Sunday, December 12, 2004
Prayer power
A CBS/New York Times poll earlier this year, found around 30% of Americans pray on a daily basis.
An estimated 45% of Canadians pray every day.
A national survey taken last year found six out of 10 of us "definitely" believed in God, while only 10% were dead sure He isn't around to hear our constant pleas.
Despite our strong faith, it's a minority who regularly attend church. For the rest, God is asked to make house calls.
But in bed in the middle of the night, or knuckles white on the steering wheel, or kneeling on a prayer mat in a living room, it's still a sweet array of very old words, and a few new beliefs, that we ask to be heard. Or are required to recite.
Ed Elkin, a Princeton-educated rabbi at Toronto's First Narayever Congregation, sees prayer for Jews -- at least three times a day -- as part of a promise, a covenant, with God. And no, he says, pointing to the history of the Jewish people, not every prayer is answered.
In one study in the early 1980s, 393 patients in the San Francisco General Hospital's coronary care unit took part in a double-blind test of the therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer (godly pleas offered by a third party). None of the patients knew whether they were being prayed for or not by members of a local church.
Patients who were prayed for had fewer deaths than those in the control group left off the list. Those prayed for also had less need for CPR, required fewer antibiotics and didn't use mechanical ventilators as much.
A 1998 study by Duke University Medical Centre in Durham, N.C., looked at the blood pressure of 4,000 people over the age of 65. Doctors found those who prayed and attended weekly church service had lower blood pressure.
And a study by the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College of Virginia, which chronicled the lives of almost 2,000 twins, found those who lived a spiritual lifestyle were healthier and had better marriages.
By Thane Burnett -- For the Toronto Sun
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