What is health care, anyway? I stumbled on an article today that blurs the lines between what most people consider health care (i.e. going to the hospital or taking some medicine) and what some consider just as effective- prayer.

The article is about The Church of Christ, Scientist religion and how they use prayer as a medical treatment- but before you start shaking your head back and forth and cursing the Christian Right over some outlandish classification and demand, think about it- it’s not that crazy and they do have a point.
The article begins with a profile of a prayer-healer within the church who takes phone calls from people.

She gets them to describe their situations and then goes to work praying for them. Its sounds out there, and most of the folks I’ve brought it up to are pretty dismissive. But think about this, liberals:
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a book documenting the shamanistic medicine of the Hmong people alongside how people are treated for seizure or other disorders in present-day American hospitals and what it’s like navigating that chasm- which isn’t much of a chasm. Two routes to the same thing, two different understandings of the cause. In some areas, Hmong shaman are now welcomed into the hospital to work in tandem with the hospital care.

Then there are priests and pastors that go in and out of hospitals- last rites, prayer circles, etc. And then there is all the positive manifestation talk, like the Secret and other things like that. There is plenty of evidence that people want and perhaps need a spiritual component to their health care- and even if that spiritual component is more of a mental boost, so what? If people need to be comforted, or feel cared about, or if they need to believe that there is a higher power to be called upon that can change the course of events here on Earth and that actually helps them get better… well, that’s health care, isn’t it? Rather than masking a symptom or moving it aside for a while, or just monitoring it, then it’s caring for the health of a person.

Of course, the two issues that come up are 1) separation of church and state and 2) government funding for prayer.

1)    I think this one is pretty easy- federal money can’t legally pay for something that endorses a specific kind of prayer, that’s been established in legal precedent. And the church/ state amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof... “

2)    So, in essence, the bill either has to support none or all- it has to reimburse people for traditional shamans, crystal new-agers, or exorcisms for that matter, if they are going to support any specific prayer-healer from the Church of Christ, Scientist.

And I think that would be the best- support all of it, no matter what. The spiritual, through prayer or any other path, is essential for health, both during treatment of an illness or injury or at any other time.

We need to protect everyone’s right to practice that, not keep it out of the hospital.

Photo Credit via Flickr under CCL: Carlos Lorenzo