The Mozambique Study¶

The claim¶

In 2010, the Southern Medical Journal published a study of intercessory prayer and sensory impairment conducted in rural Mozambique. Its authors reported statistically significant improvements in hearing and vision after prayer, in a sample of people who had been screened for impairment. It is a small, non-randomised study without a control group, and its authors do not claim that it proves a miracle. It is included here because it is the clearest example of the kind of evidence this casebook asks for: a claim of healing, taken into the ordinary apparatus of measurement, and published where sceptics can read it.

The setting¶

The study was conducted in a poor rural area of Mozambique, in association with a Pentecostal ministry. The setting matters in both directions. It is not a Marian shrine, it involves no relics, and the prayers were offered in the name of Jesus by local Christians — so the theological objections that attach to Catholic pilgrimage do not apply. But it is also a setting with limited medical infrastructure, where screening, testing, and follow-up are difficult, and where a visiting research team depends on local translators, helpers, and goodwill.

Candy Gunther Brown, the lead author, is a scholar of religion at Indiana University, not a missionary. Her book Testing Prayer (Harvard University Press, 2012) sets out the larger research programme of which this study is a part. The programme is unusual in that it takes healing claims seriously enough to measure them, and skeptical enough to expect that most will not survive measurement.

The method¶

The design was a before-and-after field study, not a clinical trial.

Screening. The team screened a large number of people in the community for hearing and vision impairment, using portable equipment.
Enrolment. Those who met the impairment criteria were invited to take part. The sample that completed the protocol was small — fewer than thirty people.
Prayer. Participants received "proximal intercessory prayer": prayer offered by ministers standing close to the person, with hands laid on, in the manner common in Pentecostal ministry.
Re-testing. Hearing and vision were measured again afterwards, with the same equipment and, as far as the design allowed, the same examiners.

The outcome measures were audiological and ophthalmological, not self-report. That is the study's strength: it did not ask people whether they felt better. It tested them.

The results¶

The published report describes statistically significant improvements in both hearing and vision, with p-values below 0.003 for hearing and below 0.02 for vision. The improvements were not uniform: some participants improved substantially, some little, and some not at all. That pattern — partial, uneven, and not universal — is what the New Testament itself leads one to expect, and it is one reason the authors describe the results as needing further study rather than as a demonstration.

The limits¶

The study is honest about its design, and a fair reader should be blunt about it too.

It is small. Fewer than thirty participants completed the protocol. Small samples produce large confidence intervals and fragile findings.
It is not randomised. Participants were not assigned to prayer or no prayer. Everyone was prayed for, so there is no control group.
Expectancy is not controlled. People who travel to a healing meeting and are prayed over may report and even experience improvement for reasons that have nothing to do with a miracle.
Test-retest effects are possible. Sensory testing has measurement error, and a second test can differ from a first for ordinary reasons.
Follow-up was short. A single re-test cannot show whether an improvement persisted.
The setting is difficult. Translation, travel, and limited equipment all introduce noise.

These are the reasons the study is evidence of a phenomenon worth investigating, not proof of a divine act. The authors say as much.

Why it matters¶

Three things follow, and none of them requires overclaiming.

First, the claim can be tested. Whatever one concludes about this study, it demonstrates that healing claims are not inherently untestable. They can be screened, measured, re-measured, and published. A church that refuses all measurement is not protecting the gift; it is protecting itself.

Second, the result was not nothing. A peer-reviewed medical journal accepted a paper reporting measurable improvements after prayer. The finding may be explained by design limitations, but it cannot be waved away as "obviously nothing happened."

Third, the study cuts against the argument from absence. The claim that the gifts have ceased is often supported by the claim that nothing measurable ever happens. This is one small, imperfect, published counter-example. It does not establish continuationism — that is the exegetical case — but it removes a premise from the other side.

What this does and does not prove¶

It proves: that a healing claim from a Protestant, non-Marian setting has been tested with medical instruments and published in a peer-reviewed journal; that the results were positive enough to be reported; and that the phenomenon is not untestable.

It does not prove: that God healed anyone in Mozambique; that the gifts continue; that prayer always works; or that the study's design is strong enough to settle the question. The authors do not claim that either, and neither should the reader.