Therapies and Remedies in the Pentecostal Tradition
Divine healing within the contemporary Christian faith movement is founded on certain claims within biblical scripture. Fundamental is the idea of sin and atonement. Illness is viewed as a manifestation of the believers lack of faith and an opportunistic attack from the devil (Pretorius, 2009). The Pentecostal religion draws upon these general theologies and offers specific formulas for healing based upon biblical interpretations made by charismatic preachers. These Pentecostal/Charismatics “stress the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit toward the proclamation that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of God the Father” (Synan, 2000). Their membership worldwide numbers over 500,000,000, making them easily the second largest Christian denomination.
Two Communions w/ the Holy Spirit
Two specific types of communions with the Holy Spirit are mentioned repeatedly in Pentecostal/Charismatic. First, glossolalia, the ability to speak in tongues and a sign of the Holy Spirit is alive in the believer. Second, is the idea of divine healing as a miraculous gift, itself being a tool for evangelization. Divine healing is exemplified as direct intervention of God in the believers life, in response to prayer and true faith. This emphasis on healing within Pentecostalism originates in the mid-nineteenth century with a theological effort to restore New Testament signs and wonders (Synan, 2000). The historic schism between medicine and faith was expanded through varied ministries, especially in Europe.
The idea of healing homes became popular and expanded across America. These centers provided free treatment to the believers. Traditional medical treatment was denounced as a tool of Satan. Scottish minister Alexander Dowie was an outspoken critic of the European medical profession and in 1895 published an article in the magazine Physical Culture entitled “Doctors, Drugs, and Devils, or the Foes of Christ the Healer”:
I want to say today that doctors as a profession are directly inspired by the devil. There is not an atom of foundation for science in medicine. All doctors are “poisoners-general and surgical butchers” and “professional destroyers”. They are monsters who hold in their hands deadly poisons and deadly surgical knives, and in the name of the law demand that you lie down upon the altar of their operating tables, that they may deprive you of your consciousness and make you a living sacrifice.
Drawing on this European model America’s Pentecostal doctrine incorporated certain medical techniques. Based on the power of prayer, “healing homes” were established in the mid-nineteenth European nations as an alternative to medical science. This was promoted through a mixture of ministries and ministers. At these homes daily pray would administered in lieu of traditional medicine. The first sort of healing homes in America was opened by Charles Cullis in Boston, Massachusetts in 1864 (Synan, 2000). Cullis was a trained medical doctor and initially his homes provided comfort and “complete medical care”. Cullis added prayer and removed traditional medicine after personally witnessing the miraculous healing of Lucy Drake who was “instantly healed of a debilitating brain tumor after the laying on of hands”.
Glossolalia
Glossolalia is a term used since at least the time of the Greeks. It is a linguistic trait that manifest at various times and places as part of a culture tradition. Commonly it is referred to as ‘speaking in tongues’ and in Pentecostal traditions it means an individual is having an actual communion with the Holy Spirit. Much research has been done into the nature of this phenomenon. Scientific work has been done to identify some physiological explanation.
Pentecostalism rejects this medical research and its explanation. It requires a believers true faith in the Holy Spirit and God. From its beginnings it has been founded on the idea of atonement and pray. Charles Fox Parham was one of the first healing evangelist and was the first ministers to preach the doctrine of speaking in tongues (Synan, 195). He established healing homes and opened the Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas. It was here that he discovered that speaking in tongues was biblical evidence of the “baptism” in the Holy Spirit”, on January 1, 1901 (Synan, 195).
Speaking in tongues became a physical manifestation an instant communion with the Holy Spirit. Divine healing came as a actual response from God in answer to prayer and atonement. Both were considered a real responsive relationship with God by the believer and in all ministries it was preached faithfulness to this fact. Going to the doctor showed a lack of faith. Pentecostal ministries expanded to reach out to communities. Faithful parishioners vowed never to take another pill for the rest of their lives.
“I praise God that I am saved, sanctified, filled with the Holy Ghost, looking for Jesus to come and I have trusted God for my body for 40 years” (or however many years since they had take their last medicine) (Synan, 196)
Sin was the catalyst that created sickness in the human body according to Pentecostal thought. If someone was ill that person had “sin in the body” and if someone was prolonging ill that person showed a lack of faith in divine healing. Congregations would gather around and commune in pray and the laying on of hands. Speaking in tongues becomes a sign that the Holy Spirit is present. Holy Ghost People is a revealing documentary of an Appalachian Pentecostal church still rich in this tradition. It offers a candid view into the thoughts and emotions of the individual parishioners. Each professed faith in God and a belief that the Holy Spirit was speaking through them. This miraculous sign provides comfort even as a person lays dying in pain. The idea that God is real can provide great strength.
Pentecostalism grew throughout United States in the first decades of the twentieth century. By the 1950s it had grown into a contentious issue in many communities. The extreme doctrines of certain ministries, such as, snake handling and poison drinking, divided the church from within. Faith healers were arrested for practicing medicine without a license and criminal neglect. Advocates for a more moderate and accepting stance towards medicine:
I do not believe that those who get sick and use no remedies and drag around for weeks and after so long a time get well, are divinely healed, but that nature alone restored them...I do not believe in lying about divine healing. I do not believe that sickness is evidence of unbelief. I do not believe that healing is paralleled with salvation in the atonement.
Were often countered with:
Beloved, let us never lower the standard, for if we fail to preach this wonderful truth, we are a fallen church, and if our ministers advocate drugs and doctors, something is wrong...you are not preaching the full gospel. (Synan, 168)
The controversy over the benefits of faith healing largely faded within the Pentecostal movement. As author Vinson Synan notes many of the men who criticized the moderate stance towards medicine died themselves in hospitals using the best medical service available.
Faith Healer Revival
Oral Roberts claims to have been miraculously cured of tuberculosis when he was sixteen. This would inspire him into the Pentecostal ministry and the life of a traveling pastor. He would witness another miraculous healing in 1947 which would compel him to pray and fast for the “gift of healing” to be given to his ministry. He began a campaign of tent-healing crusades (‘a canvas cathedral’) in 1948 that made him a common name throughout America. In 1953 he began televising on national broadcast. He became the first televangelist. He used the proceeds generated by this notoriety to found his own university in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1965. The mission of this school was to train divine healers to go out to the “furthermost nations and peoples of the world” (Roberts, 1998).
Roberts opened a 77-story hospital in Tulsa in 1980 called the “City of Faith”. This would be a place according to Roberts where a “marriage between prayer and medicine, the supernatural and the natural, in the treatment of the whole person”. Medical doctors would be taught here how to administer medicine and prayer. The City of Faith hospital closed in 1989 after little public interest. Supporters still believed in the power of Oral Robert’s prayers but not in traveling to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Pentecostals finally centered around Oral Roberts and his ministry of divine healing. His position was that all healing was the work of God. Whether that power works after the laying on of hands, natural processes, prayer or the work of doctors and medicine. His teachings would allow the believer to merge medical science and faith.
Broadcasting the Word
Pentecostal ministries continue to seek out new ways to engage the community. Faith healing has expanded from local healing homes into a worldwide enterprise and religious broadcasting has grown from tent-revivals into multimillion dollar media companies. Radio has been utilized by religious groups since its creation to reach out to parishioners within frequency range. American radio networks were required to allot a certain amount of air-time each week to public interest groups. This required that time be equally given to each denomination.
As Pentecostalism grew within the religious world it acquired more financial resources and technical expertise. Ministries began to wholly fund their own radio stations in the 1920s to spread the message. Religious broadcasting lends itself to the tradition of vibrancy in the Pentecostal faith. The mega-ministries of Oral Roberts inspired pastors to expand their congregations however they could. Traditionally this meant traveling from town to town, and limited to the size of the largest venue available. Radio broadcasting allowed for the message of the Holy Spirit to spread directly into households and reach believers and non-believers with the same passion as traditional church services.
Televangelism began with Oral Roberts in 1953. During the 1950s Roberts was able to reach out on television stations so that, by 1957, 35 of the 500 national television stations carried his program (Harrell 1985, 129). The technical capacity of television and film increased steadily allowing the camera to better capture the sights and sounds of spiritual revivals. The Pentecostal evangelist became the central figure of the scene. All the drama of Sunday worship was played out as Roberts laid hands on those who were ill, nobody exactly knowing what would happen when he prayed (Kay 2009, 247).
Roberts would modify and expand his programing over time. In 1969 he launched his “Contact” television special and embraced a more entertainment based production. He surrounded himself with singers, minor celebrities and presented a magazine style form of television that was widely adopted (Kay, 247). Response to this change was mainly supportive. By the mid-1970s there were over a hundred religious shows or programs on American television selling books and music, and inviting interactive correspondence with their viewers. Roberts was the first to encourage viewers to call-in and installed telephone banks of trained counsellors to respond. All this was to give them impression that the televangelist was interested in the personal problems of the viewer.
“The Crusade is the Vision”
A return to tent-crusade style of preaching was led by the likes of evangelist Benny Hinn and by fundamentalist preacher and Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell. These were still televised and filmed events. The glitzy evangelical preaching styles ministers developed into the creation of celebrity-cults and branding. Pentecostal/Charismatic ministries today try to develop unique and compelling imagery and histories, centered around certain individuals.
Reinhard Bonnke is one such evangelist who religious mission took him to Sub-Saharan Africa where he claims to have converted millions to Christianity. He claims to have received prophecy from the Lord that he would “see one million souls saved in a single service”. In 2001 his crusade in Nigeria would top 1.3 million people, gathered together at one time.
This event was captured by high-tech cameras and media devices and produced into DVDs, which are distributed through Bonnke’s own website. His historic claim of converting 6 million Nigerians in a single week (Gordon, Hancock, 4) is made alongside stunning imagery of a massive body of people. The force of Pentecostal practice cannot be fully understood without first understanding “the ongoing environment and the life of images”. In Bonnke’s case, the use of images and their production, reproduction and circulation, reinforced by words, “are all necessary in the visual culture of Pentecostalism; they proclaim that spiritual power is both visible and tangible, and that miracles are real”.
Conclusion: Intimacy in Faith Healing
The popularity of Pentecostal/Charismatics in broadcasting is evident in the continual donations to keep the programming on the air. The religious appeal remains the same as when pastors advocated for faith in Jesus and the Holy Spirit, to congregations gathered in tents and schoolhouses. The parishioner is called to be dutiful to the Lord and faithful that their prayers will be answered. The visual presentation of evangelic ministries is easily reproduced through modern mass-media and new ways of interaction between viewer and the ministry are possible.
The efficacy of this new Pentecostal faith healing culture is questionable. The intimate connection between individuals is what has historically been seen as the benefit of religious communities. Healing homes were established to give this social support in lieu of medicine. Church congregations would physically lay hands on sick members and pray. Physical touch is lost in this new age of digital ministries. Pentecostalism requires a belief in the miraculous and calls the believer to experience first-hand communion with the Holy Spirit. This is an essential part to divine healing. How this is interpreted and methodologically approached is vastly different today then in the beginning of the Christian Charismatic movement.