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

climatic conditions, shelter and a work/play balance. These sentiments might just as easilyhave come from the section on homeostatic balance in a nursing textbook, such as that byRoper, Tierney, and Logan (2000). Pop-homeopathic “chiropractor and pastor” “Dr.”Scott Hannen (2003) also uses theological arguments that it is the will of God that peopleshould be healed, to contend that people should use all available information on healing(apart in his case from “allopathic medicine”) to change their lifestyle and not lullthemselves into a false sense of security that „this will not happen to me‟ or procrastinate intheir health seeking behaviour This view perhaps demonstrates how easily argumentsabout the practicality of spirituality can degenerate into vague platitudes supporting almostany apparent health practice.Given such vagueness, and sometimes nakedly manipulative commercial exploitation inthe popular literature, it is not surprising that there is an increasing empirical researchinterest in seeking to measure the effects of prayer on health. Breslin et al (2008) in a broadreview of the literature concluded, somewhat inconclusively, that prayer might make apositive contribution to health in a variety of ways - if only through a placebo effect. Thesmall specifically „medical outcomes‟ literature on the efficacy of prayer, does sometimessuggest prayer is empirically associated with improved health outcomes (c.f. Dossey 1997,Byrd 1998 and Narayansamy and Narayansamy 2008). Dossey (1997) maintains that animpressive body of evidence suggest that prayer and religious devotion are associated withpositive health outcomes, but no attempts were found to try to measure whether differencesin services (such as those between the URC and COGIC) have different outcomes.Schlitz and Braud (1997) even conducted experimental research some of which showed apositive result which they claim is replicable, robust and not negligible. They reported thatunder certain conditions such as when the healer had an image of the person and the50