From Tent Meetings and Store-front Healing Rooms to Walmarts and the Internet: Healing Spaces in the United States, the Americas, and the World, 1906–2006

Church History

Volumn 75, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 631-647

  Brown, Candy Gunther ^a  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85008574379     PISSN: 00096407     EISSN: 17552613     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S000964070009867X     Document Type: Article

References (61)

1. A 2003 Newsweek poll found 72 percent of Americans believing that “praying to God can cure someone-even if science says the person doesn't stand a chance”: Claudia Kalb and others, “Faith and Healing,” Newsweek, 10 November 2003. A 1996 Gallup Poll showed 82 percent believing “in the healing power of personal prayer,” and 77 percent agreeing that “God sometimes intervenes to cure people who have a serious illness:” John Cole, “Gallup Poll Again Shows Confusion,” NCSE Reports (spring 1996): 9; and Claudia Wallis, “Faith and Healing,” Time, 24 June 1996, 63, quoted in Ronald L. Numbers, “Science Without God: Natural Laws and Christian Beliefs,” in When Science and Christianity Meet, ed. David C. Lindberg and Numbers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 284. Other polls suggest that 61 percent-80 percent believe in miracles: Robert Bruce Mullin, Miracles and the Modern Religious Imagination (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), 262; Stephen J. Pullum, “Foul Demons, Come Out!”: The Rhetoric of Twentieth-Century American Faith Healing (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 150.
2. In addition to praying for healing, many people, including pentecostal and charismatic Christians, also use other medical and spiritual alternatives, such as chiropractics, herbs, New Age crystals, yoga, or reiki: Robert C. Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 10; author's interviews with participants at charismatic healing services in Toronto, Ont., August 17-20, 2005; Harrisburg, Pa., November 2-5, 2005; and St. Louis, Mo., February 28-March 3, 2006. Although I am very interested in diverse spiritual healing traditions, they exceed the scope of this essay.
3. Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1995), 104-6.
4. Martin E. Marty, “Religion and Healing: The Four Expectations,” in Religion and Healing in America, ed. Linda L. Barnes and Susan S. Sered (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 488.
5. Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1967), 206; David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal, ed., American Sacred Space (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 6.
6. Although Protestants have frequently voiced suspicions of pilgrimages as superstitious, the practice has persisted throughout the history of Christianity and has arguably become more prevalent in the past century: John F. Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 5-6.
7. Barnes and Sered, ed., Religion and Healing in America, 16.
8. Chidester and Linenthal, ed., American Sacred Space, 10.
9. Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (New York: Picador, 1988), 180; Amanda Porterfield, Healing in the History of Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 151; Sarah Coakley, ed., Religion and the Body (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 6.
10. See, for instance, the testimonials included in Kathryn Kuhlman, I Believe in Miracles: Streams of Healing from the Heart of a Woman of Faith (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962; rev. ed., Gainesville, Fla.: Bridge-Logos, 1992).
11. For examples of the interpretations to which I am responding, see David Edwin Harrell, Jr., AH Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 5; Cox, Fire From Heaven, 15.
12. Heather D. Curtis, “The Lord for the Body: Pain, Suffering and the Practice of Divine Healing in Late-Nineteenth-Century American Protestantism” (Th.D. diss., Harvard University, 2004), 10.
13. Frank Bartleman, Azusa Street (South Plainfield, N.J.: Bridge, 1980), 58.
14. Harrell, All Things Are Possible, 44, 87.
15. Candy Gunther Brown, “Healing Words: Narratives of Spiritual Healing and Kathryn Kuhlman's Uses of Print Culture, 1947-1976,” in Religion and the Culture of Print, ed. James P. Danky (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming).
16. Randy Clark, Lighting Fires (Orlando, Fla.: Creation House, 1998), 77; “International Ministry Trips,” http://www.globalawakening.com/trips.htm [cited January 16, 2006].
17. Paul Gale Chappell, “The Divine Healing Movement in America” (Ph.D. diss., Drew University, 1983), 32.
18. Curtis, “The Lord for the Body,” 10; see also Curtis's essay in this issue.
19. Kemp Pendleton Burpeau, God's Showman: A Historical Study of John G. Lake and South African/American Pentecostalism (Oslo, Norway: Refleks, 2004), 37,154, 224; Curry Blake, A Basic Course in Divine Healing (Dallas, Tex.: John G. Lake Ministries, 1997), 4.
20. See, for example, Gordon Lindsay, Sketches from the Life and Ministry of John G. Lake (Shreveport, La.: Voice of Healing, 1952); Roberts Liardon, comp., John G. Lake: The Complete Collection of His Life Teachings (Tulsa, Okla.: Albury, 1999).
21. Genesis 26:18; Cal Pierce, Preparing the Way: The Reopening of the John G. Lake Healing Rooms in Spokane, Washington (Hagerstown, Md.: McDougal, 2001), 15, 84.
22. Acts 19:12 provides the precedent for the practice of sending blessed cloths to the sick; author's interviews with Cal and Michelle Pierce, Elaine Perkins, Harry Lundy, January 11 and 18, 2005. Oral Roberts popularized the idea of finding points of contact for the release of faith: see David Edwin Harrell, Jr., Oral Roberts: An American Life (San Francisco, Calif.: Harper and Row, 1985), 97.
23. Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 114.
24. “International Association of Healing Rooms (IAHR) Members,” http://www. healingrooms.com/iahr/iahr_rooms.htm [cited January 16, 2006].
25. Bill Johnson, When Heaven Invades Earth: A Practical Guide to a Life of Miracles (Shippensburg, Pa.: Treasure House, 2003), 46.
26. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace, 1987), 20-65; Chidester and Linenthal, American Sacred Space, 16; Sears, Sacred Places, 6.
27. Randy Clark, God Can Use Little Ole Me: Remarkable Stories of Ordinary Christians (Shippensburg, Pa.: Revival, 1998); A. A. Allen, Allen Revival Hour (Miracle Valley, Ariz.: A. A. Allen, 196?).
28. See, for instance, Cal Pierce, Third Day Church: The Church on Fire [sound recording] (Spokane, Wash.: Healing Rooms, 2004).
29. I want to thank Amanda Porterfield for helping me to think about the ways that Walmart prayers reinforce consumerism and problematic aspects of globalization.
30. Tommy Lee Osborn, Healing the Sick (Tulsa, Okla.: T. L. Osborn Evangelistic Association, 1959), 5.
31. Harrell, Oral Roberts, 118.
32. Jamie Buckingham, Daughter of Destiny: Kathryn Kuhlman. Her Story (Plainfield, N.J.: Logos International, 1976), 207.
33. Amanda Porterfield, Healing in the History of Christianity, 162.
34. Todd Bentley, journey Into the Miraculous (Victoria, B.C.: Sound of Fire Productions, 2003), 247; Todd Bentley, Christ's Healing Touch, vol. 1, Understanding How to Take God's Healing Power to the World (Abbottsford, B.C.: Fresh Fire Ministries, 2004), 275-76.
35. Chidester and Linenthal, American Sacred Space, 10, 15.
36. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 4.
37. James William Opp, “Religion, Medicine, and the Body: Protestant Faith Healing in Canada, 1880-1930” (Ph.D. diss., Carlton University, 2000), 14.
38. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 36; Darrel W. Amundsen and Ferngren, “The Early Christian Tradition,” 46; Marvin R. O'Connell, “Roman Catholic Tradition,” 121; and Timothy P. Weber, “Baptist Tradition,” in Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions, ed. Ronald L. Numbers and Darrel W. Amundsen (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 292.
39. Bryan T. Turner, “The Body in Western Society: Social Theory and its Perspectives,” in Religion and the Body, ed. Coakley, 29.
40. Stacy Takacs, “Alien-Nation: Immigration, National Identity and Transnationalism,” Cultural Studies 13:4 (October 1, 1999): 591-620.
41. Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Vintage Books), xi.
42. James W. Opp, “Healing Hands, Healthy Bodies: Protestant Women and Faith-Healing in Canada and the United States, 1880-1930,” in Women and Twentieth-century Protestantism, ed. Margaret Lamberts Bendroth and Virginia Lieson Brereton (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 237; Curtis, The Lord for the Body, 21; Cox, Fire from Heaven, 121; Gaston Espinosa, “‘God Made a Miracle in My Life’: Latino Pentecostal Healing in the Borderlands,” in Religion and the Body, ed. Coakley, 123.
43. R. Marie Griffith, Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 69.
44. Francis MacNutt, The Prayer That Heals: Praying for Healing in the Family (Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria, 1981), 61; MacNutt was laicized following his marriage to Judith Sewell in 1980. For a discussion of the use of scientific language in religious discourses on healing, see Porterfield, Healing in the History of Christianity, 162.
45. See, for example, John T. Chibnall, Joseph M. Jeral, and M.A. Cerullo, “Experiments on Distant Intercessory Prayer: God, Science, and the Lesson of Massah,” Archives of Internal Medicine 161:21 (November 26, 2001): 2529; and Herbert Benson and others, “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in Cardiac Bypass Patients: A Multicenter Randomized Trial of Uncertainty and Certainty of Receiving Intercessory Prayer,” American Heart Journal 151:4 (April 2006): 934-42.
46. Randy Clark, There Is More! Reclaiming the Power of Impartation (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Global Awakening, 2006).
47. See, for instance, the essays in Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington, and George A. Rawlyk, ed., Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700-1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
48. I want to thank Michael McClymond for helping me to think about the transnational dimensions of the early pentecostal revivals.
49. Young-Hoon Lee, “Korean Pentecost: The Great Revival of 1907,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 4:1 (2001): 73-83; Gary B. McGee, “Baptism of the Holy Ghost and Fire! The Revival Legacy of Minnie F. Abrams of India,” Enrichment (summer 1998): 1-9; Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 11-12; David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2001), 83, 132, 153.
50. “A Brief History,” http://www.sentinelgroup.org/history.asp [cited December 22, 2005].
51. “Global Day of Prayer,” http://www.globaldayofprayer.com/ [cited June 26, 2006].
52. David Hilborn, “Toronto” in Perspective: Papers on the New Charismatic Wave of the Mid-1990s (Waynesboro, Ga.: Acute, 2001), 7; Margaret Poloma, Main Street Mystics: The Toronto Blessing and Reviving Pentecostalism (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 87.
53. Rolland Baker and Heidi Baker, There is Always Enough: God's Miraculous Provision among the Poorest Children on Earth (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Chosen Books, 2003), 48; Heidi Baker, sermon, Voice of the Apostles Conference, Harrisburg, Pa., November 4, 2005.
54. “The Apostolic Network of Global Awakening,” http://www.globalawakening.com/ apostolic%20pastor%20network.htm [cited January 17, 2006].
55. Clark's citation of statistical estimates made by the Argentine evangelist Carlos Annacondia circulated, among other means, through U.S. e-mail chains, for instance, a Spokane Healing Rooms communication dated January 11, 2005.
56. Randy Clark, Ministry Training Manual (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Ministry Training Manual, 2002), Ml-42.
57. Gaston Espinosa, “The Impact of Pluralism on Trends in Latin American and U.S. Latino Religions and Society,” Perspectives: Hispanic Theological Initiative Occasional Paper Series 7 (fall 2003): 35-37.
58. “International Ministry Trips,” http://www.globalawakening.com/trips.htm [cited December 21, 2005 1.
59. Cox, Fire From Heaven, 109-10; Leif Hetland, lecture, Global Awakening School of Healing and Impartation, Toronto, Ont., August 20, 2005.
60. Lamin Sanneh, “Mission and the Modern Imperative-Retrospect and Prospect: Charting a Course,” in Earthen Vessels: American Evangelicals and Foreign Missions, 1880-1980, ed. loel A. Carpenter and Wilbert R. Shenk (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990), 301; John C. Rowe, ed., Post-Nationalist American Studies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 23.
61. Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, 180; Porterfield, Healing in the History of Christianity, 151; Cox, Fire from Heaven, 57, 107-8; Espinosa, “God Made a Miracle in My Life,” 134-35.