by Cate Montana

On July 8, 2004, Tom Zender, President of Unity, announced the creation of the Office of Prayer Research at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Barcelona, Spain. The first research group of its kind in the world, the Office of Prayer Research was created to unite the scientific and spiritual communities in their endeavors to learn, collaborate and share more about the measurable impact of prayer.

“There is a difference, we believe, between mystery and faith,” said Zender. “By creating a resource that supports scientists in their endeavors to gather empirical data, the Office of Prayer Research helps reduce the mystery and strengthen the faith. Through the Office of Prayer Research, we are inviting and encouraging researchers to use scientific method to raise humanity’s awareness of the transformative and harmonizing power of prayer.”

Like all faiths, prayer is an intrinsic part of Unity. Since its inception in 1889, Unity, which calls itself a “transdenominational spiritual movement,” has worked to help people of all faiths through prayer. The organization’s prayer ministry, Silent Unity, receives more than 2 million prayer requests each year.

Do these prayers work? How do they work? What studies on the effectiveness of prayer are viable? What research parameters should be applied to the study of prayer? These questions and more are being asked on a daily basis by those working in the Office of Prayer Research, located at Unity’s worldwide headquarters in Unity Village just outside Kansas City, Missouri.

Vice president of Unity and Office of Prayer Research director Bob Barth, a physics major who heeded the call to the ministry before he could complete graduate studies in astrophysics at the University of Washington in Seattle, is clear that finding the answers to these questions is one of the most profoundly important issues facing humanity today. “If prayer works,” he says, “we want people to know that, because we think it can change the world.”

VP and Director Bob Barth

In the past year and a half, the Office of Prayer Research has investigated over 227 studies. On average the office locates or receives from six to eight more each week. Their research, based upon models used by Dr. Mitch Krucoff of Duke University Medical Center, and Dr. Jeffrey Dusek of Harvard Medical School, is rigorous.

First they check to make sure the study meets specific criteria: Was it blinded? Double-blinded? Did it undergo peer review? Was it published in a respected journal? When was it published? How were the participants randomized? How about the people who were excluded from the study. Why were they excluded?

“These are some of the guidelines we look at,” says Barth. “Most studies we’ve pulled in meet all those criteria right up front.”

So far their meticulous work has reconfirmed what prior research has shown: 75% of the studies show that prayer has a positive impact; 17% show it has no impact and about 7% show that prayer actually had a negative impact.

Negative impact?

“Yeah, that surprised us,” says Barth. “We were a little naïve about that, but what it boils down to is that sometimes when a person gets sick they blame God; they get angry with God. And as you know, your thoughts project what happens in your life. And so that anger gets expressed and their health is negatively impacted.”

Although the majority of studies so far indicates prayer to be effective, the findings are not all clear cut. The seminal MANTRA (Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Training) Study in 2001 at Duke University Medical Center study which tracked the effects of prayer on 150 angioplasty patients with acute coronary syndromes, found that those prayed for did considerably better during their hospital stay than patients who were not prayed for. Of all the patients tested, the fewest patient complications were observed in patients assigned to offsite prayer.

These results were significant enough to indicate that further study was needed. MANTRA II, again under the auspices of Dr. Krucoff at Duke University Medical Center, was conducted. This time the results indicated no clear connection between patient recovery and prayer. The results of another study triggered by MANTRA, Harvard’s Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayers (STEP) are still under peer review. Barth, who is undismayed by the MANTRA II findings which he has had published on the OPR website, expects the STEP results to be published soon.

“There are just too many intangibles,” he says. “We found, for example, you can never really study if prayer works. You can only study if supplementary prayer works. And what I mean by that is, if we have two groups, the test group and a control group, we can’t say to the control group, ‘Well, you can’t pray for yourself and you can’t have any friends pray with you.’ And especially if it’s blinded too. There’s nothing you can do there. All you can really test is the supplemental prayer. And this is a real challenge when looking at the whole issue of prayer studies.”