Toward the end of services at Calvary Gospel Church in Madison, the Rev. John Grant invites parishioners with heavy burdens to come forward and pray.

Over the years, the majority of those prayers have dealt with health concerns, a pattern Grant does not find surprising. Throughout the Scriptures, Jesus heals. "That's why I call him the great physician," Grant said.

Grant believes in both the power of prayer and the value of medicine. Tuesday, Wisconsin residents saw what can happen when only half of that equation is in play.

Dale and Leilani Neumann, a central Wisconsin couple, were each sentenced to six months in jail in the death of their 11-year-old daughter, Madeline. Prosecutors say the couple relied on prayer instead of calling a doctor when Madeline fell severely ill with undiagnosed diabetes.

The Neumanns, convicted of second-degree homicide, did not belong to an organized church but quoted the Bible to support their belief in faith healing. Their approach was extreme, forgoing medicine entirely.

But for about 20 years now, a controversial area of scientific research has sought to determine whether a supernatural power, invoked through prayer and working alongside doctors, can cure illness. The research involves intercessory prayer, or people interceding on someone else's behalf.

It is different from personal prayers or other forms of meditation or positive thinking that have been shown to strengthen and comfort patients. With intercessory prayer research, the focus is on strangers praying in a concerted, prolonged way to a higher power.

Paula McKenzie, a chaplain and director of pastoral care at St. Mary's Hospital in Madison, said she supports these efforts because they can lend greater legitimacy to the role of spirituality in healing. Yet, like many other religious people, she said science may ultimately be unable to quantify the value of intercessory prayers, and that's OK.

"There's a lot of mystery in prayer," she said. "It is not about us controlling God."

Scientific inquiry

The first prayer study in the modern era to use the clinical trial method was done by cardiologist Dr. Randolph Byrd and published in 1988. The results caused a stir. The study seemed to indicate that not only does God exist but that he had stepped in to help a group of heart patients.

During a 10-month period, 393 patients admitted to the coronary care unit at San Francisco General Medical Center were randomly assigned either to a group that received daily intercessory prayers from born-again Christians or to a control group that did not. Neither the patients nor the doctors knew who was in which group.

Byrd found that the prayed-for group had less congestive heart failure, required fewer antibiotics, needed less ventilator support and had fewer episodes of pneumonia and cardiac arrest. However, no significant differences were found between the control group and the prayed-for group in 20 other categories, including mortality rate.

"So it wasn't a slam dunk," said Anne Harrington, chairwoman of the history of science department at Harvard University. "But he pried the door open a little on the issue."

Critics punched holes in the study, noting there was no attempt to limit prayer among the control group patients. To do so would have been unethical, Byrd said.

So it was theoretically possible that patients in the control group received just as many prayers - or even more - from family members and friends as did the patients in the other group. For critics, this rendered the effort pointless.

A wave of studies

Despite the criticism, Byrd's results triggered a wave of prayer studies, with largely inconclusive results, Harrington said. Then, in 2006, the steam went out of the movement when the results of a large, multihospital study of 1,802 patients proved embarrassing, she said.

In this $2.4 million study, led by Dr. Herb Benson of Harvard Medical School, one group of heart patients received intercessory prayers and one group did not. As with other studies, the patients didn't know if they were being prayed for. But this study added a third group whose patients not only received prayers but also were told they were receiving them.

The result: The third group - the patients who knew they were being prayed for - suffered the most complications.

"Skeptics were delighted," said Dr. Larry Dossey of Sante Fe, N.M., a retired physician and the author of numerous books on the role of spirituality in health care. "The findings were not only negative but suggested prayer could actually harm people."

Nonhuman studies

Research on intercessory prayer has since cooled, which is unfortunate, Dossey said. He argues that the field is relatively young and has made great strides in methodology. He'd like the field to shift to studies on nonhuman subjects, such as bacteria and animals, because the control groups can be more easily managed.

There already have been more than 100 studies in the nonhuman field, yet the results have been largely ignored, Dossey said. One such study indicated prayer helped speed the germination of seeds and produced more vigorous plants.

Others dismiss prayer outright or say religion and science are incompatible. Anne Nicol Gaylor, a co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Madison, coined the phrase "Nothing Fails Like Prayer" in the 1970s.

"Think of all the prayers that fill the universe that never do any good," she said. "There is no way someone could find something that fails more often."

'Answer to a prayer'

Among religious people, prayer can mean different things and serve varied purposes.

In his 17 years as a staff chaplain at UW Hospital in Madison, the Rev. Steve Wenk said he has experienced situations where prayers seem to be answered on the spot. In one instance, he was praying with a transplant patient who desperately needed a liver. A doctor showed up with one.

"Coincidence? Who knows. I tend to think it was an answer to a prayer," Wenk said.

Most patients aren't seeking a miracle cure when they ask him to pray with them, he said. Rather, they seek the strength to get through whatever lies ahead or they want comfort for family members, he said.

At Temple Beth El in Madison, a Reform community affiliated with the liberal tradition of Judaism, members generally do not believe that God directly intervenes in one's life through prayers, said Rabbi Jonathan Biatch. But that doesn't mean prayer isn't beneficial, he said.

"I don't believe science will ever answer the question of whether God exists or answers prayers," Biatch said. "But when patients know that a community of people is praying on their behalf, there's a positive effect that helps in their healing. They feel the support of a community and they feel less alone."

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