Doctors Perform First Successful Faith Transplant

This article was originally published on Humorality, on July 19, 2010.

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In what is being called both a medical miracle and a miracle miracle, a team of doctors and chaplains has successfully completed the world’s first full-faith transplant. The operation holds much promise for the millions of people worldwide who suffer from faith-related diseases, including atheism, a debilitating and often fatal disorder known in the medical literature as “Acquired Faith Deficiency Syndrome.”

The transplant was performed at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Minneapolis, a town known as “The Holy Land” by its predominantly Lutheran population. Lars Iverson, chief of Adult Fideliology at “Saint Joey’s,” moved to the Twin Cities nearly two decades ago with a dream of bringing medically induced faith to its citizens. “People call this the Midwest Mecca, but the fact is that the spiritually disaffected wander the streets, hopeless, faithless, in need of urgent biblical care. I just hope today’s procedure can become the norm.”

The technology needed to transplant faiths has been around for more than ten years, but finding compatible donors has proved difficult. “Humans are born with an innate sense of faith that normally grows and develops well into their adult years,” said Mary Nelson, a member of the transplant team. “But since about the 1960’s, through a combination of poor spiritual eating habits and new diseases that target the faith centers of the body, we’ve seen a dramatic decrease in supernatural health. It’s something you just don’t expect in a land of plenty.”

The seven-hour procedure was performed on a 45-year-old male whose name has not yet been released pending a follow-up baptism. The donor was 78-year-old Estelle Halverson, a life-long Catholic who had been involved in a serious potluck-related injury at her church earlier that day. “She came in repeating ‘Hail Mary’ over and over again,” said Ms. Nelson. “When I saw the leather-bound King James in her casserole-encrusted hands, I knew we had a match.”

Despite the success of the surgery, it could be months, or even years, before the patient finds a church that is able to help him go through the full healing process. “Until then, we’ll need to keep him loaded up on anti-rejection medications,” said Sven Olafson, the transplant recipient’s primary care physician. “If the transplant takes hold, his body will generate antibodies on its own, defenses strong enough to withstand even arguments over the First Amendment’s religion clauses.”