THE ORIGINAL STUDY
The Spiritual Healing Project is an international study of spiritual life in mainstream religious communities. The study was designed by Rev. Bobbie McKay, Ph.D. and conducted by Dr. McKay and her husband, Lewis Musil, MFA.
Approximately 4,000 people from mainstream Protestant, Catholic, Reform Jewish, and Muslim congregations have participated in the study. We have collected over 1,000 stories about spiritual life.
Over 1,900 questionnaires, written specifically for this project by Dr. McKay, have been completed and processed at Johns Hopkins Center for Learning and Health and analyzed at the University of Pennsylvania. The study became an international study when presented to the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre at Westminster College at Oxford University, U.K.
RESULTS OF THE PROJECT
- Universally people shared spiritual experiences of the Presence and Action of God in their lives which was transforming. By “transforming,” they meant that God had become real to them. The study demonstrated a rich resource of spiritual life within the lives of people in mainstream religious communities which is rarely talked about.
- As a direct result of their spiritual experiences, people reported feeling better, more connected to others and to God, less angry, more loving, more interested in living in the present, and interested in becoming more active in their religious communities.
- The unity of response between people of different religious traditions, ethnic and socio- economic backgrounds offers a unique opportunity for interfaith dialogue and an exploration of the spiritual bonds we share.
- People told us of three kinds of spiritual experiences: (1) Physical curing experiences when a disease was present and “miraculously” cured; (2) Stories where there was a disease present, but with no cure. People felt “spiritually healed” in the process, regardless of cure. (3) The largest category of experiences occurred in the ordinary flux of life, with no disease present, with or without a stressor, in which people felt spiritually transformed. God became “real”.
THE BIGGEST SURPRISE OF OUR RESEARCH
Our Spiritual Life Team program has been 100% successful in enabling people to get in touch with their spiritual lives. This program has been successfully operational for over five years in multiple locations in the United States.
This phenomenon has been repeated in all our groups.
In addition, no one tried to define “God,” even though it was clear that they had an experience with something they “knew” was God. In addition, no one in any of the groups ever tried to interpret the experiences of others.
“It is exciting to reflect upon the potential that this imposing body of qualitative and quantitative research has for bringing about healing relationships among people at the deepest level. The authors have done the scientific and religious world a great service in probing beneath the surface of life to give us a new and fresh insight into the action and presence of God in human existence.”
SPIRIT BLOG
Click on any of the stories below to read the words from our founder and those who have shared their God gifts with others.
On Healing, Headaches, Feeling Better and Finding God
Our extensive research study on Spiritual life in mainstream interfaith congregations contained both quantitative and qualitative questions about spiritual life. The results of our analysis of the quantitative data revealed three critical findings:
Praying With Mind, Spirit and Body: It Will Change Your Life!
I have the privilege of being the grandparent of an incredible granddaughter, Shannon, who is deaf, and her husband, Brent, who is also incredible and deaf. And the richness of their lives and the deaf community we have met through them have changed our lives entirely.…
New Prayers, New Spirit
At most churches, prayer is a pretty standard experience. We have certain prayers we say at different times in the worship service. We generally pray before and sometimes after a meeting. We pray when someone is ill and needs our prayers. We pray when there is an emergency and we know that prayer is our most direct line to God’s Presence.
Men & God: A Beginning Inquiry into Male Spiritual Life in a Small Group Setting: Part I
Over the fifty years of my ministry, I’ve encountered questions about gender differences when talking about spiritual life, often including statements about men not being as spiritual as women. I’ve always thought that men and women had different spiritual lives, not defined as more or better.
Love is Where You Find It: The power of Love in Spiritual Life
Designing a research study to understand spiritual life in mainstream, interfaith congregations called for an approach that would reach a variety of people from different backgrounds, educational opportunities, interests and abilities who shared an interest in spiritual life.
DISCOVER GOD – SHARE THE GIFT – CHANGE YOUR LIFE – CHANGE THE WORLD
DISCOVER GOD:
Let God become REAL in your life – not an intellectual understanding or an emotional support but entirely real, experienced, known, a constant presence; available 24/7, a felt reality, never separated.
SHARE THE GIFT:
Talk about God to anyone… everyone… friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, strangers! (I talk to my Uber drivers all the time about God and they get it.)
CHANGE YOUR LIFE:
Let God become an essential/necessary part of your life. 24/7, never absent, available every second of every day, start and end the day with God as a presence with you and you will will find yourself becoming more loving, more attentive, more attentive to others, more open to learning more about God from other people and from your experiences.
People in my study said they became less angry, lived more in the present rather than the past or the future and most significantly, they “felt better”… undefined better but real.
CHANGE THE WORLD:
God is not a secret relationship. Find a way to talk about God first to people you think will be receptive, and then anywhere! When God is real for you, God will become real to anyone you come in contact with.
As your behavior changes – and it will, because you are now connected go God, people will see you differently. Look at your own experiences now shared when God became real to you. How have you changed? What’s different about you and your life? What’s different about your relationships with others?
That’s where we can help make God real for others because God has become more real to you.
God is the most powerful source for change in the world. (It beats psychology every time! Spoken by a licensed psychologist, Reverend Bobbie McKay, Phd.)