God Heals Today through Prayer – Scientific Paper

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Peter Kirk

I am grateful to Healing on the Streets (HOTS) Bath for linking from their home page to my earlier post God can heal, but not to meet advertising standards, which they describe as “some good Christian wisdom”. That post was a response to the Advertising Standards Authority’s ruling that HOTS Bath must not claim publicly that God heals today, physically and not only spiritually.

I was interested to look at some of the other material currently linked to from the same HOTS Bath home page, in a section also responding to the ASA ruling. In particular, they link to a proper scientific paper providing evidence that God heals today, physically, in response to Christian prayer. The paper is entitled Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Proximal Intercessory Prayer (STEPP) on Auditory and Visual Impairments in Rural Mozambique, by “Brown, Candy Gunther PhD; Mory, Stephen C. MD; Williams, Rebecca MB BChir, DTM&H; McClymond, Michael J. PhD”, and is published in Southern Medical Journal: September 2010 – Volume 103 – Issue 9 – pp 864-869.

The research for this paper was done in Mozambique, at mass meetings sponsored by Iris Ministries (founded by Rolland and Heidi Baker) and Global Awakening. The authors tested the hearing or eyesight of people coming forward for healing and tested them again after prayer. They found statistically significant improvements in both hearing and eyesight. There is an extremely small probability that these were merely chance improvements or measurement errors. A suggestion or placebo effect cannot be ruled out, but the improvements are much better than have elsewhere been recorded for suggestion and hypnosis.

Heidi Baker with a baby who "was blind with white eyes just minutes before!"

It is interesting that the authors write:

Conducting similar studies under controlled clinical conditions in North America would be desirable, yet neither Iris nor Global Awakening claims comparable results in industrialized countries (arguing that “anointing” and “faith” are lower where medical therapies are available) …

I can’t help wondering what results would be obtained if similar measurements were made in industrialized countries at, for example, Todd Bentley or Benny Hinn meetings. These two have also claimed spectacular results in third world countries but would additionally claim comparable results in the USA, and in Benny Hinn’s case other western countries. But, as far as I know, no similar studies have been attempted at their meetings.

Nevertheless, the scientifically demonstrated result that God heals today in Mozambique shows that he is able to do so also in a tent in Florida or on the streets of Bath. This also suggests the veracity of reports that he has actually done so, even if the frequency of such occurrences is less than in Africa.

HOTS Bath also links to the newly formed Global Medical Research Institute, which

seeks to apply the rigorous methods of evidence-based medicine to the study of Christian spiritual healing practices, including the widespread practice of proximal intercessory prayer (PIP).

There is also a link to a book to be published shortly by Harvard University Press, Testing Prayer (my link is an affiliate one to your local Amazon store) by Candy Gunther Brown who is also the lead author of the Mozambique paper. From the publisher’s material:

In Candy Gunther Brown’s view, science cannot prove prayer’s healing power, but what scientists can and should do is study prayer’s measurable effects on health. If prayer produces benefits, even indirectly (and findings suggest that it does), then more careful attention to prayer practices could impact global health, particularly in places without access to conventional medicine.

The clear implication of all this is that there is real scientific evidence that healing prayer is effective and a respectable scholarly opinion that it is beneficial. I am sure HOTS Bath are pointing this out in their appeal to the Advertising Standards Authority. Hopefully this will lead them to reconsider their apparent blanket ban on claims that God heals physically today.

Does this heartless thief now have a saint’s heart?

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Peter Kirk

Sorry for so little blogging recently. Life has been very busy, for reasons which I hope to be able to explain soon.

The BBC (also Joel Watts in a retweet, but surprisingly he doesn’t seem to have blogged about this yet) reports that the heart of Dublin’s patron saint has been stolen from the cathedral where it was kept. The 12th century relic of St Laurence O’Toole was stolen from inside a cage with iron bars. The thief apparently ignored nearby gold chalices and candlesticks and intentionally took only the heart.

Interestingly, this is an Anglican (Church of Ireland) cathedral. It seems strange to me as an Anglican that a relic like this is, or was, kept in one of our church buildings. It is of course of historic interest. But if it had become an object of veneration, it is perhaps good that, like Nehushtan in 2 Kings 18:4, it has been removed.

Perhaps the thief realised how heartless he or she was, and thought a saint’s heart would help with mending ways. Of course wrongdoing is never the road to repentance. But it is only God, through Jesus, who can give such a person the new heart they need:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Ezekiel 26:26-27 (NIV)

Does this heartless thief now have a saint's heart?

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Peter Kirk

Sorry for so little blogging recently. Life has been very busy, for reasons which I hope to be able to explain soon.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Ezekiel 26:26-27 (NIV)

Piper’s God is right to slaughter women and children

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Peter Kirk

Henry Neufeld quotes some words of John Piper as a post title:

It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases

This was Piper’s response to a question put to him in an interview in the Christian Post:

Why was it right for God to slaughter women and children in the Old Testament? How can that ever be right?

Well, that is a very good question, and it has no simple answer. To be fair to Piper, he does go on to explore in more depth some of the issues of why large numbers of people die, and why God has sometimes commanded people to kill them. In this post I make no attempt to offer my own answer.

Piper’s main argument is that God has the right to do whatever he likes. Well, I would accept that God has the power to do whatever he likes. Unlike the gods of the ancient Maltese, he is not constrained by some higher concept of Justice – and Piper would be right to reject any suggestion that Justice constrained God to send his Son to die on the cross.

Nevertheless, for God, just as for humans, might is not right. The determining factor for what it is right for God to do is not that he is almighty, but his character, defined in such terms as love and justice. He has made this character known to us in the created universe, in the Scriptures, and above all through his Son Jesus Christ. In the same ways he has also revealed to us how he expects us to live. And since goodness and consistency are part of the character he has shown us, it is no surprise to find that, in general terms and making allowances for human limitations, what is good and right for him to do is also good and right for us. Certainly we see no sign of Jesus doing things which it would be wrong for us also to do.

By contrast, the God described by John Piper has the character of an arbitrary despot, one who asserts the right to do whatever he wants, even when this entirely contradicts the standards of behaviour he expects from others. It rather seems as if the deity that he worships is not in fact the God and Father of Jesus Christ.

Piper's God is right to slaughter women and children

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Peter Kirk

Henry Neufeld quotes some words of John Piper as a post title:

It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases

This was Piper’s response to a question put to him in an interview in the Christian Post:

Why was it right for God to slaughter women and children in the Old Testament? How can that ever be right?

God can heal, but not to meet advertising standards

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Peter Kirk

As a charismatic Christian, I believe that God can and does heal today. I believe this because I have seen it in others, and experienced it in small ways in my own life. I have also read convincing testimonies, from trustworthy sources, of major miraculous healings. Some of these are accompanied by medical testimony, that the improvement in health cannot be accounted for by any normal medical processes – but of course it is not for doctors to say what did cause the healing. So it is not blind faith but rational conviction for me to state that God heals today.

But my right even to write this now seems to be under threat. As the BBC and several bloggers, including Adrian Warnock and Gillan Scott, have already reported, the Advertising Standards Authority here in the UK has banned the Bath section of the Christian group Healing on the Streets from advertising that “God can heal today!” This was in response to a complaint made by a certain Hayley. You can read the ASA adjudication and the response from HOTS Bath.

This is by no means the first time this issue has come up. In 2008 I commented on a similar ruling by the ASA about advertising by a church in Shrewsbury. But on this latest occasion there has been far more publicity, including on a Daily Telegraph blog.

Now I accept that it is right that there are controls on people making unverifiable claims for healing remedies or powers, especially for financial gain. Christian groups presumably don’t charge for healing, but may be perceived as in it for gain it they take offerings or encourage those healed to join their church. Perhaps it was unwise for HOTS Bath to name specific illnesses which could be healed. But the ASA doesn’t seem to have been willing to reach any compromise.

On that basis these rulings raise serious issues of freedom of religious expression. There is room for negotiation on the exact wording. But if the ASA is trying to stop any expression of the belief that God can heal today, then it is overreaching itself and infringing internationally agreed basic human rights.

I don’t usually read political blogs, especially those supporting the Conservative Party. But I was alerted to the following by a tweet retweeted by Gillan Scott. It comes from a post at Conservative Home, Andrew Lilico: Should Christians be able to claim that “God heals”?:

God is not a magic stone to be rubbed with healing flowing. He is a person who does what He wills. The function of prayer is to align our will with God’s and to offer our supplications to him, not to force His will to ours. So when God heals miraculously (as, with mainstream Anglicans, I believe he does still today) he does so on His terms and for His purposes.

One implication of this is that God’s healing is intrinsically non-replicable. The claim is not that performing such-and-such a ritual in such-and-such a way raises the probability of recovering from this ailment by that percentage. God’s miraculous healing is not induced by any act of ours, and thus is intrinsically not something to be subject to scientific standards of controlled replicability (indeed, the very attempt to test it for replicability is literally and specifically blasphemous). So it can never qualify as a medical claim under normal advertising rules – and I avow that non-replicability as a theological claim, not an empirical one.

So if my understanding (which, as far as I am aware, is entirely orthodox) is correct, then if Christianity is true, no Christian claim that “God heals” or “God can heal diseases” could ever have an evidential basis to satisfy the ASA. Note: that’s if Christianity is true! So the ASA ruling says, in effect, “If Christianity is true, no Christian church can ever be permitted to claim that God heals.” How could that be other than an attack on Christian liberty?

Indeed. And this brings the matter back to broader issues. In the past, on this blog and elsewhere, I have been involved in wide ranging and sometimes acrimonious debates about the lack of evidence for healings claimed by for example Todd Bentley and Benny Hinn. But, as Andrew Lilico clearly understands, one can never expect evidence of God’s work in the world which meets “scientific standards of controlled replicability”. The ASA, as well as certain bloggers, ought to recognise this and stop trying to apply these standards to religious claims.

Why can’t women appoint Anglican bishops?

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Peter Kirk

It is a long time since I have commented here on the slow progress towards the Church of England accepting women as bishops. I haven’t really been following the discussions, which have dragged on interminably. But they may now be nearing an end. The Church Mouse has made a welcome return to blogging to report on the current situation, in a post with the unlikely title Ladies hats. It seems that within the next few days the General Synod may give the final go-ahead for episcopal women – or may throw the process into turmoil by accepting an alternative proposal.

I will not attempt to deal with the issues in detail here. But one thing puzzles me – perhaps someone reading this can enlighten me. I tried to post a comment about this on the Church Mouse blog, but the vagaries of the Blogger comment system defeated me.

The current proposals require any future female bishop to delegate to a male bishop her authority over parishes that object to women in the episcopate. “Sir Watkin”, in a comment on Mouse’s post, rehearses a common conservative Anglo-Catholic objection to these proposals, that this delegation of authority

will no longer work if the diocesan is female, and thus the priests and laity … aren’t convinced she is a bishop. They would be in the nonsensical position of accepting the delegation of an authority that the person delegating didn’t (from their perspective) have in the first place.

The Supreme Governor of the Church of England

The problem with this argument is that Anglo-Catholics, as members of the Church of England, have accepted ever since the 1534 Act of Supremacy that the English monarch is Head or Supreme Governor of the Church of England, with all earthly authority over it including the right to appoint its bishops. Diocesan bishops are still appointed by the monarch, on the advice of the Crown Nominations Commission. Clearly by appointing a bishop the monarch delegates some of her own authority over the church, including giving that bishop the right to appoint suffragan bishops and priests within his diocese, as well as to celebrate the sacraments within that diocese – something which the monarch cannot personally do.

The point here is that the monarch is not a bishop, and is currently, as quite often in the past, a woman. The first woman to be in this position was Elizabeth I in 1558. Yet these Anglo-Catholics have remained within a Church of England headed in this way by a laywoman.

So this is my question to the Anglo-Catholics: If you accept that Queen Elizabeth II, a laywoman, can appoint diocesan bishops and delegate to them authority and the right to celebrate sacraments, why can you not allow that a woman appointed by her as a bishop can appoint a male subordinate bishop and delegate to him authority and the right to celebrate sacraments? I understand that you do not recognise the appointed woman as a bishop. But if the authority to act as a bishop can be delegated only by a bishop, or only by a man, then none of the diocesan bishops are validly appointed either.

I note that this is not an issue of the validity of orders, as it could be required that the subordinate bishop be consecrated by at least one male bishop, but of the validity of episcopal appointments.

Now I respect the argument that no lay person can have authority over the church or appoint any kind of bishop. That is the argument for which Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More were put to death in 1535. Fortunately our current Queen does not assert her authority as vigorously as Henry VIII did, and does not count it as an act of treason to reject her supreme governorship of the church. So there is an easy way out for those who can only accept bishops being appointed by other bishops: they should move to the Church of Rome, all of whose bishops are appointed by the Bishop of Rome. The recent innovation of the Ordinariate has made things even easier for Anglicans who wish to make this move.

On the other hand, those conservative Anglo-Catholics who choose to stay in the Church of England should recognise that not only those they recognise as bishops have the right to appoint bishops and delegate authority to them. They should also recognise that the church is bending over backwards to make allowances for their minority position of not accepting that women can be bishops. And they should accept those arrangements with good grace and work for the peace, unity and general advancement of the church in which they choose to stay.

Why can't women appoint Anglican bishops?

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Peter Kirk

will no longer work if the diocesan is female, and thus the priests and laity … aren’t convinced she is a bishop. They would be in the nonsensical position of accepting the delegation of an authority that the person delegating didn’t (from their perspective) have in the first place.

The Supreme Governor of the Church of England

Newfrontiers Complementarian Accepts Junia as Apostle

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Peter Kirk

There has been a great deal of controversy in recent years concerning the woman Junia mentioned in many translations of Romans 16:7, and described, along with the man Andronicus, as “outstanding among the apostles” (NIV). This has apparently stemmed from the reluctance of some to accept that a woman could be called an apostle. As a result some have argued that the name is in fact not the common female Junia but the otherwise unknown male Junias, whereas others have argued that the description should be understood as “well known to the apostles”.

Suzanne McCarthy has reported on this issue several times, most recently in a post The Junia Evidence: X transgendered again. Scot McKnight has written a whole e-book on the subject, Junia Is Not Alone, which I have not read. Both the SMc’s seem to conclude that the evidence strongly supports Junia being both a woman and an apostle.

So I was pleased to find today a self-proclaimed complementarian accepting this conclusion, and not attempting to force the Bible to fit the grid of his theology. Phil Whittall, who describes himself as “a church planter in the Newfrontiers family of churches currently in the south-east of Sweden”, writes a post Junia Or Junias?, in which he surveys commentaries and shows a clear majority of scholarly support for Junia as a female apostle – not as one of the original Twelve, of course, but as some kind of missionary. Phil concludes:

What is the consensus? Andronicus and Junia were an outstanding missionary couple who no doubt planted churches. Arguably they were apostles both because they witnessed the risen Christ and because they were sent. As a complementarian pastor I have absolutely zero problem with this. If anyone was ever to write a history of church planting in Sweden in the 21st century, I hope they’d write about Phil and Emma Whittall and not just me – we’re in this together, it is a joint venture all the way and yet our roles are different. For more on how this works out read this.

I am glad to read this from a Newfrontiers leader, and I have no real quarrel with it. It is fine that Phil and Emma have different roles, within their partnership and within any wider team they are in, as long as they have both freely agreed on those roles. But I would hope that they have chosen them not according to some dogmatic human position about which roles are for men and which for women, but on the basis of the different gifts and different callings which they have received from God.

Sadly, I don’t think that is what the Whittalls feel able to do, as Phil’s final link is to an article by Andrew Wilson, on an apparently official Newfrontiers site, which prejudges the whole issue by starting with The Presumption of Complementarianism. Well, at least he makes it explicit that Newfrontiers approaches Scripture with this presumption, which of course makes it no surprise that that is what they find there. I won’t attempt here to answer Wilson’s arguments in detail, but I note that his appeal to 1 Timothy 2:12 completely contradicts his claim to “passionately support and encourage women in ministry, prophesying, deaconing, worship leading, preaching, teaching, leadership, missionary work, church planting and so on … but I still believe that only men should be elders” (a point which he promised, in a comment “25/01/2012 at 15:57” to address “in next Wednesday’s post” i.e. on 1st February).

I can understand why Phil Whittall sees the need to defer to this official Newfrontiers teaching. After all, they are very likely sponsoring his and his wife’s church planting work in Sweden. But I wish he had left out of his post that final sentence with its link to Wilson’s post.

The Truth New Testament by Colin Urquhart

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Peter Kirk

I just discovered a new version of the New Testament (actually from 2009) translated by one of the UK’s most respected Charismatic leaders, and a long time hero of mine, Colin Urquhart.

I have posted twice about this version at Better Bibles Blog: The Truth New Testament by Colin Urquhart and The Truth New Testament: A Review. Please follow the links to read what I wrote.

I am pleased that Colin Urquhart has taken the effort to produce this translation. He has thus given the lie to the old charge that Charismatics aren’t interested in serious study of the Bible. But I cannot recommend this as a general purpose Bible.

Gentle Wisdom

Thoughts on life from Peter Kirk