Spiritual Healing<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In her editor's introduction to Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, Candy Gunther Brown observes: \u201cAccording to the Pew Forum on Religion and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/03\/spiritual-healing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spiritual Healing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In her editor's introduction to Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, Candy Gunther Brown observes: \u201cAccording to the Pew Forum on Religion and\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/03\/spiritual-healing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Leithart\" 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{"id":18717,"date":"2017-03-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=440"},"modified":"2017-03-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T00:00:00","slug":"spiritual-healing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/03\/spiritual-healing\/","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual Healing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I<\/span>n her editor\u2019s introduction to Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing<\/em><\/a>, Candy Gunther Brown observes: \u201cAccording to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life\u2019s Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals (2006), more than a quarter\u2014and in many countries two-thirds\u2014of the world\u2019s 2 billion Christians identify themselves as Pentecostal or Charismatic.\u201d <\/p>\n

Of these, \u201clarge majorities (more than 70 percent in 8 of 10 countries) of Pentecostals reported having personally experienced or witnessed the divine healing of an illness or injury. Even in the United States, which lagged behind the curve, 62 percent of Pentecostals reported personal experience with divine healing.\u201d An extraordinarily high proportion (80\u201390%) of first-generation Christians in Latin America, Asia, and Africa \u201cattribute their conversions primarily to having received divine healing for themselves or a family member.\u201d <\/p>\n

For these, salvation means \u201cfull salvation,\u201d deliverance from sin, demons, and<\/em> sickness. If this sounds egocentric, we should take a moment to consider the setting. Brown quotes Philip Jenkins\u2019s penetrating rebuke. Jenkins acknowledges that \u201c\u2018at its worst, the gospel of prosperity permits corrupt clergy to get away with virtually anything,\u2019 including the justification of materialism, but Jenkins also emphasizes the powerlessness and dependence created by living in a very poor society and calls attention to the vested interests of prosperity\u2019s critics in defending against \u2018successful competitors for the souls of the faithful.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s collection of essays aims in part to dispel stereotypes of faith healers. Most healers ain\u2019t Elmer Gantry. Few have TV shows or stations. Most healings \u201care transacted outside large religious services and without the ministrations of prominent evangelists, many of whom are more complex figures than the stereotypes suggest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Divine healing is linked to the disruptions caused by globalization, which is, among other things, the globalization of disease: \u201cFor the great majority of peoples living in the two-thirds world, especially in growing urban areas where high population densities and unsanitary living conditions facilitate the spread of disease, poverty and poverty-related infirmities are everyday realities that make daily survival uncertain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Divine healing also reflects the post-modern collapse of confidence in scientific advance and human reason. \u201cDespite technological advances,\u201d Brown points out, \u201cmany illnesses still baffle medical doctors. . . . Recognition of the limits of scientific medicine, even in industrialized nations, fuels therapeutic experimentation with divine healing\u2014and with other alternative remedies, many of which invoke aid from personal or impersonal spiritual sources.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"