Does prayer exist, in Washington's eyes?

Does prayer exist, in Washington's eyes? - Yahoo! News

Here’s a great paradox of our time: Half of the adults in America now rely on prayer for healing – a remarkable one-third jump from the 1990s. Yet the federal government recently decided not to study prayer as an alternative to medicine – as it had done for years.

Why this sudden disconnect between Washington and half the adult population? Must a spiritual exercise so useful and so common be labeled, as one researcher put it, “parochial” and “unconventional”?

Prayer is certainly central to everyday life in the United States. A large majority of people believe in God, according to polls. And again this year, the US president proclaimed a “national day of prayerâ€

“We’re seeing a wide variety of prayer use among people with good income and access to medical care,” says Dr. Amy Wachholtz, a psychiatrist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

She and a fellow researcher released a study last month that is the first to look at trends in the use of prayer for health concerns. They saw a substantial increase from 13.7 percent of adults in 1999 to 49 percent only eight years later.