Faith Healing

Exposes the pretension and fraud that surrounds the faith healer business, revealing how alleged faith healers prey on the insecurities and vulnerabilities of the people they preach to.

What happens to one's belief in God when faith healing fails? A journalist looks at faith healing, and discovers that the absence of a healing miracle does not always mean the absence of God.

Collects the thoughts of pastors, counselors, doctors, and health researchers on the efficacy and practice of prayer

This book explores both sides of the issue of faith healing.

This history of evangelical faith healing in nineteenth-century America examines the nation’s shifting attitudes about sickness, suffering, and health. Faith in the Great Physician tells the story of how participants in the divine healing movement transformed the ways Americans coped with physical affliction and pursued bodily wellbeing. Heather D. Curtis offers critical reflection on the theological, cultural, and social forces that come into play when one questions the purpose of suffering and the possibility of healing. Belief in divine healing ran counter to a deep-seated Christian ethic that linked physical suffering with spiritual holiness. By engaging in devotional disciplines and participating in social reform efforts, proponents of faith cure embraced a model of spiritual experience that endorsed active service, rather than passive endurance, as the proper Christian response to illness and pain. Emphasizing the centrality of religious practices to the enterprise of divine healing, Curtis sheds light on the relationship among Christian faith, medical science, and the changing meanings of suffering and healing in American culture. Recipient of the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History for 2007

Recipient of the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History for 2007 Faith in the Great Physician tells the story of how participants in the evangelical divine healing movement of the late nineteenth century transformed the ways Americans coped with physical affliction and pursued bodily health. Examining the politics of sickness, health, and healing during this period, Heather D. Curtis encourages critical reflection on the theological, cultural, and social forces that come into play when one questions the purpose of suffering and the possibility of healing. Curtis finds that advocates of divine healing worked to revise a deep-seated Christian ethic that linked physical suffering with spiritual holiness. By engaging in devotional disciplines and participating in social reform efforts, proponents of faith cure embraced a model of spiritual experience that endorsed active service, rather than passive endurance, as the proper Christian response to illness and pain. Emphasizing the centrality of religious practices to the enterprise of divine healing, Curtis sheds light on the relationship among Christian faith, medical science, and the changing meanings of suffering and healing in American culture.

• Presents the positive results of the author’s two-year clinical trial of spiritual healing (energy medicine) involving 200 hospital patients • Shares intriguing evidence from case studies as well as other research projects that negate the myth that energy healing is only a placebo • Explores how spiritual healing not only led to improved outcomes for patients, but also faster recovery times and thus less time spent in hospitals Seven years after qualifying to become a spiritual healer, Sandy Edwards approached a consultant gastroenterologist at a city hospital and offered to give healing to his patients as a volunteer. She provided healing sessions alongside conventional medical treatments, documenting the effects in a scientific way, and the doctor was surprised at the overwhelmingly positive outcomes. In partnership with the University of Birmingham, as well as a national grant to fund the study, Sandy instigated the largest clinical research trial of spiritual healing in the world. Revealing the outstanding results of this two-year medical trial, which involved 200 chronically ill hospital patients, Sandy demonstrates that spiritual healing (energy medicine) can support the healing process of a patient, whether they are in pain, sick, stressed, or depressed. In many cases, these patients had been suffering for a long time with little hope of recovery. Yet they improved substantially in numerous ways after receiving just five 20-minute healing sessions. Illustrating how spiritual healing helps a patient from pain and distress through to recovery, Sandy shares intriguing evidence from case studies as well as other research projects that negate the myth that energy healing is only a placebo. She offers statements from medical professionals who have witnessed the results firsthand and also details a quick technique to relieve pain that readers can apply in their own lives. Showing how spiritual healing not only led to improved outcomes for patients, but also faster recovery times and thus less time spent in hospitals, Sandy moves us one step closer to widespread acceptance for spiritual healing and energy medicine.