Faith healing

Christianity Overview , Philippines Regarded as a Christian belief that God heals people through the power of the Holy Spirit, faith healing often involves the laying on of hands. It is also called supernatural healing, divine healing, and miracle healing, among other things. Healing in the Christian Bible is often associated with the ministry of specific individuals, including Elijah, Jesus, and Paul of Tarsus. Being healed has been described as a privilege of accepting Jesus's redemption on the cross. Pentecostal writer Wilfred Graves Jr. views the healing of the body as a physical expression of salvation. After relating a story of Jesus's exorcising an individual and healing ill individuals who approached him, the author of the book of Matthew states that the miracles were a fulfillment of a prophecy from Isaiah 53:5. Christian writers who believe in faith healing do not necessarily believe that an individual's faith presently brings about the desired healing. "[Y]our faith does not effect your healing now. When you are healed rests entirely on what the sovereign purposes of the Healer are," argues Larry Keefauver. Keefauver cautions against allowing enthusiasm for faith healing to stir up false hopes: "Just believing hard enough, long enough or strong enough will not strengthen you or prompt your healing. Doing mental gymnastics to 'hold on to your miracle' will not cause your healing to manifest now." Four of the seven miracles performed in the book of John that the author uses to indicate that Jesus was sent from God were acts of healing or resurrection. Jesus heals a Capernaumite official's son, heals a paralyzed man by a pool in Bethsaida, heals a man born blind, and resurrects Lazarus of Bethany. Jesus told his followers to heal the sick and stated that signs such as healing are evidence of faith. The apostle Paul believed healing is one of the special gifts of the Holy Spirit, and that the possibility exists that certain persons may possess this gift to an extraordinarily high degree. The New Testament says that during Jesus's ministry and after his Resurrection, the apostles healed the sick and cast out demons, made lame men walk, raised the dead and performed other miracles. The apostles are described as men given supernatural powers by God, including the ability to heal. For example, in the book of Acts 3:1–10, Saint Peter is recounted healing a disabled man. Early Christian church Accounts or references to healing appear in the writings of many Ante-Nicene Fathers, although many of these mentions are very general and do not include specifics. Catholicism The Roman Catholic Church recognizes two "not mutually exclusive" kinds of healing, one justified by science and one justified by faith: • healing by human "natural means through the practice of medicine" which emphasizes that the theological virtue of "charity demands that we not neglect natural means of healing people who are ill" and the cardinal virtue of prudence forewarns not "to employ a technique that has no scientific support (or even plausibility)". In 2000, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued "Instruction on prayers for healing," with specific norms regarding prayer meetings for healing, It accepts "that there may be means of natural healing that have not yet been understood or recognized by science", According to John Cavadini, when healing is granted, "The miracle is not primarily for the person healed, but for all people, as a sign of God's work in the ultimate healing called 'salvation', or a sign of the kingdom that is coming." Some might view their own healing as a sign they are particularly worthy or holy, while others do not deserve it. Since Catholic Christians believe the lives of canonized saints in the Church will reflect Christ's, many have come to expect healing miracles. While the popular conception of a miracle can be wide-ranging, the Catholic Church has a specific definition for the kind of miracle formally recognized in a canonization process. According to Catholic Encyclopedia, it is often said that cures at shrines and during Christian pilgrimages are mainly due to psychotherapypartly to confident trust in Divine providence, and partly to the strong expectancy of cure that comes over suggestible persons at these times and places. Among the best-known accounts by Catholics of faith healings are those attributed to the miraculous intercession of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary known as Our Lady of Lourdes at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France and the remissions of life-threatening disease claimed by those who have applied for aid to Saint Jude, who is known as the "patron saint of lost causes". , Catholic medics have asserted that there have been 67 miracles and 7,000 unexplainable medical cures at Lourdes since 1858. In a 1908 book, it says these cures were subjected to intense medical scrutiny and were only recognized as authentic spiritual cures after a commission of doctors and scientists, called the Lourdes Medical Bureau, had ruled out any physical mechanism for the patient's recovery. Evangelicalism , Ghana, 2018 In some Pentecostal and Charismatic Evangelical churches, a special place is thus reserved for faith healings with laying on of hands during worship services or for campaigns of evangelization. Faith healing or divine healing is considered to be an inheritance of Jesus acquired by his death and resurrection. Biblical inerrancy ensures that the miracles and healings described in the Bible are still relevant and may be present in the life of the believer. At the beginning of the 20th century, the new Pentecostal movement drew participants from the Holiness movement and other movements in America that already believed in divine healing. By the 1930s, several faith healers drew large crowds and established worldwide followings. The first Pentecostals in the modern sense appeared in Topeka, Kansas, in a Bible school conducted by Charles Fox Parham, a holiness teacher and former Methodist pastor. Pentecostalism achieved worldwide attention in 1906 through the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles led by William Joseph Seymour. Smith Wigglesworth was also a well-known figure in the early 20th century. A former English plumber turned evangelist, Wigglesworth lived simply and read nothing but the Bible from the time his wife taught him to read. He traveled around the world preaching about Jesus and performing faith healings. Wigglesworth claimed to raise several people from the dead in Jesus' name in his meetings. During the 1920s and 1930s, Aimee Semple McPherson was a controversial faith healer of growing popularity during the Great Depression. Subsequently, William M. Branham has been credited with initiating the post-World War II healing revivals. The healing revival he began led many to emulate his style and spawned a generation of faith healers. Because of this, Branham has been recognized as the "father of modern faith healers". According to writer and researcher Patsy Sims, "the power of a Branham service and his stage presence remains a legend unparalleled in the history of the Charismatic movement". By the late 1940s, Oral Roberts, who was associated with and promoted by Branham's Voice of Healing magazine also became well known, and he continued with faith healing until the 1980s. Roberts discounted faith healing in the late 1950s, stating, "I never was a faith healer and I was never raised that way. My parents believed very strongly in medical science and we have a doctor who takes care of our children when they get sick. I cannot heal anyone – God does that." A friend of Roberts was Kathryn Kuhlman, another popular faith healer, who gained fame in the 1950s and had a television program on CBS. Also in this era, Jack Coe and A. A. Allen were faith healers who traveled with large tents for large open-air crusades. Oral Roberts's successful use of television as a medium to gain a wider audience led others to follow suit. His former pilot, Kenneth Copeland, started a healing ministry. Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn, and Peter Popoff became well-known televangelists who claimed to heal the sick. Richard Rossi is known for advertising his healing clinics through secular television and radio. Kuhlman influenced Benny Hinn, who adopted some of her techniques and wrote a book about her. Christian Science Christian Science claims that healing is possible through prayer based on an understanding of God and the underlying spiritual perfection of God's creation. The material world as humanly perceived is believed not to be the spiritual reality. Christian Scientists believe that healing through prayer is possible insofar as it brings the spiritual reality of health into human experience. Prayer does not change the spiritual creation but gives a clearer view of it, and the result appears in the human scene as healing: the human picture adjusts to coincide more nearly with the divine reality. Therefore, Christian Scientists do not consider themselves to be faith healers since faith or belief in Christian Science is not required on the part of the patient, and because they consider healings reliable and provable rather than random. Although there is no hierarchy in Christian Science, practitioners devote themselves full-time to prayer for others on a professional basis and advertise in an online directory published by the church. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has had a long history of faith healings. Many members of the LDS Church have told their stories of healing within the LDS publication, the Ensign. The church believes healings come most often as a result of priesthood blessings given by the laying on of hands; however, prayer often accompanied with fasting is also thought to cause healings. Healing is always attributed to God's power. Latter-day Saints believe that the Priesthood of God, held by prophets (such as Moses) and worthy disciples of the Savior, was restored via heavenly messengers to the first prophet of this dispensation, Joseph Smith. According to LDS doctrine, even though members may have the restored priesthood authority to heal in the name of Jesus Christ, all efforts should be made to seek the appropriate medical help. Brigham Young stated this effectively, while also noting that the ultimate outcome is still dependent on the will of God. Islam A number of healing traditions exist among Muslims. Some healers are particularly focused on diagnosing cases of possession by jinn or demons. Buddhism Chinese-born Australian businessman Jun Hong Lu was a prominent proponent of the "Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door", claiming that practicing the three "golden practices" of reciting texts and mantras, liberation of beings, and making vows, laid a solid foundation for improved physical, mental, and psychological well-being, with many followers publicly attesting to have been healed through practice. Ancient Greek paganism The Ancient Greeks believed in several forms of divine healing. Religious healing of bodily illnesses was usually sought at temples of Asclepius, god of medicine, where patients would, after purifying ritual and prayer, sleep in the temple; of the people supposedly cured thereby, some were healed immediately, but often they would have a dream in which the god came to them and prescribed a treatment, which might be mundanely medical (e.g., a change of diet) or ritual. In the archaic period there were also priests of Apollo who supposedly cured plagues. However, religious healing was applied especially to mental illness, which was thought of as sent by a god and therefore curable by appeasing that god; the gods appealed to were most commonly Dionysus, or Cybele and the Korybantes, but might also include Hecate, Poseidon, Apollo, Ares, Pan, or the heroes. Such religious cures, especially those invoking the Korybantes, often involved special hymns, music, and dancing. Scientology Some critics of Scientology have referred to some of its practices as being similar to faith healing, based on claims made by L. Ron Hubbard in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and other writings. ==Scientific investigation==

Nearly all scientists dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience. Critics reply that claims of medical cures should be tested scientifically because, although faith in the supernatural is not in itself usually considered to be the purview of science, claims of reproducible effects are nevertheless subject to scientific investigation. A Cochrane review of intercessory prayer found "although some of the results of individual studies suggest a positive effect of intercessory prayer, the majority do not". A review in 1954 investigated spiritual healing, therapeutic touch and faith healing. Of the hundred cases reviewed, none revealed that the healer's intervention alone resulted in any improvement or cure of a measurable organic disability. In addition, at least one study has suggested that adult Christian Scientists, who generally use prayer rather than medical care, have a higher death rate than other people of the same age. ==Criticism==

Skeptics of faith healing offer primarily two explanations for anecdotes of cures or improvements, relieving any need to appeal to the supernatural. The first is post hoc ergo propter hoc, meaning that a genuine improvement or spontaneous remission may have been experienced coincidental with but independent from anything the faith healer or patient did or said. These patients would have improved just as well even had they done nothing. The second is the placebo effect, through which a person may experience genuine pain relief and other symptomatic alleviation. In this case, the patient genuinely has been helped by the faith healer or faith-based remedy, not through any mysterious or numinous function, but by the power of their own belief that they would be healed. In both cases the patient may experience a real reduction in symptoms, though in neither case has anything miraculous or inexplicable occurred. Both cases, however, are strictly limited to the body's natural abilities. According to the American Cancer Society: Belgian philosopher and skeptic Etienne Vermeersch coined the term Lourdes effect as a criticism of the magical thinking and placebo effect possibilities for the claimed miraculous cures as there are no documented events where a severed arm has been reattached through faith healing at Lourdes. Vermeersch identifies ambiguity and equivocal nature of the miraculous cures as a key feature of miraculous events. Negative impact on public health Reliance on faith healing to the exclusion of other forms of treatment can have a public health impact when it reduces or eliminates access to modern medical techniques. This is evident in both higher mortality rates for children It is the stated position of the AMA that "prayer as therapy should not delay access to traditional medical care". Christian theological criticism of faith healing Christian theological criticism of faith healing broadly falls into two distinct levels of disagreement. The first is widely termed the "open-but-cautious" view of the miraculous in the church today. This term is deliberately used by Robert L. Saucy in the book Are Miraculous Gifts for Today?. Don Carson is another example of a Christian teacher who has put forward what has been described as an "open-but-cautious" view. In dealing with the claims of Warfield, particularly "Warfield's insistence that miracles ceased", Carson asserts, "But this argument stands up only if such miraculous gifts are theologically tied exclusively to a role of attestation; and that is demonstrably not so." However, while affirming that he does not expect healing to happen today, Carson is critical of aspects of the faith healing movement, "Another issue is that of immense abuses in healing practises.... The most common form of abuse is the view that since all illness is directly or indirectly attributable to the devil and his works, and since Christ by his cross has defeated the devil, and by his Spirit has given us the power to overcome him, healing is the inheritance right of all true Christians who call upon the Lord with genuine faith." The second level of theological disagreement with Christian faith healing goes further. Commonly referred to as cessationism, its adherents either claim that faith healing will not happen today at all, or may happen today, but it would be unusual. Richard Gaffin argues for a form of cessationism in an essay alongside Saucy's in the book Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? In his book Perspectives on Pentecost Gaffin states of healing and related gifts that "the conclusion to be drawn is that as listed in 1 Corinthians 12(vv. 9f., 29f.) and encountered throughout the narrative in Acts, these gifts, particularly when exercised regularly by a given individual, are part of the foundational structure of the church... and so have passed out of the life of the church." Gaffin qualifies this, however, by saying "At the same time, however, the sovereign will and power of God today to heal the sick, particularly in response to prayer (see e.g. James 5:14, 15), ought to be acknowledged and insisted on." According to the Catholic apologist Trent Horn, while the Bible teaches believers to pray when they are sick, this is not to be viewed as an exclusion of medical care, citing Sirach 38:9,12-14: Fraud Skeptics of faith healers point to fraudulent practices either in the healings themselves (such as plants in the audience with fake illnesses), or concurrent with the healing work supposedly taking place and claim that faith healing is a quack practice in which the "healers" use well known non-supernatural illusions to exploit credulous people in order to obtain their gratitude, confidence and money. James Randi's The Faith Healers investigates Christian evangelists such as Peter Popoff, who claimed to heal sick people on stage in front of an audience. Popoff pretended to know private details about participants' lives by receiving radio transmissions from his wife who was off-stage and had gathered information from audience members prior to the show. According to this book, many of the leading modern evangelistic healers have engaged in deception and fraud. The book also questioned how faith healers use funds that were sent to them for specific purposes. Physicist Robert L. Park Coe then told the parents to remove the boy's leg braces. As a result, through the efforts of Joseph L. Lewis, Coe was arrested and charged on February 6, 1956, with practicing medicine without a license, a felony in the state of Florida. A Florida Justice of the Peace dismissed the case on grounds that Florida exempts divine healing from the law. Later that year Coe was diagnosed with bulbar polio, and died a few weeks later at Dallas' Parkland Hospital on December 17, 1956. Miracles for sale TV personality Derren Brown produced a show on faith healing entitled Miracles for Sale which arguably exposed the art of faith healing as a scam. In this show, Derren trained a scuba diver trainer picked from the general public to be a faith healer and took him to Texas to successfully deliver a faith healing session to a congregation. ==United States law==

The 1974 Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) required states to grant religious exemptions to child neglect and child abuse laws in order to receive federal money. The CAPTA amendments of 1996 state: Thirty-one states have child-abuse religious exemptions. These are Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming. In six of these states, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Ohio and Virginia, the exemptions extend to murder and manslaughter. Of these, Idaho is the only state accused of having a large number of deaths due to the legislation in recent times. In February 2015, controversy was sparked in Idaho over a bill believed to further reinforce parental rights to deny their children medical care. Criminal convictions related to faith healing In 2008, 15-month-old Ava Worthington of Oregon died of bronchial pneumonia and a bloodstream infection after her parents Raylene and Carl Worthington, members of Followers of Christ Church, allowed a cystic growth to grow on her neck for months while anointing her, giving her diluted wine, praying, and fasting over her. Her father was charged with manslaughter and eventually convicted of criminal mistreatment in 2009. In 2008, 11-year-old Kara Neumann of Wisconsin died of diabetic ketoacidosis stemming from undiagnosed juvenile-onset diabetes after her parents Leilani and Dale Neumann refused to take her to the hospital and prayed over her instead. Members of the Followers of Christ Church, both Hickmans were convicted of second-degree manslaughter in 2017 and were sentenced 6 years and 3 months in prison. In 2012, 16-year-old Austin Sprout Creswell of Oregon died of appendicitis after his parents Russel and Brandi Bellew prayed over him over the course of a week while his appendix deteriorated instead of seeking medical treatment. The Bellews, members of the General Assembly and Church of the First Born, pled guilty to criminally negligent homicide in 2012. In 2013, 12-year-old Syble Rossiter of Oregon died of Type 1 diabetes complications after her parents Travis and Wenona Rossiter refused to treat her condition. Syble's parents, members of the General Assembly and Church of the First Born, were both convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2014. In 2023, 2-day old Hayden Edwards of Oregon died of acute bilirubin encephalopathy after his parents Blair and Taylor Edwards prayed over him after he suffered intermittent breathing problems over the course of a few hours; instead of seeking medical help, his parents, members of the Followers of Christ Church, prayed over him and anointed him with oil. Both parents pled guilty to criminal mistreatment in 2025. ==See also==