Psychological, Neurological and Immunological Changes Following a Meeting With a Chaplain Coupled With Biblical Readings

The authors pre‐screened hospitalized participants to find those who were the most in need of an intervention by a chaplain. A passage from the Bible was read to the participants during a meeting with the chaplain at the bedside, or in the chapel of the hospital. No meeting occurred in the randomized control group, which was compiled in a way to get a group of participants with an approximatively similar pattern of diagnoses and treatment days than the intervention groups. The pace of enrollment was deliberately slow in order to assure the authenticity of the visits ("slow science"). Blood samples were taken 30 minutes prior, and 60 minutes after the meeting to measure White Blood Cell (WBC)‐, lymphocyte counts, interferon gamma (IFN‐γ)‐, immunoglobulin M (IgM)‐, immunoglobulin A (IgA)‐, immunoglobulin G (IgG)‐, and complement C3 levels. A subgroup of the visited participants was subjected to functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), where they were played an audiotape of readings of the same passage from the Bible. Associative tests, paired‐samples t‐test, network analysis was performed to search for any correlation between psychological and immunological parameters, completed with Statistical Parametric Mapping to search for correlations of the above with neurological parameters.