EurekAlert posted a press release this morning about a new study out of Brandeis University based on a content analysis of a prayer book housed in a Baltimore hospital. The study lends important insight into the details of individual prayers – an important subject of study given that 90% of Americans pray and more than half do so once a day or more. The release suggests that prayers can be large, such as good health, employment, and enduring relationships or small, including such assistance as finding parking spaces or missing objects.

The study found that prayer writers seek general strength, support, and blessing from their prayers, rather than explicit solutions to life’s difficult situations, and, more often than not, frame their prayers broadly enough to allow multiple outcomes to be interpreted as evidence of their prayers being answered.

Sociologist Wendy Cadge, the lead author, worked with others to conduct an analysis of 683 individuals prayers written between 1999 and 2005. The researchers found that “prayers fell into one of three categories: about 28 percent of the prayers were requests of God, while 28 percent were prayers to both thank and petition God, while another 22 percent of the prayers thanked God.”

“If researchers studying religion and health take seriously even the possibility that prayer may influence health, they need to learn more about what people pray for, how they pray, and what they hope will result from their prayers,” says Cadge. “The information in this study serves as general background and informs the mechanisms through which religion may influence health.”

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