Pentecostal faith and healing as signs

of the Kingdom

Allan Anderson*

A personal testimony

Most Pentecostals, Charismatics and members of

Pentecostal-like independent churches believe in divine

healing (they usually prefer this term to ‘faith healing’),1

and a few will even admit to their doubts concerning it.2

Pentecostal belief in healing is often based on testimonies of

people who have themselves experienced healing, and they see

this as a direct intervening act of God. I share that

perspective and offer a personal testimony to clarify my own

presuppositions and set the stage for what follows. In 1975,

during a preaching tour in the mosquito-infested Shire River

Valley in Malawi, I contracted cerebral malaria. I was unable

to have medical attention for two days; I was delirious and

felt as if I was dying. A Christian villager prayed for me

until the fever broke. The next day I was well on the way to

* Allan Anderson is Senior Lecturer in Pentecostal Studies at the Centre for Missiology and World Christianity, Department of Theology,University of Birmingham, Birmingham B29 6LQ, UK. This article is adapted from a paper read at the Missiology Consultation, World Council of Churches, London, England, 14-19 April 2002.

recovery and was preaching again within three days. A medical

doctor confirmed from a blood test that I had indeed

contracted and recovered from the disease, but I had an

injection of Chloroquine, just in case!

What seemed like an even greater act of divine

intervention occurred ten years later, when my wife Olwen and

I were travelling in Zambia towards Malawi with a van and

trailer. A partial head-on collision with a large truck

resulted in us both being at death’s door. I lost a lot of

blood from external injuries. A Catholic priest gave me the

rite of extreme unction and a Polish nun stayed at my side in

the small mission hospital, holding my hand, imparting

incredible strength. The Australian doctor said that it would

be ‘a miracle’ if I was still alive the next morning. Lutheran

nuns from Darmstadt came to assist the Catholics. We were

flown to hospital in South Africa by air ambulance. I was

released from hospital within two weeks, but Olwen went into a

coma after two days, that was to last for seven weeks. People

all over the world prayed. I believe that I had received

divine assurances that Olwen would recover. One afternoon,

after she had been comatose for four weeks, the German healing

evangelist Reinhard Bonnke (who lived in South Africa at that

time) came to pray for her and rebuke the ‘spirit of death’

that gripped her. She was in a deep coma with a ‘decerebral’

response to stimuli. The neurologist had pronounced his

opinion that she would not recover from her vegetative state.

The next day, the nurse reported that she had smiled, and

three weeks later she was beginning to talk. Everyone, the

neurologist included, admitted that this was an event that had

exceeded all expectations. Although Olwen’s injuries were

extensive and she remained in hospital for six months, we are

now the parents of two children, our oldest born eighteen

months after the accident that changed our lives. That is

another miracle and another story. Much more recently I was

admitted to hospital in Manila, Philippines with a ruptured

appendix that I had unknowingly been travelling with for ten

days. God miraculously intervened so that my plans to travel

to Baguio and Singapore were thwarted, and God used the

prayers of many and the dedication of a Catholic hospital

staff to heal me and save me from death.

I relate these stories briefly because the issues that

are discussed here have profoundly affected me and are taken

1 In this essay, ‘Pentecostal’ will refer to ‘Pentecostal’, ‘Charismatic’, and indigenous ‘Pentecostal-like’ churches all over the world, unless the text makes clear that it refers to only one of these categories.2 e.g. Menzies, William W. & Robert P. Menzies, Spirit and power: Foundations of Pentecostal experience (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 159-160.

very seriously. God used a Catholic priest, Catholic and

Lutheran nuns, medical professionals, a German evangelist, and

the prayers of many people to bring about our healing. I will

not pretend that everything has been perfect thereafter. Olwen

and I continue to suffer physical consequences from our

injuries and surgical operations. But we know that we are

still alive because of God’s miraculous intervention and

answer to prayers. We know that God is compassionate and

powerful, and can do anything in his love-filled purposes.

Sometimes (but not always) these purposes are to heal and to

relieve suffering and affliction. I pray for people to be

healed even when I seldom see it happening, and I gladly

receive prayer for healing when I need it. Sometimes it seems

as if sickness overwhelms people, including my family and

myself. But we Pentecostals remain convinced that healing is

part of the continuing ministry of Christ on earth through the

Holy Spirit. Healing, furthermore, is comprehensive and

relates to all of life, not just the ‘physical’ part of it.3

This has been at the heart of the Pentecostal view of healing

since its beginning.

3 Wimber, John & Kevin Springer, Power healing (New York: HarperCollins,1991), 37.

The Pentecostal ‘full gospel’

The contemporary healing practices of the Pentecostal and

Charismatic movements did not originate in early

Pentecostalism. The doctrines of ‘divine healing’ and ‘healing

in the atonement’ (explained below) were already widespread in

the North American Holiness movement in the nineteenth century

out of which Pentecostalism emerged, and the idea also existed

in early Methodism. Holiness leaders like Charles Cullis, A.B.

Simpson and Asa Mahan were staunch proponents of divine

healing through faith.4 The Holiness movement stressed the four

elements of a ‘full gospel’ of salvation, healing, holiness

and the Second Coming of Christ.5 The distinctiveness added by

early Pentecostals was another element, the baptism in the

Holy Spirit, which Pentecostals usually linked to speaking in

tongues. Jesus Christ was declared to be ‘Saviour, Healer,

Baptiser and Soon Coming King’—to which the Holiness

Pentecostals added ‘Sanctifier’. Pentecostal belief in the

‘full gospel’ not only meant that Jesus was ‘Saviour’ who

saved people from sin, but also ‘Healer’ from sickness and

deliverer of people from the power of Satan. This was a

soteriological emphasis, to which was added an eschatological one:

Christ was the ‘soon coming King’ who was preparing his church

for his rule. The Pentecostals added a pneumatological and

missiological dimension before the eschatological one: Christ was

the ‘Baptiser in the Holy Spirit’ who empowered ordinary

people to witness to the ends of the earth. Steven Land

summarises this ‘full gospel’ as comprising ‘five theological

motifs’, characteristic of North American Classical

Pentecostals in particular: (1) justification by faith in

Christ; (2) sanctification by faith as a second definite work

of grace (Land’s own Holiness Pentecostal position); (3)

healing as provided for all in the atonement; (4) the pre-

millennial return of Christ (not all Pentecostals, however,

are pre-millenialists); and (5) the baptism in the Spirit

evidenced by speaking in tongues.6

Although it is difficult to generalize about Pentecostal

beliefs in such a multifaceted movement, it may be said that

most believe that the coming of the Spirit brings an ability

to perform ‘signs and wonders’ in the name of Jesus Christ to

accompany and authenticate the Christian message. The role of

‘signs and wonders’, particularly that of healing and

miracles, has been prominent in Pentecostal praxis and

reflection all over the world since its inception, and one of

4 Dayton, Donald W. Theological roots of Pentecostalism (Metuchen, NJ & London: The Scarecrow Press, 1987), 115-41.5 Dayton, 22.6 Land, Steven J. Pentecostal spirituality: A passion for the Kingdom (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 18.

the most important emphases of its mission and outreach.

Pentecostals see the role of healing as good news for the poor

and afflicted. Sickness, it was assumed, had its origins in

the sin of humanity. Early twentieth century Pentecostal

newsletters and periodicals abounded with testimonies to

physical healings, exorcisms and deliverances from evil

spirits. At the turn of the twentieth century, there was an

expectation that ‘signs and wonders’ would accompany an

outpouring of the Spirit,7 and a belief that healing was linked

to the work of Christ on the cross. Healings demonstrated

Christ’s victory over all forms of affliction, a holistic

salvation that encompassed all of life’s problems.8 The

presence of these ‘signs and wonders’ was the realisation of

the coming of the kingdom of God.9

This Pentecostal understanding of the ‘full gospel’ meant

that these ‘signs and wonders’ should accompany the preaching

of the Word, and divine healing in particular was an

indispensable part of their evangelistic methodology.10 Indeed,

7 McGee, Gary B. ‘”Power from on high”: A historical perspective on the radical strategy in missions’, in Ma, Wonsuk & Robert P Menzies (eds.), Pentecostalism in context (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), (317-336), 324.8 Menzies & Menzies, 168; Wimber & Springer, 37.9 In a more sophisticated form, this was also the position of the Tübingen I consultation. Benn, Christoph and Erlinda Senturias, ‘Health, Healing and Wholeness in the Ecumenical Discussion’, International Review of Mission XC:356/357 (7-25), 12.

in many cultures of the world, healing has been a major

attraction for Pentecostalism. In these cultures, the

religious specialist or ‘woman/man of God’ has power to heal

the sick and ward off evil spirits and sorcery. This holistic

function, which does not separate the ‘physical’ from the

‘spiritual’, is restored in Pentecostalism, and people see it

as a ‘powerful’ religion to meet human needs. For some

Pentecostals, faith in God’s power to heal directly through

prayer resulted in a rejection of other methods of healing.

The numerous healings reported by Pentecostals confirmed that

God’s Word was true, his power was evidently on their

evangelistic efforts, and the result was that many were

persuaded to become Christians. This emphasis on healing is so

much part of Pentecostal evangelism, especially in the Third

World, that large public campaigns and tent crusades preceded

by great publicity are frequently used in order to reach as

many ‘unevangelised’ people as possible. Pentecostal mission

historian Gary McGee notes that this ‘confident belief that

God had at last poured out his Spirit with miraculous power to

empower Christians to bring closure to the Great Commission …

has forced the larger church world to reassess the work of the

Holy Spirit in mission’.11

A fundamental presupposition of all Pentecostal theology

is the central emphasis on the experience of the Holy Spirit.

This experience includes ‘gifts of the Spirit’, especially

healing, exorcism, speaking in tongues and prophesying. These

charismata of the Spirit are, for Pentecostals, the proof that

the gospel is true. In Pentecostalism, the ‘full gospel’ is

understood to contain good news for all of life’s problems,

particularly relevant in those societies where disease is rife

and access to adequate health care is a luxury. Without

decrying the wonderful advances in medical science, I do not

share the optimism of Christoffer Grundmann that medical

healing today is readily available ‘to a degree never before

possible’.12 As Claudia Währisch-Oblau has observed in China,

the need for healings is in direct proportion to the

unavailability of medical resources and the breakdown of the

public health system there. Prayer for healing is ‘an act of

desperation in circumstances where they see few alternative

options’.13

‘Salvation’, sometimes called ‘full salvation’, is an

all-embracing term in Pentecostalism, usually meaning a sense

of well-being evidenced in freedom from sickness, poverty and

misfortune as well as in deliverance from sin and evil.

10 Saayman, Willem A. ‘Some reflections on the development of the Pentecostal mission model in South Africa’, Missionalia 21:1 (1993), 46.11 McGee, ‘Power from on high’, 278.

Healing from sickness and deliverance from evil powers are

seen as part of the essence of the gospel, reference being

made to Old Testament prophets, Christ himself and New

Testament apostles who practised healing. In some African

initiated churches, the healing offered to people relies upon

various symbols, especially sprinkling by holy water, a

sacrament providing ritual purification and protection. The

symbolic healing practices are justified by the Bible, where

Jesus used mud and spittle to heal a blind person, Peter used

cloths to heal, and Old Testament prophets used staffs, water,

and various other symbols to perform healing and miracles.14 In

most other Pentecostal churches the emphasis is on the laying

on of hands with prayer, sometimes with the addition of

anointing with oil.

Early Pentecostals stressed that healing was part of the

provision of Christ in his atonement, again following a theme

that had emerged in the Holiness movement, based on such texts

12 Grundmann, Christoffer H. ‘Healing: A challenge to church and theology’, International Review of Mission XC:356/357, January/April 2001 (26-40), 29, 39.13 Währisch-Oblau, Claudia, ‘God can make us healthy through and through: On prayers for the sick and healing experiences in Christianchurches in China and African immigrant congregations in Germany’, International Review of Mission XC:356/357, January/April 2001 (87-102), 94, 99.14 Anderson, Allan, Zion and Pentecost: The spirituality and experience of Pentecostal and Zionist/Apostolic churches in South Africa, (Tshwane: University of South Africa Press, 2000), 137-141.

as Isaiah 53:4-5 and Matthew 8:16-17. 15 Dayton considers the

‘healing in the atonement’ idea to emerge ‘largely as a

radicalization of the Holiness doctrine of instantaneous

sanctification in which the consequences of sin (i.e. disease)

as well as sin itself are overcome in the Atonement and

vanquished during this life’.16 British Pentecostal Harold

Horton represented the vast majority of early Pentecostals who

rejected ‘modern medicine’. In his classic publication The Gifts

of the Spirit, which first appeared in 1934, Horton speaks of

‘gifts’ of healing ‘for the supernatural healing of diseases

and infirmities without natural means of any sort’.17 He says

that ‘divine healing’ is the ‘only way’ of healing open to

believers and ‘authorised by the Scriptures’.18 Many

Pentecostals and members of African initiated churches have

rejected the use of any medicine, traditional and modern,

because its use is viewed as evidence of ‘weak’ faith.

The majority in the world today is underprivileged, state

social benefits like health insurance are absent, and

efficient medical facilities are scarce and expensive. Swedish

15 Dayton, 127-130. The doctrine of ‘healing in the atonement’ has reappeared in a different (Anglican) form recently. See Maddocks, Morris, The Christian healing ministry (London: SPCK, 1990), 62-69.16 Dayton, 174.17 Horton, Harold, The Gifts of the Spirit (Nottingham: Assemblies of God Publishing House, 10th Edition, 1976), 99.18 Horton, 101.

bishop Bengt Sundkler, writing about Zionist churches in South

Africa, said that people receive their healing message as a

‘gospel for the poor’.19 Währisch-Oblau found that prayers for

the sick and healing experiences were common to all the

Chinese Protestant churches, and that healings were considered

‘normal’ there. 20 Michael Bergunder shows the prominence of

healing in the south Indian Pentecostal movement.21 My own work

has demonstrated the central role of healing in most African

initiated churches.22 That people believe themselves to be

healed means that for them, the gospel is a potent remedy for

their frequent experiences of affliction. The ‘full gospel’

proclaimed by Pentecostals seeks to be relevant to life’s

totality and to proclaim biblical deliverance from the very

real fear of evil. Whatever the source—evil, misfortune and

affliction are the experiences of people everywhere, and

Pentecostals endeavour to provide a solution to this

compelling need. This understanding of ‘salvation’ has to do

with deliverance from people’s fearful experiences of evil

19 Sundkler, Bengt G.M. Bantu prophets in South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 223.20 Währisch-Oblau, 87-88.21 Bergunder, Michael, ‘Miracle healing and exorcism: The South IndianPentecostal movement in the context of popular Hinduism’, International Review of Mission XC:356/357, January/April 2001 (103-112).22 Anderson, Allan, African reformation: African initiated Christianity in the 20th century(Trenton, NJ & Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, 2001), 233-234; Anderson, Zion and Pentecost, 290-304.

forces opposing their sense of safety and security. The

methods used to receive this deliverance and the perceptions

concerning the means of grace sometimes differ, but

Pentecostals believe in an omnipotent and compassionate God

concerned with all human troubles and willing to intervene to

alleviate them. Bishops, pastors, prophets, ministers,

evangelists and ordinary church members exercise the authority

that they believe has been given them by the God of the Bible.

Reinforced by the power of the Spirit, they announce the good

news of deliverance from sin, sickness and oppression, and

from every conceivable form of evil, including social

deprivation, unemployment, poverty and sorcery. The emphasis

on experiencing the power of the Spirit is a common

characteristic of Pentecostal theology, where the Holy Spirit

is the agent of healing and deliverance.

The healing evangelists and the Word of Faith movement

Early Pentecostals preachers, and especially the mass

healing evangelists, expected miracles to accompany their

evangelism and ‘prioritized seeking for spectacular displays

of celestial power—signs and wonders, healing, and deliverance

from sinful habits and satanic bondage’.23 The ‘signs and

wonders’ promoted by independent evangelists have led to the

rapid growth of Pentecostal churches in many parts of the

world, although have seldom been without controversy.24

Sometimes the emphasis on the ‘miraculous’ has led to shameful

showmanship and moral decadence, exaggerated and

unsubstantiated claims of healing, and a triumphalism that

betrays the humility of the cross. But healing was part of the

‘foursquare’ gospel, and healing evangelists have always been

part of the Pentecostal movement, from Maria Woodworth-Etter,

John G. Lake and Aimee Semple McPherson in the earlier years

of the movement to Kathryn Kuhlman and Reinhard Bonnke more

recently. The healing campaigns of North American evangelists,

contributing to the growth of western forms of Pentecostalism

in many parts of the world, developed after the Second World

War and peaked in the 1950s. Leading independent healing

evangelists at that time were William Branham (1909-65),25

Kathryn Kuhlman (1907-1976),26 T.L. Osborne (1923-), Oral

Roberts (1918-),27 and Tommy Hicks (1909-73), and remarkable

healings and miracles were reported in their campaigns. First

Branham and then Roberts were probably the best known and most

widely travelled. Branham’s sensational healing services,

which began in 1946, are well documented, and he became the

‘pacesetter’ for those that followed before he became involved

in doctrinal controversies.28 Hicks was responsible for a

revival in Argentina in 1954 resulting in accelerated growth

among Pentecostal churches there.29 Kuhlman was one of the best

known of the healing evangelists in the late sixties until her

death in 1976. Osborne had large crowds at his crusades in

Central America, Indonesia and East Africa. By 1960, Oral

Roberts had become the leading healing evangelist in the USA,

he was increasingly accepted by ‘mainline’ denominations, and

was one of the most influential Pentecostals in the beginnings

of the Charismatic movement.30 He was a staunch proponent of

‘healing in the atonement’, and his oft-repeated phrase ‘God

is a good God’ was the basis for his belief in God’s desire to

heal or bring ‘wholeness’ to people. In this he followed

classical Pentecostal beliefs that because healing was in the

atonement of Christ, it was offered to all, and therefore that

people could receive immediate healing just as they could

confess Christ and be ‘saved’.31 Bonnke has undoubtedly been

the most prominent Pentecostal healing evangelist at the close

of the twentieth century.

In some continuity with the Pentecostal healing

evangelists are the controversial ‘Word of Faith’ preachers of

the USA’s ‘Bible Belt’, now one of the most widely influential

movements in world Pentecostalism and often characteristic of

new Pentecostal churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

This movement is also known as ‘positive confession’ and the

‘faith message’, and by its detractors as the ‘prosperity

gospel’ and the ‘health and wealth gospel’. It is widely

regarded to have originated in the writings of Baptist pastor

Essek W. Kenyon (1867-1948), who taught ‘the positive

confession of the Word of God’ and a ‘law of faith’ working by

predetermined divine principles. The development of the

movement was stimulated by the teachings of such evangelists

as Branham and Roberts, contemporary popular televangelists,

and the Charismatic movement in North America.32 Kenneth Hagin

(1917-), widely regarded as ‘father of the Faith Movement’,

has imbibed many of Kenyon’s ideas, and teaches that every

Christian believer should be physically healthy and materially

23 McGee, ‘Power from on high’, 329.24 McGee, Gary B. ‘Pentecostals and their various strategies for global mission: A historical assessment’, in M.A. Dempster, B.D. Klaus & D. Petersen (eds), Called and empowered: global mission in Pentecostal perspective (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991), (203-224), 215.25 Kydd, Ronald A.N. Healing through the centuries: Models for understanding (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1998), 167-180.26 Kydd, 181-197.27 Kydd, 202-211.28 Wilson, D.J. ‘Branham, William Marrion’, in Burgess, S. M. & G. M. McGee (eds.), Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic movements (Grand Rapids:Zondervan, 1988), 95-97; Chappell, P. G. ‘Healing Movements’, in Burgess, S. M. & G. M. McGee, 372.29 Wagner, Peter, Look out! The Pentecostals are coming (Carol Stream: Creation House, 1973), 20.30 Chappell, P.G. ‘Roberts, Granville Oral’, in Burgess, S. M. & G. M.McGee (eds.), Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic movements (Grand Rapids:Zondervan, 1988), 759-760.31 Kydd, 204-205.

prosperous and successful, a teaching supported by selective

Bible quotations. This teaching begins with a belief in

guaranteed healing through the atoning work of Christ. Hagin

says that it is not enough to believe what the Bible says; the

Bible must also be confessed, and that what a person says

(confesses) is what will happen. A person should therefore

confess healing even when the ‘symptoms’ are still there.33

Hagin emphasizes the importance of the ‘word of faith’, a

positive confession of one’s faith in healing, despite

circumstances or symptoms. Hagin started the Rhema Bible

Training Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1974, since which time

thousands of graduates have propagated his ‘Word of Faith’

message all over the world, and Hagin’s books, videos and

tapes have been sold in their millions.

Among Hagin’s disciples are Kenneth Copeland (1937-) of

Fort Worth, Texas (whose ministry has since overshadowed

Hagin’s), African American preacher Frederick Price (1932-) of

Los Angeles and, among many others, Ray McCauley (1949-), one

of the most influential Charismatic ministers in South

Africa.34 This Word of Faith teaching, however, although in a

less developed form, has been part of Pentecostalism since its

beginnings. Healing evangelists, especially Roberts and

Osborne, but also the earlier Lake and Woodworth-Etter, are

quoted by Hagin and his followers. The Word of Faith movement

teaches physical healing and material prosperity usually

through special revelation knowledge of a Bible passage (as

distinct from ‘sense knowledge’)—a ‘Rhema word’ that is

positively confessed as true. The teaching asserts that when

Christians believe and confess this ‘Rhema word’ it becomes

energising and effective, resulting in receiving it from God.

When people do not receive what they have confessed, it is

usually because of a negative confession, unbelief, or a

failure to observe divine laws. Copeland developed Hagin’s

teaching with a greater emphasis on financial prosperity, and

formulated ‘laws of prosperity’ to be observed by those

seeking health and wealth. Poverty is seen as a curse to be

overcome through faith. Through ‘faith-force’, believers

regain their rightful divine authority over their

circumstances. Some faith teachers reject the use of medicine

as evidence of a weak faith, and overlook the role of

suffering, persecution and poverty in the purposes of God. It

must be said that many Pentecostals have rejected this

movement and distanced themselves from it.

In independent developments, teaching similar to the

32 Gifford, Paul, Christianity and politics in Doe’s Liberia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 147.33 Neumann, H. Terris, ‘Cultic origins of the Word-Faith theology within the Charismatic movement’, Pneuma 12:1, 1990 (32-55), 33-34.

‘Word of Faith’ is also part of the theology of the pastor of

the world’s largest congregation, David (Paul) Yonggi Cho of

the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, Korea. He has added to

the fourfold ‘full gospel’ of the early Pentecostals, the

‘five-fold message of the Gospel’, which includes (1) renewal,

(2) the fullness of the Spirit, (3) healing, (4) blessing and

(5) the Second Coming. In addition, Cho proclaims the ‘three-

fold blessings of salvation’ to include ‘soul prosperity’,

‘prosperity in all things’ and ‘a healthy life’.35 Another

prominent present-day exponent of the ‘faith message’ is

Nigerian bishop David Oyedepo of the Living Faith World

Outreach, also known as ‘Winner’s Chapel’, with a vigorous

church planting programme all over Africa.36 The extent by

which these and other preachers have been influenced by the

Hagin school is debatable, but globalization has definitely

affected Pentecostalism throughout the world. Prominent

‘Faith’ teachers like Robert Schuller and Oral Roberts write

forewords to Cho’s books, and Roberts even suggests that Cho

received his teaching on prosperity from his books and tapes.37

Cho himself says that in his search for a ‘God of the present

in Korea’ in 1958, he received a revelation of ‘the truth of

the threefold blessings of salvation, health and prosperity

34 Anderson, Allan, ‘The prosperity message in the eschatology of somenew Charismatic churches’, Missionalia 15:2, 1987 (72-83), 74.

written in 3 John 2’ and that this became the foundation of

his preaching and ministry since that time.38

Apart from the fact that the Word of Faith teaching

encourages the ‘American dream’ of capitalism and promotes the

‘success ethic’, among its even more questionable features is

the possibility that human faith is placed above the

sovereignty and grace of God. Faith becomes a condition for

God’s action and the strength of faith is measured by results.

Material and financial prosperity and health are sometimes

seen as evidence of spirituality, and the positive and

necessary role of persecution and suffering is often ignored.39

Some critics have tried to link the Word of Faith teaching

with Norman Vincent Peale’s Positive Thinking, with dualistic

materialism, and even with the nineteenth century New Thought

of Phineas Quimby and the Christian Science of Mary Baker

Eddy. However, these arguments remain unsubstantiated, and it

is probably more helpful to see this movement as a development

of Pentecostalism and its healing emphasis. Classical

Pentecostals have joined in the accusations of ‘cultism’, an

Assemblies of God writer Neuman charging Cho, Hagin and

Copeland with this error,40 and the US Assemblies of God taking

an official position against the teaching. Neuman concludes

that the ‘health and wealth gospel’ has ‘cultic origins’, an

‘heretical Christology’, and has ‘devastating effects on human

lives and the false portrayal of Christianity it presents to

the world’.41

On the other hand, criticisms of the Word of Faith

message have also to reckon with the fact that the Bible is

not silent on the question of material need, that Christ’s

salvation is holistic, making provision for all human need and

the enjoyment of God and God’s gifts. Salvation means a

restoration of wholeness to human life, in which people have

communion with God and enjoy the divine gifts. God does desire

to bless God’s children, and this blessing seems to include

provision for all their needs. But this is nowhere portrayed

in the Bible as an irreversible law of cause and effect, as

some ‘prosperity’ teachers indicate. I have suggested that a

‘realised eschatology’ which always sees the ‘not yet’ as

‘already’ is no worse than one that sees the ‘not yet’ always

as ‘not yet’.42 One of the reasons for the emergence of

independent and Pentecostal churches in the Third World was

that many people there saw existing Christian missions as

35 Yoido Full Gospel Church (Seoul: Yoido Full Gospel Church, 1993).36 Anderson, African Reformation, 174.37 Foreword by Oral Roberts in Cho, David (Paul) Yonggi, Salvation, health and prosperity Altamonte Springs, FL: Creation House, 1987, 8; c.f. Foreword by Robert H. Schuller in Cho, David (Paul) Yonggi, The fourth dimension, Seoul: Seoul Logos Co., 1979.38 Cho, Salvation, Health & prosperity, 11-12.

being exclusively concerned with the ‘not yet’, the salvation

of the soul in the life hereafter, and that little was done

for the pressing needs of the present life, the ‘here and now’

problems that were addressed by Pentecostals and independent

churches.

Access to modern communications and globalization has

resulted in the popularizing of the Word of Faith message in

many other parts of the world. North American televangelists

propagate this teaching in Africa, some making regular visits

and broadcasting their own television programmes there. The

strategies employed by these televangelists have been subject

to criticism, but have had the effect of promoting a form of

Christianity that has appealed especially to the urbanized and

significantly westernized new generation of Africans.

Theologically, the new Pentecostal churches that have arisen

throughout Africa since the 1980s are Christocentric, but they

share an emphasis on the power of the Spirit with other

Pentecostals, including many older African initiated churches.

A particular focus on personal encounter with Christ (being

‘born again’), long periods of individual and communal prayer,

39 Anderson, ‘Prosperity message’, 78-79.40 Neuman, 49-51.41 Neuman, 54.42 Anderson, ‘Prosperity message’, 80-81.

prayer for healing and for individualized problems like

unemployment and poverty, deliverance from demons and 'the

occult’ (this term often means traditional beliefs and

witchcraft), and the use of spiritual gifts like speaking in

tongues and (to a lesser extent) prophecy— these features more

or less characterize all these churches, which are by no means

limited to Africa, but are also found in Asia, Latin America

and the Caribbean.

The new Pentecostal churches in Africa see themselves as

the ‘born again’ people of God, with a strong sense of

belonging to the community of God’s people, those chosen from

out of the world to witness to the new life they experience in

the power of the Spirit. The cornerstone of their message is

this ‘born again’ conversion experience through repentance of

sin and submission to Christ, and this is what identifies

them, even to outsiders. Unlike the older African Independent

Churches, where there tends to be an emphasis on the prophet

figure or principal leader as the one dispensing God’s gifts

to his or her followers, the new churches usually emphasize

the availability and encourage the practice of gifts of the

Holy Spirit by all of their members. The emergence of these

churches at the end of the twentieth century indicates that

unresolved questions face the church, such as the role of

‘success’ and ‘prosperity’ in God’s economy, enjoying God and

his gifts, including healing and material provision, and the

holistic dimension of ‘salvation’ which is always meaningful

in an African context. Asamoah-Gyadu believes that the

‘greatest virtue’ of the ‘health and wealth’ gospel of the new

Pentecostal and Charismatic churches lies in ‘the indomitable

spirit that believers develop in the face of life’s odds....

In essence, misfortune becomes only temporary’.43 The ‘here-

and-now’ problems being addressed by these churches in modern

Africa are not unlike those faced by the older churches

decades before, and these problems still challenge the church

as a whole today. They remind the church of the age-old

conviction of Africa that for any faith to be relevant and

enduring, it must also be experienced.44

Faith and healing in Pentecostalism today

The ‘Third Wave’ in Evangelicalism was a term coined by

Fuller Theological Seminary’s Peter Wagner, following the two

‘waves’ of the Classical Pentecostal movement and the

Charismatic movement. Wagner identified the Third Wave with

43 Asamoah-Gyadu, Kwabena J. ‘The church in the African state: The Pentecostal/Charismatic experience in Ghana’, Journal of African Christian Thought, 1:2 (1998), 55.44 Anderson, African Reformation, 167-186.

John Wimber (1934-1997), who taught a ‘Signs and Wonders’

course at Fuller during the eighties and whose Vineyard

Christian Fellowship spearheaded a new emphasis on renewal in

the established churches throughout the English-speaking

world. The Third Wave moved away from the idea of a ‘second

blessing’ experience of the Spirit to an emphasis on the gifts

of the Spirit in evangelism and as part of normal Christian

life. Wimber’s influence on the Charismatic renewal in Britain

was enormous. His first visit there in 1982 resulted in

widespread acceptance of his message of ‘power evangelism’

among older churches, especially in evangelical Anglicanism.

The churches of Holy Trinity, Brompton and St Andrew’s,

Chorleywood became centres of the new renewal. Wimber’s

particular contribution was to demonstrate that healing is a

ministry of the whole church and not just of a particularly

gifted individual like a healing evangelist.

The question of healing in Pentecostal churches has been

extensively debated, among others by British Charismatics

Nigel Wright and Andrew Walker, both of who believe in

healing, but say that the claims about healing and the

miraculous must be handled with care. Wright, with reference

to Wimber, says that ‘the rhetoric about miraculous healing

far exceeds the reality’.45 Walker reminds us that just as both

dispensational fundamentalists and liberals, following

Bultmann, rejected the possibility of miracles, so those who

accept their present reality will need to be very careful that

‘nothing short of total integrity in dealing with them will

do’. He says that believing in miracles ‘surely entails the

moral imperative to protect them from fraudulence or from

frivolity and shoddiness’. This is ultimately a question of

seeing the ‘miraculous’ as holy.46

Pentecostals today, particularly in the western world,

generally have greatly modified views on faith and healing,

compared to those of their predecessors. They frequently

resort to modern medicine and accept the validity of ‘gradual’

and ‘natural’ healing. Rather than declare that divine healing

is for all, most prefer as Keith Warrington observes, ‘to

allow for the possibility of healing rather than hold to an

unconditionally promised gift of healing for all believers’.47

More credence is given to the idea that God sometimes chooses

not to heal, that suffering is part of the divine economy, and

45 Wright, Nigel, ‘The theology and methodology of “signs and wonders”’, Smail, T., A. Walker & N. Wright, Charismatic renewal: The searchfor a theology (London: SPCK, 1995), (71-85), 76.46 Walker, Andrew, ‘Miracles, strange phenomena, and holiness’, T. Smail, A. Walker & N. Wright, Charismatic renewal: The search for a theology (London: SPCK, 1995), (123-130), 129-130.47 Warrington, Keith, ‘Healing and exorcism: the path to wholeness’, in Keith Warrington (ed.), Pentecostal perspectives (Carlisle: Paternoster,1998), (147-176), 149.

more reflection on these and other issues has led to a more

realistic and sensitive theology of healing, including a more

nuanced view of ‘healing in the atonement’.48 Warrington also

points out that the ministry of a healing evangelist has

largely given way to that of a corporate healing ministry of

the church.49 This too is expressed in the recent ecumenical

consultations, where the church is seen as a ‘community in

healing’.50

Healing and protection from evil are among the most

prominent features of Pentecostalism that have affected its

evangelism and church recruitment throughout the world. The

central place given to healing is particularly relevant in the

Third World, where the presence of disease and evil affects

the whole community and is not simply a private domain

relegated to individual pastoral care. As Harvey Cox observes

in the African context, Pentecostals ‘provide a setting in

which the African conviction that spirituality and healing

belong together is dramatically enacted’.51 These communities

were, to a large extent, health-orientated communities and in

48 Menzies & Menzies, 159-168.49 Warrington, 151.50 Allen, E. Anthony, ‘What is the church’s healing ministry? Biblicaland global perspectives’, International Review of Mission XC:356/357, January/April 2001 (46-54), 50.51 Cox, Harvey, Fire from Heaven: The rise of pentecostal spirituality and the reshaping of religion in the twenty-first century (London: Cassell, 1996), 247.

their traditional religions, rituals for healing and

protection are prominent. Pentecostals responded to what they

experienced as a void left by rationalistic western forms of

Christianity which had unwittingly initiated what was

tantamount to the destruction of ancient spiritual values.

Pentecostals declared a message that reclaimed the biblical

traditions of healing and protection from evil, demonstrated

the practical effects of these traditions, and by so doing

became heralds of a Christianity that was more meaningful.

Thus, Pentecostalism has gone a long way towards meeting

physical, emotional and spiritual needs, offering solutions to

life’s problems and ways to cope in a threatening and hostile

world.52

All the widely differing Pentecostal movements have

important common features. Far from being ‘the expression of

escapist behaviour’,53 they proclaim and celebrate a salvation

that encompasses all of life’s experiences and afflictions,

and they offer an empowerment providing a sense of dignity and

a coping mechanism for life, and that motivates their

messengers. Thousands of preachers have emphasised the

manifestation of divine power through healing, prophecy,

speaking in tongues and other Pentecostal phenomena. The

52 Anderson, Zion and Pentecost, 120-126.53 Grundmann, 29.

message proclaimed by these charismatic preachers of receiving

the power of the Spirit to meet human needs was welcome in

societies where a lack of power was keenly felt on a daily

basis. The main attraction of Pentecostalism in the Third

World is still the emphasis on healing. Preaching a message

that promises solutions for present felt needs, Pentecostal

preachers are heeded and their ‘full gospel’ readily accepted.

Pentecostals confront old views by declaring what they are

convinced is a more powerful protection against sorcery and a

more effective healing from sickness than either the existing

churches or the traditional rituals had offered. Healing,

guidance, protection from evil, and success and prosperity are

some of the practical benefits offered to faithful members of

Pentecostal churches. Although Pentecostals do not have all

the right answers or are to be emulated in all respects, the

enormous and unparalleled contribution made by Pentecostals to

alter the face of world Christianity must be acknowledged.

NOTES