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September 21, 2008 9:30 PM
By Ed Stoddard
DALLAS - Feeling under the weather? If you're American there is a one in three chance that you have encountered a divine healing and so you may put your faith in a spiritual rather than medical cure.
That is one of the findings of the second part of the US Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The first part of the survey, based on a 2007 nationwide survey of over 35,000 U.S. adults, was released earlier this year.
"A third of all Americans (34 per cent) say they have experienced or witnessed a divine healing of an illness or injury," the survey said.
"Mormons (69 per cent) are especially likely to say this.
Half of members of evangelical churches and a slim majority of
historically black churches (54 per cent) also say they have
experienced or witnessed a divine healing," it said.
It added that within the evangelical and historically black
church traditions, members of Pentecostal churches were the
most likely to claim to have had this kind of experience.
America's high rates of religious belief and regular
worship attendance set it apart from most other affluent
nations and ripple throughout the country's culture.
The survey found, for example, that 71 per cent of Americans
are "absolutely certain" of God's existence and 39 per cent
attend a religious service at least once a week.
It also showed that nearly a third of American adults
reported that they received "definite answers" to specific
requests made by prayer at least once a month.
"Speaking in tongues," a practice usually linked to
charismatic denominations like the Pentecostal churches, is
regarded skeptically by most US Christians.
But the survey found that a sizeable minority of
Christians, or 19 per cent, reported that they spoke in tongues,
which usually refers to the uttering of a language foreign or
unknown to the speaker. It is therefore taken to be a
miraculous event.
Nearly one in 10 of the US Christians questioned in the
survey said they spoke in tongues on a weekly basis. Among
American Pentecostals the figure was 28 per cent.
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