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

anti-Christian laws, acknowledges the suffering of Christ, the forgiveness of sin (andsuffering) and life everlasting. The Nicene Creed is a revised version of the Apostles‟Creed and was adopted in the time of Constantine when Christianity became the officialreligion of the Roman Empire (Young 1993). Both churches use creeds as thefoundation of their Christian doctrine and as a means of solemnising membership of thechurch. The chapter discusses the culture-bound facets of suffering and the differentperceptions of suffering by the respondents. There is an indication that spiritual healingcan move people psychologically from the suffering caused by generations of abuse oraddiction such as alcohol through acknowledgement and forgiveness.The discussion of the last three chapters, 7 8 and 9 focuses on the outcomes of theprocesses of prayer, music and laying of hands as health promotion activities andconsiders how these relate to the illness action models reviewed by Kasl and Kolb(1996) and the definitions of health and health behaviour models by Dingwall (1976).During the healing services when prayer, music and the laying of hands are used toadminister healing, people may seem to enter an altered state of consciousness whenthey are one with God and the Universe. This experience may be present onlymomentarily, although the person may not recognise the change until minutes, hours ordays later.The optimum health and absence of disease as described by Seedhouse (1992), Blaxter(1995), Dubois (1995) and Jansen (1992) cannot be sustained for any period of time.This may explain why health seeking-behaviours of consultation with doctors, other313