-ed from Raymond Lawrence, an episcopal priest and director of pastoral care at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, on the subject of the recent study that showed no connection between prayer and "healing" (well, miracle cures).
Since that's not how things turned out, he fell back on the other standard bit of theological blather.The one where they desperately explain away the inability of anyone to detect a tangible effect of God's alleged dominion over the world.
I'm sorry you don't understand the Episcopalian faith and beliefs and as such, merely assume that they (well, we) must therefore believe just as you interpret every other Christian faith (especially those whose ethics I personally doubt come from anybody but their own greedy souls).
The fact is that every Christian organization of any influence in this country was perfectly happy to tell its flock about how science has proven that prayer is effective.
Well, then I guess it is true that the Episcopalians are no longer "of any influence in the country". :)
I have, in the 30 years I've been an Episcopalian, never prayed for, nor been in a public service where others were praying for a specific outcome to a real-world situation. I've seen prayers for strength, guidance, patience, peace, grace, and "healing", and in the latter, it has always been in the form of emotional healing, not "cures". We would see it as "God's Will" (yes, the same thing as statistical miracles so don't belabor it) if someone were "cured" of cancer. But our prayers are often considered answered if our friend dying of cancer died with peace and a sense of closure.
If you look through the Episcopalian 1979 Book of Common Prayer (you can google for it online, though its 450 pages) you won't find many prayers that actually ask for physical intervention in reality. (One of these days I should go back and catalog the core prayers and look for those that do, and analyse them for their history/origins and how often they're actually used.)
In short, prayer is an emotional thing, not a "physical" thing. In some ways prayer is an expression of hope, and emotionally (in terms of physiology and chemistry) it might even be indistinguishable. But that doesn't make it any less real a feeling or any less viable a form of expression.
Many in my church, along with myself, have "felt" a prayer answered. We tend not to talk about such occurances with nonbelievers because we accept that the emotional feeling, and the connection between it and the prayer, is personal and anectdotal at best. It wouldn't be "evidence" for anyone but ourselves.
Had the study come out "the other way", Lawrence would have been expressing skepticism right along with most other scientists who would be out there looking for ways (and likely finding them) in which the study was significantly flawed (as many others have been).
When Lawrence wrote "Had they done so to begin with a considerable amount of money could have been saved.", he was implying that most theologians he knows (now, granted, he's more attuned to the mindset of mainstreams like Episcopalian, American Catholicism, and Methodism) would have told them don't bother. The vast majority of us don't take faith healing in the "Benny Hinn sense" seriously.
Personally, I doubt the ability of the "Religious Right" to study anything at all (as evidenced by their inability to study science and history properly), much less their generally inept reading of the Bible, to call any of them "theologians".
(side note, the Rector of the church I grew up in, now a Bishop in Virginia, has signed the Clergy List.)
Since that's not how things turned out, he fell back on the other standard bit of theological blather.The one where they desperately explain away the inability of anyone to detect a tangible effect of God's alleged dominion over the world.
I'm sorry you don't understand the Episcopalian faith and beliefs and as such, merely assume that they (well, we) must therefore believe just as you interpret every other Christian faith (especially those whose ethics I personally doubt come from anybody but their own greedy souls).
The fact is that every Christian organization of any influence in this country was perfectly happy to tell its flock about how science has proven that prayer is effective.
Well, then I guess it is true that the Episcopalians are no longer "of any influence in the country". :)
I have, in the 30 years I've been an Episcopalian, never prayed for, nor been in a public service where others were praying for a specific outcome to a real-world situation. I've seen prayers for strength, guidance, patience, peace, grace, and "healing", and in the latter, it has always been in the form of emotional healing, not "cures". We would see it as "God's Will" (yes, the same thing as statistical miracles so don't belabor it) if someone were "cured" of cancer. But our prayers are often considered answered if our friend dying of cancer died with peace and a sense of closure.
If you look through the Episcopalian 1979 Book of Common Prayer (you can google for it online, though its 450 pages) you won't find many prayers that actually ask for physical intervention in reality. (One of these days I should go back and catalog the core prayers and look for those that do, and analyse them for their history/origins and how often they're actually used.)
In short, prayer is an emotional thing, not a "physical" thing. In some ways prayer is an expression of hope, and emotionally (in terms of physiology and chemistry) it might even be indistinguishable. But that doesn't make it any less real a feeling or any less viable a form of expression.
Many in my church, along with myself, have "felt" a prayer answered. We tend not to talk about such occurances with nonbelievers because we accept that the emotional feeling, and the connection between it and the prayer, is personal and anectdotal at best. It wouldn't be "evidence" for anyone but ourselves.
Had the study come out "the other way", Lawrence would have been expressing skepticism right along with most other scientists who would be out there looking for ways (and likely finding them) in which the study was significantly flawed (as many others have been).
When Lawrence wrote "Had they done so to begin with a considerable amount of money could have been saved.", he was implying that most theologians he knows (now, granted, he's more attuned to the mindset of mainstreams like Episcopalian, American Catholicism, and Methodism) would have told them don't bother. The vast majority of us don't take faith healing in the "Benny Hinn sense" seriously.
Personally, I doubt the ability of the "Religious Right" to study anything at all (as evidenced by their inability to study science and history properly), much less their generally inept reading of the Bible, to call any of them "theologians".
(side note, the Rector of the church I grew up in, now a Bishop in Virginia, has signed the Clergy List.)
