Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 15, Nol 1, 1976
Spiritual Healing L A U R E N C E H. B L A C K B U R N " T h e day will come when the doctor will ask his patients, ' W h a t a b o u t your religion a n d how m u c h does it m e a n to y o u ? ' " So prophesied F r a n k Sladen, M.D., of the H e n r y Ford Hospital in Detroit years ago. T h a t day has now come. T h e relation between religion and health is real. In the practice of medicine, it is expressed by the psychosomatic a p p r o a c h to pathology and therapy. F r o m a religious point of view, it has t a k e n the form of the ministry of spiritual healing in the churches. In some quarters there is m u c h apprehension and skepticism a b o u t spiritual healing. It is well, therefore, to clear away a few m i s u n d e r s t a n d i n g s before a t t e m p t i n g to define spiritual healing. Spiritual healing is not a substitute for the doctor's t r e a t m e n t or the surgeon's skill. We recognize t h a t the manifold blessings from medical science t o d a y have come through the devotion and sacrifice of countless t h o u s a n d s o f m e n and women. We consider the a c h i e v e m e n t s of medical science as special blessings of God through His selfless servants. W h e n we are sick or hurt, we call the doctor, t h e n pray for the doctor! Spiritual healing is not Christian Science under another n a m e . At a t i m e when the Christian Church sounded only a negative a n d uncertain note in regard to sickness and death, Christian Science filled the void of need with a positive p r o c l a m a t i o n on the superiority of m i n d over m a t t e r . We owe m u c h to Christian Science, b u t spiritual healing is more t h a n Christian Science. Spiritual healing is not just m e n t a l a d j u s t m e n t or positive thinking. However, when we are sick we need m u c h more m e n t a l a d j u s t m e n t and positive thinking t h a n we usually m a n a g e to have. These things are a vital p a r t of our healing, but they are not sufficient in themselves. Spiritual healing is not just relief from pain or freedom from a h a n d i c a p . We p r a y earnestly for the healing of the deep underlying causes of our distress with the firm belief t h a t the inner spiritual healing will be reflected in an outward physical sign, or t h a t in some cases the p a t i e n t will be inspired to live t r i u m p h a n t l y with his difficulty. In one of m y parishes, a w o m a n who lived in The Rev. Laurence H. Blackburn, D.D., who has served in the ministry in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Ohio, is now a retired member of the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio, living in Watertown, Connecticut, His concern with spiritual healing has produced a book (God Wants You to Be Well, New York, Morehouse-Barlow), a number of articles in religious periodicals, and addresses in 17 states, Canada, and England. He has spent much time in England and Europe studying and working in the interest of spiritual healing. He is a member of the Institutes of Religion and Health. 34
Spiritual Healing
35
another part of the city came to our service of spiritual healing in great distress about her eyes. We had the laying-on of hands weekly for some time. After one service, I asked her about her eyes. Her answer: " M y eyes are about the same, b u t / ' m so different!" What is spiritual healing? The best definition I have ever found came from the late Very Reverend Noel Waring, sometime Dean of St. Patrick's Anglican Cathedral in Dublin, who had long been interested in practicing the ministry of healing: "Spiritual healing is God's loving action in all and every part of our nature." For our purpose, my own simpler definition will suffice: Spiritual healing is the healing of the spirit. It is well to note here that we are not bodies with souls, but souls with bodies. The soul or spirit that is the person is clothed in a physical body to enable it to live and express itself in the physical world in which it must exist during its brief time on earth. The body, being physical, is subject to all the accidents, and exigencies that accompany our physical existence. The body is born to di e--a natural plan of life. The soul is born to live and grow through the earthly experience, and then on and on through eternity. Healing the body is important, but healing the soul is eternally important. And, since it is true that most of our sicknesses have a psychosomatic basis, it is of the utmost importance that healing take place in the soul or spirit of the person, the center of his being where the emotions lie. Two illustrations come to mind. A nurse once handed me a note t hat read, "When the doctor turns his back upon a patient because he can do no more, and there is no minister available and many times not wanted, we who are nurses must carry on because the soul needs healing." T hen one evening during a spiritual healing service in a church in Chicago, a woman came forward for the laying-on of hands. She limped badly, so I was not surprised when to my question as to what we should pray for she responded, "Oh, it's my arthritis! My knees and ankles are so swollen and painful." Then after a brief pause she fairly spat through her teeth this revealing statement: " But mostly it's the bitterness in my heart!" In that solemn moment she was led to divulge the secret cause of her illness. Years later I was reminded of the incident when I ran across this word from Loring T. Swaim, M.D., a specialist in arthritis: " M y belief is that chronic harmful emotions are a primary factor in the onset and the development of rheumatoid arthritis. ''1 Is spiritual healing important? It is important to the doctors. The late John A. Schindler, M.D., when Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the Monroe Clinic in Monroe, Wisconsin, boldly wrote in the introduction to his book that "over 50% of all the illness that doctors see is emotionally induced illness. ''2 When a team of doctors made a survey of the patients coming to the clinics of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, they found that "80% of these patients did not have the physical sickness they complained of, and that 84% needed psychiatric care." The internationally famous English divine and author, the Rev. Leslie D. Weatherhead, M.A., Ph.D., D.D., wrote in his pioneering book on the subject
36
Journal of Religion and Health
that he once found this striking statement in an editorial in the British Medical Journal: "There is no tissue in the human body wholly removed from the influence of the spirit. ''3 While it is recognized especially by the doctors themselves that they do not have the time or the technique to delve into the emotional stress that caused the tension that in turn produced the physical illness of their patients, it is also recognized by at least some doctors of long experience and keen intuition that to treat only the physical ailment is purely palliative. Spiritual healing is important to the church. I believe spiritual healing belongs primarily in the Christian Church, where it began. Every service of worship where people come to seek sincerely God's help in their distress of body, mind, or spirit is a service of spiritual healing, whether it is called t hat or not. Spiritual healing revitalizes our faith in the power of prayer. Spiritual healing makes the Bible come to life with new reality. Spiritual healing makes the Gospel relevant to life at the point of greatest need. Spiritual healing sets Jesus Christ in the midst of us as a living, ever-present Savior who cares. Then there are the multitudes of people who have not found in the church the healing ministry needed in life's crises. When Gerhard Lenski, Jr., was Associate Professor of Sociology in the University of Michigan, he conducted a survey of 9,000 families in Detroit over a period of 10 years. Among the significant factors discovered was that in the Protestant families there was a definite falling off in attendance at church services when they were faced with economic problems, sickness, and death. Some years ago I invited Brother Mandus of Blackpool, England, to hold a four-day spiritual healing mission in Emmanuel Church, Cleveland, of which I was then rector. To our great surprise, the total attendance was over 2,200. More important was the analysis of the 1,041 cards turned in. We found that 204 came from well outside the Greater Cleveland area, 32 were from 10 different states, four from Canada, and 11 denominations were represented. What really startled us was that seven percent of the cards indicated no church connections whatever. Yet those people came! May we not conclude that there is a vast need and opportunity to reach the people who have no church but who cry for help through spiritual healing? Spiritual 1Tealing is important to the individual. In 1965 the New York Academy of Sciences held a conference on the psychophysiological aspects of cancer. ~ Lawrence L. LeShan, Ph.D., of New York reported to the conference that for more than 12 years he had conducted research on 450 cancer patients and found that in 72% of the cases despair and hopelessness were cited as contributing factors. To that same conference, William Greene, M.D., of Rochester reported that for 15 years he had conducted research on 100 patients suffering from leukemia and lymphoma, and that in every case the diseases had developed in a setting involving sadness, anxiety, anger, or hopelessness. The effect of the emotions on the body are easily seen in such common experiences as blushing when we are ashamed or turning "white as a sheet" when we are afraid. When the emotions are allowed to get out of hand, tension occurs to interfere with
Spiritual Healing
37
the free functioning of some part of the body until physical sickness results. Among the emotions, fear, grief, and guilt are the most virulent offenders. "Emotional stress is, today, our Number One cause of ill health," declares Dr. Schindler. 5 In the first chapter of his book, entitled "Your Emotions Produce Most of Your Physical Disease," he gives two illustrations: In a paper published by the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans, it was noted that 74% of 500 consecutive patients admitted to the department handling gastrointestinal diseases were found to be suffering from emotionally induced illness. And in 1951 a paper from the Yale University Outpatient Medical Department indicated that 76% of the patients coming to that clinic were suffering from E.I.I. (emotionally induced illness). Spiritual healing is of primary importance to the Christian because of its importance in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. One-seventh of the verses in the four Gospels relate to his healing miracles and his teaching concerning them. In the four Gospels, there are recorded 26 healing miracles, with nine more by the Apostles in the Book of the Acts, "In the Name of Jesus Christ!" These five books of the New Testament contain 58 references to miraculous healings from lengthy descriptions to brief statements such as, "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people" (Matthew 4:23 A.V.). It is important to ghis faith that Jesus came healing, that he never refused to heal, that he never failed to heal. Under the dome of the building used as the main entrance to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, there is a rotunda containing a platform on which stands a heroic replica of Thorwaldsen's "Christus." The head is bowed to see who may kneel at his feet, and his hands are outstretched in the gesture of welcome. Underneath are the words, "Come unto Me." Whenever I have seen that statue there at the entrance to that great medical complex, it has seemed to me that the Christ was saying: "Welcome to the place where you can receive the physical blessings ordained by the love of the Father for all His children and achieved by the wonders of medical science through His devoted servants; but if you earnestly desire wholeness in body, mind, and spirit--'Come unto M e . ' " References
1. Swaim, L. T., Arthritis, Medicine and Spiritual Laws. Philadelphia and New York, Chilton Company, 1962, p. 129. 2. Schindler, J. A., How to Live 365 Days a Year. New York, Prentice-Hall, 1954, p. XIX. 3. Weatherhead, L. D., Psychology, Religion and Healing, rev. ed. Nashville, Tennessee, Abingdon Press, 1952, p. 40. 4. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1966, 125, 780-800. 5. Schindler, op. cir., pp. XX, 4,
Spiritual Healing L A U R E N C E H. B L A C K B U R N " T h e day will come when the doctor will ask his patients, ' W h a t a b o u t your religion a n d how m u c h does it m e a n to y o u ? ' " So prophesied F r a n k Sladen, M.D., of the H e n r y Ford Hospital in Detroit years ago. T h a t day has now come. T h e relation between religion and health is real. In the practice of medicine, it is expressed by the psychosomatic a p p r o a c h to pathology and therapy. F r o m a religious point of view, it has t a k e n the form of the ministry of spiritual healing in the churches. In some quarters there is m u c h apprehension and skepticism a b o u t spiritual healing. It is well, therefore, to clear away a few m i s u n d e r s t a n d i n g s before a t t e m p t i n g to define spiritual healing. Spiritual healing is not a substitute for the doctor's t r e a t m e n t or the surgeon's skill. We recognize t h a t the manifold blessings from medical science t o d a y have come through the devotion and sacrifice of countless t h o u s a n d s o f m e n and women. We consider the a c h i e v e m e n t s of medical science as special blessings of God through His selfless servants. W h e n we are sick or hurt, we call the doctor, t h e n pray for the doctor! Spiritual healing is not Christian Science under another n a m e . At a t i m e when the Christian Church sounded only a negative a n d uncertain note in regard to sickness and death, Christian Science filled the void of need with a positive p r o c l a m a t i o n on the superiority of m i n d over m a t t e r . We owe m u c h to Christian Science, b u t spiritual healing is more t h a n Christian Science. Spiritual healing is not just m e n t a l a d j u s t m e n t or positive thinking. However, when we are sick we need m u c h more m e n t a l a d j u s t m e n t and positive thinking t h a n we usually m a n a g e to have. These things are a vital p a r t of our healing, but they are not sufficient in themselves. Spiritual healing is not just relief from pain or freedom from a h a n d i c a p . We p r a y earnestly for the healing of the deep underlying causes of our distress with the firm belief t h a t the inner spiritual healing will be reflected in an outward physical sign, or t h a t in some cases the p a t i e n t will be inspired to live t r i u m p h a n t l y with his difficulty. In one of m y parishes, a w o m a n who lived in The Rev. Laurence H. Blackburn, D.D., who has served in the ministry in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Ohio, is now a retired member of the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio, living in Watertown, Connecticut, His concern with spiritual healing has produced a book (God Wants You to Be Well, New York, Morehouse-Barlow), a number of articles in religious periodicals, and addresses in 17 states, Canada, and England. He has spent much time in England and Europe studying and working in the interest of spiritual healing. He is a member of the Institutes of Religion and Health. 34
Spiritual Healing
35
another part of the city came to our service of spiritual healing in great distress about her eyes. We had the laying-on of hands weekly for some time. After one service, I asked her about her eyes. Her answer: " M y eyes are about the same, b u t / ' m so different!" What is spiritual healing? The best definition I have ever found came from the late Very Reverend Noel Waring, sometime Dean of St. Patrick's Anglican Cathedral in Dublin, who had long been interested in practicing the ministry of healing: "Spiritual healing is God's loving action in all and every part of our nature." For our purpose, my own simpler definition will suffice: Spiritual healing is the healing of the spirit. It is well to note here that we are not bodies with souls, but souls with bodies. The soul or spirit that is the person is clothed in a physical body to enable it to live and express itself in the physical world in which it must exist during its brief time on earth. The body, being physical, is subject to all the accidents, and exigencies that accompany our physical existence. The body is born to di e--a natural plan of life. The soul is born to live and grow through the earthly experience, and then on and on through eternity. Healing the body is important, but healing the soul is eternally important. And, since it is true that most of our sicknesses have a psychosomatic basis, it is of the utmost importance that healing take place in the soul or spirit of the person, the center of his being where the emotions lie. Two illustrations come to mind. A nurse once handed me a note t hat read, "When the doctor turns his back upon a patient because he can do no more, and there is no minister available and many times not wanted, we who are nurses must carry on because the soul needs healing." T hen one evening during a spiritual healing service in a church in Chicago, a woman came forward for the laying-on of hands. She limped badly, so I was not surprised when to my question as to what we should pray for she responded, "Oh, it's my arthritis! My knees and ankles are so swollen and painful." Then after a brief pause she fairly spat through her teeth this revealing statement: " But mostly it's the bitterness in my heart!" In that solemn moment she was led to divulge the secret cause of her illness. Years later I was reminded of the incident when I ran across this word from Loring T. Swaim, M.D., a specialist in arthritis: " M y belief is that chronic harmful emotions are a primary factor in the onset and the development of rheumatoid arthritis. ''1 Is spiritual healing important? It is important to the doctors. The late John A. Schindler, M.D., when Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the Monroe Clinic in Monroe, Wisconsin, boldly wrote in the introduction to his book that "over 50% of all the illness that doctors see is emotionally induced illness. ''2 When a team of doctors made a survey of the patients coming to the clinics of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, they found that "80% of these patients did not have the physical sickness they complained of, and that 84% needed psychiatric care." The internationally famous English divine and author, the Rev. Leslie D. Weatherhead, M.A., Ph.D., D.D., wrote in his pioneering book on the subject
36
Journal of Religion and Health
that he once found this striking statement in an editorial in the British Medical Journal: "There is no tissue in the human body wholly removed from the influence of the spirit. ''3 While it is recognized especially by the doctors themselves that they do not have the time or the technique to delve into the emotional stress that caused the tension that in turn produced the physical illness of their patients, it is also recognized by at least some doctors of long experience and keen intuition that to treat only the physical ailment is purely palliative. Spiritual healing is important to the church. I believe spiritual healing belongs primarily in the Christian Church, where it began. Every service of worship where people come to seek sincerely God's help in their distress of body, mind, or spirit is a service of spiritual healing, whether it is called t hat or not. Spiritual healing revitalizes our faith in the power of prayer. Spiritual healing makes the Bible come to life with new reality. Spiritual healing makes the Gospel relevant to life at the point of greatest need. Spiritual healing sets Jesus Christ in the midst of us as a living, ever-present Savior who cares. Then there are the multitudes of people who have not found in the church the healing ministry needed in life's crises. When Gerhard Lenski, Jr., was Associate Professor of Sociology in the University of Michigan, he conducted a survey of 9,000 families in Detroit over a period of 10 years. Among the significant factors discovered was that in the Protestant families there was a definite falling off in attendance at church services when they were faced with economic problems, sickness, and death. Some years ago I invited Brother Mandus of Blackpool, England, to hold a four-day spiritual healing mission in Emmanuel Church, Cleveland, of which I was then rector. To our great surprise, the total attendance was over 2,200. More important was the analysis of the 1,041 cards turned in. We found that 204 came from well outside the Greater Cleveland area, 32 were from 10 different states, four from Canada, and 11 denominations were represented. What really startled us was that seven percent of the cards indicated no church connections whatever. Yet those people came! May we not conclude that there is a vast need and opportunity to reach the people who have no church but who cry for help through spiritual healing? Spiritual 1Tealing is important to the individual. In 1965 the New York Academy of Sciences held a conference on the psychophysiological aspects of cancer. ~ Lawrence L. LeShan, Ph.D., of New York reported to the conference that for more than 12 years he had conducted research on 450 cancer patients and found that in 72% of the cases despair and hopelessness were cited as contributing factors. To that same conference, William Greene, M.D., of Rochester reported that for 15 years he had conducted research on 100 patients suffering from leukemia and lymphoma, and that in every case the diseases had developed in a setting involving sadness, anxiety, anger, or hopelessness. The effect of the emotions on the body are easily seen in such common experiences as blushing when we are ashamed or turning "white as a sheet" when we are afraid. When the emotions are allowed to get out of hand, tension occurs to interfere with
Spiritual Healing
37
the free functioning of some part of the body until physical sickness results. Among the emotions, fear, grief, and guilt are the most virulent offenders. "Emotional stress is, today, our Number One cause of ill health," declares Dr. Schindler. 5 In the first chapter of his book, entitled "Your Emotions Produce Most of Your Physical Disease," he gives two illustrations: In a paper published by the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans, it was noted that 74% of 500 consecutive patients admitted to the department handling gastrointestinal diseases were found to be suffering from emotionally induced illness. And in 1951 a paper from the Yale University Outpatient Medical Department indicated that 76% of the patients coming to that clinic were suffering from E.I.I. (emotionally induced illness). Spiritual healing is of primary importance to the Christian because of its importance in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. One-seventh of the verses in the four Gospels relate to his healing miracles and his teaching concerning them. In the four Gospels, there are recorded 26 healing miracles, with nine more by the Apostles in the Book of the Acts, "In the Name of Jesus Christ!" These five books of the New Testament contain 58 references to miraculous healings from lengthy descriptions to brief statements such as, "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people" (Matthew 4:23 A.V.). It is important to ghis faith that Jesus came healing, that he never refused to heal, that he never failed to heal. Under the dome of the building used as the main entrance to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, there is a rotunda containing a platform on which stands a heroic replica of Thorwaldsen's "Christus." The head is bowed to see who may kneel at his feet, and his hands are outstretched in the gesture of welcome. Underneath are the words, "Come unto Me." Whenever I have seen that statue there at the entrance to that great medical complex, it has seemed to me that the Christ was saying: "Welcome to the place where you can receive the physical blessings ordained by the love of the Father for all His children and achieved by the wonders of medical science through His devoted servants; but if you earnestly desire wholeness in body, mind, and spirit--'Come unto M e . ' " References
1. Swaim, L. T., Arthritis, Medicine and Spiritual Laws. Philadelphia and New York, Chilton Company, 1962, p. 129. 2. Schindler, J. A., How to Live 365 Days a Year. New York, Prentice-Hall, 1954, p. XIX. 3. Weatherhead, L. D., Psychology, Religion and Healing, rev. ed. Nashville, Tennessee, Abingdon Press, 1952, p. 40. 4. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1966, 125, 780-800. 5. Schindler, op. cir., pp. XX, 4,
