Miracles and Pain Relief

Abstract

This study examines a large collection of healing testimonies published by a Danish charismatic Christian organization. Diseases and symptoms reported to be healed through charismatic prayer healing (CPH) are counted and coded using ICD-10 diagnostic criteria. The analysis shows that even in testimonies published to convince other believers about the divine powers of prayer, most accounts include relatively mundane reports of pain relief in the musculoskeletal system. Cases of complete and immediate healing of serious diseases, echoing miracles reported in the Bible, also exist in the material, but such cases appear to be predicted by variables relating to the credibility of each testimony. The notable proportion of pain relief in this supposedly highly biased Christian material is interpreted as support for a popular but poorly documented assumption that CPH mainly affects subjective symptoms responsive to expectation modulation.