An investigation into the phenomena and practices of spiritual ...

prayer to ma e me better‟, as though prayer were a therapy, we can look at the factorsleading to this behaviour within models derived from the more empirical studies of socialresponses by the individual to illness from Dingwall (1976) to Weiss and Lonnquist(2005).The findings from this research show how prayer is used in distant healing and contacthealing in the two churches in the study. There are differences, however. In thePentecostal church prayer for healing is not separated from prayer for repentance,sanctification, justification and becoming a born again Christian. It is always presentbecause, since Pentecostal eschatology suggests we are already living in “the end times”,and so Christians can always claim the possibilities of healing right now. For the URC,while Christians may always ask for healing, they accept it may not arrive until we areall in heaven, so healing services are something extra to normal everyday Christianworship in this world. There is no evidence that the differences in the services havedifferent outcomes, although Dossey (1997) maintains that an impressive body ofevidence suggests that prayer and religious devotion are associated with positive healthoutcomes.Unsurprisingly, there are also gender and ethnicity-related variations. Levin and Schiller(1987) found that generally in the USA females and African Americans prayed morefrequently than those who are males and white. The majority of church attendees in bothURC and COGIC in my study happen to be female and black. There is also a similarityin those who volunteered to be interviewed. However, these results may be related to thegeographical location where the study was conducted and cannot be generalised even in228