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A New Standard of Scholarship for Studying the Evangelical Divine Healing Movement in Late 19th Century America, August 1, 2008
This review is from: Faith in the Great Physician: Suffering and Divine Healing in American Culture, 1860-1900 (Lived Religions) (Hardcover)
This essential study documents and analyzes the concerns, beliefs and practices of key participants in the evangelical "faith cure" or "divine healing" movement which flourished during the second half of the 19th century. It warrants a permanent place alongside such relevant works as Nancy Hardesty's Faith Cure: Divine Healing in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements (2003), James W. Opp's The Lord for the Body: Religion, Medicine, and Protestant Faith Healing in Canada, 1880 - 1930 (2005), and Robert Bruce Mullin's Miracles and the Modern Religious Imagination (1996), among others, and utilizes them in the study. Ms. Curtis has set a new standard of scholarship for analyzing this important movement and her seminal book deserves recognition and a wide readership.
Jesus Christ is considered "the great physician" in the book's title which emphasizes faith in Christ as the divine healer. Although "divine healing" is used in the book's subtitle, the author makes it clear in footnote #6 to the introduction that throughout the book, she uses the phrases "divine healing," "faith cure," and "faith healing" interchangeably. She notes that some historians consider "faith cure" a derogatory label used by critics of the movement, but as she points out, both Charles Cullis and Sarah Mix - advocates of faith cure - used this designation in the titles of their published collections of answered prayer narratives. She further notes, however, that as the movement came under increasing attack in the mid to late 1880s, some advocates like A. B. Simpson preferred the phrase "divine healing" as more appropriate, especially as a way of distinguishing the evangelical movement from other healing movements of the period such as mesmerism, Spiritualism, Christian Science, and New Thought.
Key participants in the movement include upper-middle-class Protestants such as Charles Cullis (1833 - 92), Adoniram Judson Gordon (1836 - 95), Albert Benjamin Simpson (1843 - 1919), and Carrie Judd Montgomery (1858 - 1946) which, Ms. Curtis states, "were primarily responsible for shaping the devotional ethics of divine healing, and it is for this reason that they are the main protagonists in my story" (page 20). Other notable participants that find a place in the story include, but are not limited to, William E. Boardman (1810 - 86), Ethan O. Allen (1813 - 1902), Sarah Mix (1832 - 84), Elizabeth Baxter (1837 - 1926), Maria Woodworth-Etter (1844 - 1924), John Alexander Dowie (1847 - 1907), and Russell Kelso Carter (1849 - 1928).
Two remarkable women that are also introduced in the book are Jennie Smith (1842 - 1924) and Mary Rankin (1821 - 89). Smith, whose picture adorns the book's front cover, is an example of one who made the transition from a bedridden invalid to an active evangelist through a belief in and experience of divine healing. Mary Rankin (1821 - 1889), on the other hand, is a notable example of one of many Protestant women who suffered physically without healing but believed in God's afflictive providence. They embraced their suffering as an opportunity for spiritual sanctification and submission to what they believed to be God's sovereign and beneficent will and this belief gave meaning to their suffering. The author's detailed descriptions of Ms. Rankin's suffering at the hands of physicians is unnerving, especially the amputation of her leg without analgesics - which she refused! - to dull the pain during the sawing. Ms. Rankin serves as an excellent example of not only the prevalent belief in the doctrine of afflictive providence, but also of the multiple sufferings that many endured at the hands of the medical practitioners of the day whose prescriptions were sometimes more painful than the initial ailments. Ms. Curtis also shows how gender roles were perceived not only in the culture at large but also in relation to suffering and how women, considered to be weak, were expected to be more prone to bodily ailments than men and how Christian women were expected to be role models to other women in passive resignation to the divine will in suffering.
Ms. Curtis shows how the divine healing movement developed within the context of the Holiness and Higher Life movements. Many of the participants in these movements became convinced that all sickness was ultimately related to sin and Satan and reasoned that since sanctified believers have power over these enemies, they also have power over sickness. They challenged the traditional Protestant doctrine of afflictive providence as well as the sister doctrine that divine miracles ceased with the Christian apostles and the closing of the canon of scripture. As Mullin discusses in more detail in his book on miracles referenced above, the belief in a limited age of miracles is rooted in the Protestant Reformation's rejection, on the basis of biblical authority and its "true" miracles, of certain Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, inclusive of so-called "miracles" used to validate them. However, with the rise of biblical criticism and Protestant Liberalism in the 19th century, some were rejecting miracles altogether so advocates of the divine healing movement saw themselves as offering contemporary proof that God still works miracles, especially since some of those who were labeled "incurable" by the medical establishment were cured through faith in the Great Physician.
Challenging the traditional doctrine of afflictive providence was not without its problems, however. With an emphasis on the individual's need to have faith for healing coupled with the belief that God desires to heal as revealed in his biblical promises came the danger of accusing those who aren't healed of not receiving it by faith. According to Carrie Judd, "If I say I have faith that I am healed in the name of the Lord, and yet do not show forth my faith by acting as if I were healed it is apparent to myself and to others that my faith is without works and dead" (page 91). Many of the advocates of divine healing elevated "scriptural means" over medical remedies, even if they tolerated the latter. In an attempt to prove their faith, some rejected medical assistance which resulted in their deaths. Twenty-one-year-old missionary Charlie Miller who contracted malaria in Africa, resisted medical care to demonstrate his faith, and who died on May 7, 1885 is given as a somber example of the danger (page 194). Nonetheless, as noted before, there were healings that took place which available medical treatment - as painful as it sometimes was - did not cure and this kept the movement going, some establishing "faith homes" to provide a sacred place for invalids to come, even live for a while, to hear the message of faith and receive prayer. This didn't stop the criticisms which came not only from Christians but also the medical establishment itself. Some accused the faith healing advocates of practicing mesmerism or magic or relying on a "magical theory of religion" (pages 130 & 203) whereas others such as doctors accused them of promoting the dangerous practice of ignoring symptoms needing immediate medical care or of practicing treatment without a license.
Many of the concerns and arguments for and against the belief in divine healing and the practice of faith cure that occurred in the 19th century continue to occur which makes the information in this book very relevant today, especially among Pentecostals and Charismatics who are the inheritors of some of the beliefs and practices of the 19th century movements of Holiness, Higher Life and Divine Healing. In this regard, one comment made by the author in the book's conclusion is worth consideration: "Despite its prominence throughout most of the twentieth century, the 'health and wealth' gospel was never a part of nineteenth-century faith cure" (page 206). Although this may be true regarding the wealth or prosperity aspect of this "gospel" as promoted by some evangelicals (such as E. W. Kenyon [1867 - 1948] and those he influenced, including Kenneth E. Hagin [1917 - 2003], the father of the Word of Faith movement), there are elements of belief and practice regarding healing in this "gospel" that are in common with the faith cure movement and such elements carried over from the 19th century into the 20th as the author acknowledges (see, for example, F. F. Bosworth's [1877 - 1958] classic Christ the Healer, first published in 1924 - not mentioned by the author). The New Thought movement, on the other hand, already developed a combined health and wealth message before the 20th century as evidenced by Ralph Waldo Trine's classic In Tune with the Infinite, first published in 1897. I cannot recommend Ms. Curtis's book highly enough and will refer to it often.
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