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Religious Healing Experiences and Earned Security

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Abstract

This article focuses on religious healing experiences related to resources from Christian faith and practices and attachment theory. Qualitative interviews were conducted with nine informants. The results indicate that they perceived healing experiences as intense encounters with a loving, sensitive, external power with detailed insights into their burdens. The respondents interpreted the external power as the Christian God. They characterized these experiences as life-changing spurs to further healing processes. We suggest that these encounters can be understood as perceived experiences of God as an attachment-like figure. Earlier research on religious attachment showed that God is often approached as a safe haven in stressful times. Although there is less evidence implying that God is seen as a secure base or a starting point for new exploration, our respondents indicated that these experiences prompted new explorations of their lives, selves, others, and God. We discuss how healing experiences may provide a sense of earned security that changes insecure internal working models into more secure models and argue that this insight can be relevant in the field of pastoral care.

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Notes

  1. Granqvist and Kirkpatrick (2016) referred to God with a capital ‘G,’ so we have also used a capital ‘G’ in ‘God’ in our article.

  2. Although Bowlby focused mainly on infant–mother attachment, he believed that attachment processes are important across the lifespan, from the cradle to the grave (Kirkpatrick 2006).

  3. Bowlby’s theory also describes how attachments develop children’s mental representations or inner working models (Broberg et al. 2008). These representations contain information about children, their caregivers, and their interactions (Broberg et al. 2006).

  4. We know that mental representations of religious attachment-like figures may also be mediated together with, for instance, mental representations of parental attachment figures. However, in this article we focus on religious representations mediated through perceived religious attachment-like figure(s) because the perceived religious attachment-like figure(s) emerged as the most relevant attachment(−like) figure during the healing moments.

  5. When conducting the literature review, we searched databases such as Academic Search Elite, Academic Search Ultimate, ATLA with ATLAS, and PsycArticles for relevant literature using key words such as ‘religious healing,’ ‘Christian healing,’ ‘spiritual healing,’ ‘faith healing,’ and ‘extraordinary,’ ‘anomalous,’ ‘mystical,’ ‘empiric*,’ and ‘attachment*.’ The database searches yielded no relevant hits on peer-reviewed articles related to extraordinary religious healing experiences nor perceived healing processes resulting from them.

  6. Geels has also researched experiential and behavioral aspects of Islamic mysticism (Geels 2005) and Jewish mysticism (Geels 1998).

  7. The Catholic church, in particular, has elaborated criteria for recognizing religious healings as miracles (Hvidt 2002a): (1) the patient must have suffered from a verified physical illness, (2) the healing must have occurred suddenly, (3) the healing must be complete without any remaining illness (e.g., in the case of cancer, all—not just some—tumors must have disappeared), and (4) the healing must be lasting, without relapse (Hvidt 2002a). For instance, miracles have been frequently reported by Catholic visitors to Lourdes on a pilgrimage known for medical miracles (Norheim 2009). According to Norheim, the Comité Médical International de Lourdes (CMIL), comprised of 20 medical specialists from around the world and with different religious affiliations, examined approximately 7000 patient stories dating from a period of more than 150 years. The CMIL found that almost 2000 were difficult to explain with available medical knowledge and practice (Norheim 2009).

  8. Earned security means developing more secure inner working models (Davis et al. 2019). In the present article we use the concept earned security to shed light on the informants’ development from less to more secure inner working models.

  9. Granqvist and Kirkpatrick (2016) argued that theistic religions may give a sense of God as omnipresent so one can always be in ‘proximity’ to God (p. 919).

  10. Bowlby (1969) described three types of natural dangers that trigger the attachment system and elicit attachment behavior: (1) frightening and alarming environmental events; (2) illness, injury, and fatigue; and (3) separation or threat of separation from an attachment figure.

  11. Insecure relationships to attachment-like figures tend to negatively affect children’s ability to explore the world (Mothander et al. 2010).

  12. Counted and Zock (2019) adapted the circle of security model to understand religious and spiritual attachment to places. In this perspective, sacred places can be understood as performing the function of safe havens and secure bases (Counted & Zock 2019).

  13. However, believers may fear spending eternity separated from God or being unable to experience an earlier felt communion with God (Granqvist & Kirkpatrick 2016).

  14. Stern (2004) described the nature of the present moment in a list of 11 features.

  15. The mental life is co-created in a continuous co-creative dialogue.

  16. However, the material was already established when we discovered the relevance of attachment theory. Thus, we did not use the Adult Attachment Interview to assess attachment security in adulthood (Cassidy and Shaver 2016), and we could only look for indications of change in attachment and internal working models.

  17. Some quotations about the informants’ healing moments and experiences are also discussed in the Norwegian journal Tidsskrift for Sjelesorg [Journal of Pastoral Care) (Nygaard et al. 2017).

  18. We do not have sufficient information to say that the informants’ perceived relationships with God were surrogate relationships when no other adequate attachment figure was available.

  19. We included the tasks focused on the therapist–patient relationship. We did not include tasks emphasizing the therapist’s role in encouraging patients to consider how their perceptions, expectations, feelings, and actions may be the products of childhood and adolescent events and what they have been repeatedly told (Bowlby 2012). Our material did not contain sufficient information to determine whether the perceived healing experiences helped the informants consider whether their perceptions were the products of childhood and adolescent events and what they had been repeatedly told.

  20. It is difficult to reconsider internal working models without a “trusted companion to provide support, encouragement, sympathy, and, on occasion, guidance” (Bowlby 2012, p. 157).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Theology, Diaconia and Leadership Studies, VID Specialized University, Box 184, Vinderen, N-0319, Oslo, Norway

    Marianne Rodriguez Nygaard & Anne Austad

  2. Centre of Diaconia and Professional Practice, VID Specialized University, Box 184, Vinderen, N-0319, Oslo, Norway

    Tormod Kleiven

  3. Faculty of Health Studies, VID Specialized University, Box 184, Vinderen, N-0319, Oslo, Norway

    Elisabeth Mæland

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  1. Marianne Rodriguez Nygaard
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Correspondence to Marianne Rodriguez Nygaard.

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Nygaard, M.R., Austad, A., Kleiven, T. et al. Religious Healing Experiences and Earned Security. Pastoral Psychol 69, 487–507 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-020-00922-5

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