items of interest

with contributions from Wendy E. Anderson

In a study conducted by Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, researchers discovered that 61 percent of patients interviewed were likely to pray at least once a day as compared with 29 percent of physicians.

Commenting on further research in the study, the September/October 1998 issue of Archives of Family Medicine summarized: "The more religious the patients, the more important it is for them to know their physician's beliefs, share their beliefs with their physician, and want their physicians to pray with them."

"We're in the midst of a historic moment of change in how our nation cares for its least-advantaged citizens .... Governments are not good at creating a fabric of care in communities .... And that's where churches come in." These words of Brent Coffin, head of the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at Harvard University's Divinity School, are echoed by Terry Burke, a minister at the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Boston's Jamaica Plain area. "When people look around," he says, "there's a lot of disillusionment with government and other sectors .... Of all the sources of authority out there, the Bible looks pretty good."

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