Faith healing as a practice goes about as far back as anything we can reasonably track in human history. It is explicitly endorsed throughout the New Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures, wherein prominent holy men (e.g. Moses, Elijah, Jesus, Paul) are depicted as having the power to miraculously cure all manner of illnesses. The early Christian church believed that their church leaders were similarly imbued with divine healing powers, which is why the Epistle of James mandates faith healing for Christians and makes no mention whatsoever of consulting physicians in the event of illness.
Of course, ancient medicine was not particularly advanced and could easily kill you, whereas prayer and oil is generally harmless, barring the occasional food allergy. Accordingly, faith healing wasn’t all that terrible an idea back when these scriptures were originally written. Modernly, though, what’s the harm in resorting to faith healing instead of medicine? Generally, the harm comes in the form of missed opportunities for actual medical treatment which could well have saved or at least prolonged the life of the patient. Because the body of scientific knowledge about human health increases every year, along with our technological capabilities for effective medical treatment, the opportunity costs associated with any given set of faith-based treatments have gone up dramatically over time. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: Faith healing becomes more harmful with each diagnostic and treatment breakthrough, and with every other advancement in evidence-based medicine.
In the 1960’s, a faith-healer named Kathryn Kuhlman convinced several of her parishioners that God had cured them of various ailments, including cancer. Dr. William Nolen conducted a detailed study on 23 of those she had allegedly healed and found that none of them were in fact cured, and at least some of them had their death hastened by the process of faith healing itself. When this despicable fraud of a human being fell ill herself, she could have gone in for faith healing, but instead opted for conventional medical treatment, which became the proximate cause of her death in 1976. It seems the universe is not without a sense of irony, after all.
Kuhlman died in Tulsa just months before her famed predecessor in popularizing faith-healing, Granville “Oral” Roberts announced the construction of the City of Faith Medical and Research Center in the same city, thereby further muddling the distinction between faith-healing and actual healing in the minds of those who follow these charlatans. This hospital would go on to become the largest financial drain on Roberts’ financial empire, and perhaps that is just what one gets for taking advice from a 900-foot-tall itinerant faith healer who was himself confessedly homeless.
Not that Roberts had any problem raking in the dollars, as he was known to rake in millions a month. In a particularly brisk and brazen fundraising effort, he told his millions of viewers that God was going to “call him home” to Heaven if he didn’t raise $8 million prior to March of 1987. This prompted Las Vegas bookmakers to add a betting line on whether Roberts would survive to April 1st of that year. Alas, he did, and went on to fleece his flocks of countless many more millions, tax-free. Over the years, James Randi has often requested that the Roberts ministries provide evidence of even one well-documented healing, but they have consistently refused to do so.
We’ll never know how many people put off or completely abandoned legitimate medical treatment because they watched a service featuring Kuhlman, Roberts, Popoff, or any of countless other lesser known ‘healers’ who claim to embody the magical powers thought to have been granted by Jesus to his disciples, but we can be confident that so long as these faith-healers continue drawing fame and fortune to themselves, at least some number of their followers are falling for it and bankrupting themselves and ruining their health in the process.
For one final example of Christian faith healing in action, consider this heartbreaking story of HIV patients being ‘healed’ at the Synagogue Church of All Nations based in London. That’s right, they are actually killing HIV patients in the name of Jesus, and making bank in the process. There is no curse in the dead languages nor the modern tongues to express how utterly revolting these people are, feeding on religious gullibility and preying on the weak-minded. If the universe truly bent towards justice, then surely theirs would be a special place in Hell.
