Redeemed bodies: The functions of divine healing: in incipient Pentecostalism

Church History

Volumn 70, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 735-771

  Baer, Jonathan R ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 2142811049     PISSN: 00096407     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3654547     Document Type: Article

References (165)

1. Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1987)
2. Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997), 1-83
3. Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1979), 28-61
4. D. William Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 44-186
5. Edith Lydia Waldvogel, "The 'Overcoming Life': A Study in the Reformed Evangelical Origins of Pentecostalism" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1977)
6. Paul G. Chappell, "The Divine Healing Movement in America" (Ph.D. diss., Drew University, 1983)
7. Dayton, Theological Roots, 115-41
8. Raymond J. Cunningham, "From Holiness to Healing: The Faith Cure in America, 1872-1892," Church History 43 (Dec. 1974): 499-513
9. Grant Wacker, "The Pentecostal Tradition," in Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions, eds. Ronald L. Numbers and Darrel W. Amundsen (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 516-20
10. Gary B. Ferngren, "The Evangelical-Fundamentalist Tradition," in Caring and Curing, 490-95
11. and Harold Y. Vanderpool, "The Wesleyan-Methodist Tradition," in Caring and Curing, 336-39
12. See Wacker, "Pentecostal Tradition," 520-21, for the "loss of historical memory" involved in downplaying healing. Wacker's essay is the most thorough treatment of early Pentecostal healing
13. Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 26-28, 65-67
14. Anderson, Vision, 93-97
15. Faupel, Everlasting Gospel, 130-33
16. and Synan, Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition, 192-93
17. On holiness perfectionism, see Melvin Easterday Dieter, The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century, 2d ed. (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 1996)
18. and Charles Edwin Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion: The holiness Movement and American Methodism, 1867-1936 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1974)
19. On the Higher Life movement, see Waldvogel, "The 'Overcoming Life'"
20. and David Bundy, "Keswick and the Experience of Evangelical Piety," in Modern Christian Revivals, eds. Edith L. Blumhofer and Randall Balmer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 118-44
21. "The Lourdes Miracles Again," 13 Jan. 1881, 4
22. For Christian Science and New Thought, see Gillian Gill, Mary Baker Eddy (Reading, Mass.: Perseus, 1998)
23. Beryl Satter, Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)
24. and Eugene Taylor, Shadow Culture: Psychology and Spirituality in America (Washington, D. C: Counterpoint, 1999), 137-55
25. On debates over cessationism, see Robert Bruce Mullin, Miracles and the Modern Religious Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996)
26. For the Emmanuel Movement, see Allison Stokes, Ministry after Freud (New York: Pilgrim, 1985), 17-36
27. and Sanford Gifford, The Emmanuel Movement (Boston, 1904-1929): The Origins of Croup Therapy and the Assault on Lay Psychotherapy (Boston: Francis Counrway Library of Medicine, 1996)
28. For the professionalization of medicine and its limitations, see Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic, 1982), 79-144, 180-97
29. and John Duffy, From Humors to Medical Science: A History of American Medicine, 2d ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 167-228
30. Concerning neurasthenia, see Edward Shorter, From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era (New York: Free Press, 1992), 201-32
31. Tom Lutz, American Nervousness, 1903: An Anecdotal History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991)
32. and Cynthia Russett, Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 104-29
33. For nineteenth-century alternative medicine, see Robert C. Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)
34. On nostrums and patent medicines, see James Harvey Young, American Health Quackery: Collected Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 23-31, 59-62, 89-102
35. Sarah Stage, Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979)
36. and Stewart H. Holbrook, The Golden Age of Quackery (New York: Macmillan, 1959), 58-66
37. Maria B. Woodworth, Life and Experiences of Maria B. Woodworth (Dayton, Ohio: United Brethren Publishing House, 1885), 28
38. Along with Warner's biography, see Wayne E. Warner, "Maria Beulah Woodworth-Etter," Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Gary B. McGee (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 900-901
39. Ann Taves, Fits, Trances, & Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 241-47
40. Blumhofer, Restoring the Faith, 24
41. Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Boston: Beacon, 1989)
42. Woodworth, Life and Experiences, 31-33
43. Woodworth-Etter, Signs and Wonders, 26-34
44. Warner, Woman Evangelist, 15-18
45. "Trance Evangelism," Cincinnati Enquirer, 30 Jan. 1885
46. "Rigid Religion," Fort Wayne Sentinel, 31 Jan. 1885, 1
47. Woodworth-Etter, Signs and Wonders, 70-71; 70
48. M. B. Woodworth, Trials and Triumphs of Mrs. M. B. Woodworth (Dayton, Ohio: United Brethren Publishing House, 1886), 192
49. Warner, Woman Evangelist, 68 n. 6
50. Taves, Fits, Trances, & Visions, 241-47
51. For an example of the controversy caused by trances, see "Ring the Riot Alarm!" and "Flora Briggs' Story," San Francisco Examiner, 9 Jan. 1890, 1
52. "The Voodoo Priestess," Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, 2 Dec. 1889
53. "The Trance Evangelist," Indianapolis Journal, 26 Sept. 1885, 8
54. Muscatine Journal (Iowa), 7 Aug. 1894
55. "A Cheerful Liar," The Champaign County Herald (Illinois), 7 Sept. 1887, 1
56. "Let There Be Faith," Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 7 July 1888
57. Charles W. Wendte, "A Tirnely Call," Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, 30 Nov. 1889
58. "Cataleptic Capers," Indianapolis Sentinel, 15 Dec. 1886
59. Woodworth, Life and Experience, 214-18, 239-47
60. As Anderson suggests, "Healing and 'casting out demons' were almost synonymous terms in Pentecostal vocabulary" (95)
61. "Cancer Cured by Faith," St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 3 Sept. 1887, 12
62. Woodworth-Etter, Spirit Filled Sermons, 72-75
63. For interpretations of early Pentecostal restorationism and millennial-ism, see Grant Wacker, "Playing for Keeps: The Primitivist Impulse in Early Pentecostalism," in The American Quest for the Primitive Church, ed. Richard T. Hughes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 196-219
64. Woodworth-Etter, Spirit Filled Sermons, 72-75, 122-27
65. "A Cheerful Liar," Champaign County Herald, 7 Sept. 1887
66. Woodworth, Trials and Triumphs, 156
67. Kokomo Dispatch (Indiana), 5 Feb. 1885, 5
68. "Mobbed Mrs. Woodworth," Missouri Republican (St. Louis), 18 June 1890
69. "Mockers to Meet with Punishment," Indianapolis Star, 27 Sept. 1904, 3
70. James L. Dwyer, "Elijah the Third," American Mercury, July 1927, 291-92
71. Dowie, "He Is Just the Same Today," VFZ, Jan. 1900, 10-13
72. Dowie, "Zion's Protest Against Swine's Flesh as a Disease-Producer," VFZ, June 1898, 17
73. Grant Wacker, "Marching to Zion: Religion in a Modern Utopian Community," Church History 54 (1985): 498
74. Wacker, Marching to Zion
75. Mullin, Miracles, 203-8
76. Edith L. Blumhofer, "The Christian Catholic Apostolic Church and the Apostolic Faith: A Study in the 1906 Pentecostal Revival," in Charismatic Experiences in History, ed. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1985), 126-46
77. Chappell, "Divine Healing Movement," 284-340
78. Philip L. Cook, Zion City, Illinois: Twentieth-Century Utopia (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1996)
79. and Alden Heath, "Apostle in Zion," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 70 (1977): 98-113
80. For Dowie's early ministry on the West Coast, see John Alexander Dowie, American First Fruits, Being a Brief Record of Eight Months' Divine Healing Missions in the State of California, 4th ed. (Chicago: Zion, 1895)
81. Dowie, Our Second Year's Harvest, Being a Brief Record of a Year of Divine Healing Missions on the Pacific Coast of America ... (Chicago: International Divine Healing Association, 1891)
82. Freeman D. Bovard, "Dowie's Story of the Pacific Coast," Christian Advocate, 10 Dec. 1903, 2001-2
83. and Robert C. Reinders, "Training for a Prophet: The West Coast Missions of John Alexander Dowie, 1888-1890," Pacific Historian 30 (1986): 3-14
84. Cook, Zion City, 12-13
85. Wacker, "Marching to Zion," 498
86. Cook, Zion City is the most thorough account of the city (later renamed Zion) under Dowie
87. Grover Townshend, "A City of the Plains," Munsey's Magazine, Sept. 1902, 843-45
88. and I. K. Friedman, "John Alexander Dowie," Everybody's Magazine, Nov. 1903, 567-75
89. Just about any of Dowie's sermons display the characteristics mentioned here. See, for example, John Alexander Dowie, "Reasonings for Inquirers Concerning Divine Healing Teaching," VFZ, July 1900, 1-31
90. John Alexander Dowie, "The Coming of Elijah, Restorer of All Things," VFZ, July 1901, 8-57
91. Dowie, "Power of the Covenant of Final Restoration." VFZ, Oct. 1902, 27 ff
92. Dowie, "Faith the Mightiest Power," VFZ, Oct. 1904, 13
93. John Swain, "John Alexander Dowie: The Prophet and His Profits," Century Magazine, Oct. 1902, 937
94. Dowie, "Reasonings for Inquirers," 28-29
95. "Divine Healing Vindicated," 34-35
96. Zion's Conflict With Methodist Apostasy, Especially in Connection With Freemasonry (Chicago: Zion, 1900)
97. For his attack on Woodworth-Etter, see "Trance Evangelism," Leaves of Healing, 8 Mar. 1895, 380-82
98. For "women's diseases" and the sometimes barbaric way the medical community treated them around the turn of the century, see Russett, Sexual Science
99. Shorter, From Paralysis to Fatigue, 69-92. The illnesses of Maggie Parsons and many other patients Dowie cured are open to psychosomatic interpretations, but others are less so. Blindness, deafness, shortened limbs, typhoid fever and countless other afflictions yielded to Dowie's touch
100. and Jane Dowie, "How Jesus Heals the Little Ones," VFZ, Feb. 1901, 1-35
101. For an account of Dowie's downfall, see William E. Barton, "The Dream of Dowie - and the Awakening of Zion," The Independent, 12 Apr. 1906, 915-17
102. Gordon P. Gardiner, Out of Zion and Into the World (Shippensburg, Penn.: Companion Press, 1990), identifies many former Dowie followers who assumed leadership in early Pentecostalism
103. On Parham, see Blumhofer, "The Christian Catholic Apostolic Church and the Apostolic Faith"
104. Edith Blumhofer, "A Pentecostal Branch Grows in Dowie's Zion: Charles F. Parham's 1906 Invasion," Assemblies of God Heritage, Fall 1986, 3-5
105. See, for example, "Dowie Loses Zion," 19 Sept. 1906
106. "Is Voliva's Hold in Danger?" 26 Sept. 1906
107. Parham, Life of Parham, 6
108. Charles F. Parham, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 4th ed. (1944 [1902]; reprinted in The Sermons of Charles F. Parham, New York: Garland, 1985), 15-18
109. Goff, Fields White, 38-39
110. "New Sect in Kansas Speaks with Strange Tongues," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 25 Jan. 1901
111. "Parham's New Religion Practiced at 'Stone's Folly,'" Kansas City Times, 27 Jan. 1901
112. See John W. Ripley, "Erastus Stone's Dream Castle - Birthplace of Pentecostalism," Shawnee County Historical Bulletin, June 1975, 42-53
113. Parham, Voice Crying, 39-52
114. "Healing," Apostolic Faith (Melrose, Kans.), Aug. 1905, 1-6
115. Suburbanite (Houston Heights, Tex.), 12 Aug. 1905
116. See also "Sensation at San Antonio," Houston Chronicle, 21 July 1907, 14
117. See also Anderson, Vision, 272-73 n. 8
118. Blumhofer, Restoring the Faith, 68 n. 82
119. Christian Advocate, 12 Sept. 1889, 589
120. and J. M. Buckley, Faith-Healing, Christian Science and Kindred Phenomena (New York: Century, 1892)
121. For studies of the still poorly understood influence of the mind on the body, see Anne Harrington, ed., The Placebo Effect: An Interdisciplinary Exploration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997)
122. Woodworth-Etter, Life and Experience (1904), 215-16, 246
123. Apostolic Faith (Topeka), 9 Aug. 1899, 2
124. Tyron L. Inbody, The Transforming God: An Interpretation of Suffering and Evil (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 39-42
125. Starr, Social Transformation of American Medicine, 79-144
126. Fuller, Alternative Medicine
127. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985)
128. Dowie, "Story of the Leper," 18. Robert Orsi, Thank You, St. Jude: Women's Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 175-77
129. For the centrality of human agency in Dowie's healing ministry, for instance, see John Alexander Dowie, "'Christ's Methods of Healing,'" 22
130. Dowie, "Knowing and Doing God's Will," VFZ, Dec. 1900, 24, 27
131. and Dowie, "Story of the Leper," 14
132. Woodworth-Etter, Life and Experience (1904), 251-52
133. Woodworth-Etter, Holy Ghost Sermons, 63-64
134. Dowie "Divine Healing Vindicated," 26
135. See also Woodworth-Etter, Spirit Filled Sermons, 103-5, 118
136. For glossolalia as early Pentecostalism's main initiation rite, see, for example, Wacker, Heaven Below, 40-44
137. See the photos of medical devices in Dowie tabernacles in Leaves of Healing, 21 Dec. 1894, 224 (where the quotations are located)
138. Wacker, "Pentecostal Tradition," 532
139. Wacker, "Marching to Zion," 510
140. For the Protestant focus on athletics and the body, see Tony Ladd and James A. Mathisen, Muscular Christianity: Evangelical Protestants and the Development of American Sport (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1999), 22-68
141. and Richard C. Morse, History of the North American Young Men's Christian Associations (New York: Association Press, 1919), 75-78, 166, 170-71
142. W. M. Hundley, "The Flag of the Salvation Army Eclipsed by the Standard of Zion City," Physical Culture, Apr. 1903, 271-74; 271
143. Dowie, "Doctors, Drugs and Devils: Or, the Foes of Christ the Healer," Physical Culture, Jan. 1904, 81-86. Though Dowie rejected worldly entertainments, Zion City developed sports leagues under the direction of his son Gladstone
144. Dowie, "Reasonings for Inquirers," 17
145. Woodworth-Etter, Spirit Filled Sermons, 122, 132
146. Dowie, "Satan the Defiler," 23
147. Dowie, "Story of the Leper," 28
148. See also Sarah E. Parham, "Immortality," Selected Sermons, 93-115
149. See Dowie, "Spurious holiness," 23, where he defines sickness in terms of being unclean and impure
150. Dowie, "Zion's Protest Against Swine's Flesh," 15
151. James B. Bell, M.D., "Divine Healing From a Medical Standpoint," Apostolic Faith (Topeka), 30 Mar. 1899, 1
152. For nineteenth-century therapeutics, see John Harley Warner, The Therapeutic Perspective: Medical Practice, Knowledge, and Identity in America, 1820-1885 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1997)
153. See Wayne E. Warner, "1914: Pentecostal Evangelist Arrested in Framingham Tent," Middlesex News (Framingham, Mass.), 18 Nov. 1989, 7A
154. Dowie, "Zion's Protest Against Swine's Flesh"
155. Charles W. Wendte, "A Timely Call"
156. "Repudiated by Her Church," Marion Chronicle (Indiana), 25 Nov. 1887, 1
157. "Parhamites Were Disturbed," Houston Chronicle, 5 Oct. 1906, 8
158. Dowie, "Story of the Leper," 21
159. Wacker, "Marching to Zion," 506
160. Dowie, "Faith the Mightiest Power," 24
161. James M. Buckley, "Dowie, Analyzed and Classified," Century Magazine, Oct. 1902, 930
162. Wacker, "The Pentecostal Tradition," 529, uses the term "death redefinition"
163. Dowie, "Jesus the Healer," 13
164. Parham, "We Have Found Him," in Selected Sermons, 3
165. Dowie, "Do You Know God's Way of Healing?" 7