McPherson's Faith Cure

Pentecostals placed heavy emphasis on the spiritual significance of miraculous physical renewals in answer to prayer. Pentecostal theology implied that only perfectly healthy bodies could embody God’s purity and power, and thus be acceptable conduits for the power of divine healing. McPherson’s healing practices thus encouraged a strong believe in the basic tenets of Pentecostal belief, including that the invalid open oneself up to the healing potential of God and a call to embrace pain and the will of God as a prerequisite to healing.  For Pentecostals, physical healing—although admittedly rare, even among supposed skilled faith healers—was proof that God was actively working in the present world.  Prior to the Pentecostal and faith healing revivals of the mid-19^th and early 20^th centuries, Christian theology emphasized a passive acceptance of pain and sickness. These beliefs were reflected in the dominant healing arts of the era, which emphasized “heroic” methods of healing, including such practices of bleeding, purging, sweating and other aggressive forms of bodily manipulation. Belief in the Jesus Christ, or “The Great Physician,” encouraged a different approach to handling pain and ill health.

As the 19^th century progressed, many fundamentalist American Christians began to challenge this notion of a vengeful God who employed illness and pain as a form of earthly punishment.  Did not the Great Physician Himself ease pain and cure the sick? Had the age of miracles truly ceased with the end of the Biblical period, dooming man to lives of perpetual ill health? Questions such as these plagued many devout Christians, giving rise to the birth of a number of faith-based healing denominations. Pentecostals, the foundational denomination of McPherson, abided by these new health and spiritual maxims. For faith-based healing Christians, Christ provided both forgiveness of sins and triumph over sickness for the believer who claimed these gifts via faithful prayer. Basing their argument on the promise of physical and spiritual healing put forth in scriptural passages such as Exodus 15:26, “I am the Lord that healeth thee,” and James 5:15, “The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up,” proponents of “faith-healing” insisted that ongoing invalidism was not an appropriate situation for believers.

Pentecostals such as McPherson added a unique layer to the belief in divinely-sanctioned healing. Whereas late 19th century faith healing was an international and interdenominational phenomenon that flourished in large cities along the Atlantic coast, Pentecostalism prospered primarily in Midwestern and southern states, transferring the location of divine healing away from urban centers like Boston, London, New York, and Philadelphia, to rural areas and smaller cities such as Los Angeles and Denver.  McPherson, in settling in Los Angeles, found a ready and willing population for her divine healing practices. Additionally, although Pentecostals continued to promote healing practices such as joint prayer, laying on of hands, and anointing, they also enthusiastically adopted ecstatic forms of worship such as trances, falling down in the spirit, and especially speaking in tongues, which earlier advocates of divine healing had rejected. Similarly, Pentecostals accorded a more prominent place to “healers” in the curative process than their predecessors in the faith cure movement had allowed.[1]

McPherson continued to refine the practices laid out by her Pentecostal forbearers upon arrival in Los Angeles. Working with thousands of believers in large, open venues, McPherson redefined faith-healing as a communal process. The original, embodied experience of faith healing, with small groups praying intently for health and the healer actively laying his or her hands on the afflicted, was broadcast to a huge community of believers. This communal process was further amplified when McPherson adopted the use of modern media, such as the radio, to help promulgate her divine healing crusade.