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.
Top Related