Americans Report Miraculous Healing and Answered Prayer
The new poll confirms earlier research findings
Miraculous healings and answered prayers are surprisingly common. Nearly half of Americans said they have received a miraculous answer to prayer, while 35 percent said they have experienced or witnessed a divine healing, according to a new survey from the American Bible Society and CBN News.
U.S. adults who identify with a religion are the most likely to say they have experienced a miraculous answer to prayer. Three-quarters of evangelical Protestants and two-thirds of members of historically black Protestant congregations said they have had these experiences.
READ: Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Miracles”
Majorities of Catholics (57 percent) and mainline Protestants (51 percent) also said they have, as do 49 percent of members of non-Christian religions. Even among those who don’t identify with any religion, 15 percent said they have experienced a miraculous answer to prayer.
Among practicing Christians, 90 percent said they have experienced such an answer to prayer.
“This research confirms what so many people have suspected but rarely seen documented at this scale,” CBN’s Billy Hallowell said, “Americans aren’t just curious about the supernatural; they’re experiencing it. These numbers should spark a national conversation about what so many of our neighbors are witnessing firsthand.”
A 2008 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that nearly eight in 10 U.S. adults believed miracles still occur today as they did in ancient times. More than two-thirds said angels and demons are active in the world. Meanwhile, a 2015 Barna Group survey commissioned by author Lee Strobel found that 51 percent of Americans believe the miracles of the Bible happened as described, and two-thirds said miracles are still possible today. Only 15 percent of Americans said miracles in modern times are not possible.
“We have good evidence from cosmology and physics that there is a creator behind our universe,” Strobel told Crosswalk Headlines, “and if indeed a creator can create our universe, then for him to intervene in the same laws of nature that he created would be child’s play.”
–Alan Goforth
