THE FAITH HEALERS
BY JAMES RANDI
1987 Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 305 pages
ALBERT CAMPBELL LIBRARY 615.852 RAN
A Book Review by Joseph Ng
February 2003
It is somewhat embarrassing that it took a professional conjurer and nonbeliever, James Randi, to catch the little foxes in our midst that spoil the vines. Assisted by a team of investigators, an electronics expert, a German translator, and a couple of M.D.s, Randi goes to great lengths to expose the “Holy Spirit” industry for what it is. His alliances with “the Bay Area Skeptics, the Houston Society to Oppose Pseudoscience, the Rationalist Association of St. Louis, the Southern California Skeptics and other, similar organizations” extend his capability for “fieldwork and follow-ups … across the United States and Canada.” In addition, he was awarded financial support by the MacArthur Foundation. Officially, he has been able to gain access to privileged areas for interviews and investigation under the “auspices of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP)” (pp. 3-5). With the mountain of evidence he’s gathered, Randi is infuriated that the law enforcement agencies have not been more proactive in bringing to justice those who have been shown to scam the innocent and the believing.
Black and white above: Don Henvick, an investigator assisting James Randi, in disguise as “Bernice Manicoff” before a Peter Popoff crusade meeting in Detroit.
One is reminded of Yahweh’s numerous complaints against religious leaders who exploit His people, such as in Micah 3:2-3: “you who hate good and love evil; who tear the skin from my people and the flesh from their bones; who eat my people's flesh, strip off their skin and break their bones in pieces; who chop them up like meat for the pan, like flesh for the pot?”
DESCRIPTION
The Faith Healers is organised in 18 chapters after an introduction by Carl Sagan:
1. The Origins of Faith-Healing
2. The Faith-Healing in Modern Times
3. The Church View
4. The Financial Aspects
5. The Mail Operations of Faith-Healers
6. A.A. Allen and Miracle Valley
7. Leroy Jenkins and the $100,000 Challenge
8. W.V. Grant and the Eagle’s Nest
9. Peter Popoff and His Wonderful Machine
10. Oral Roberts and the City of Faith
11. A Word of Knowledge from Pat Robertson
12. The Psychic Dentist and an Unamazing Grace
13. Father DiOrio: Vatican-Approved Wizard
14. The Lesser Lights
15. Practical Limitations of Medical Science
16. Where Is the Evidence?
17. Amen!
Randi is furious at law-enforcement agencies’ refusal to act despite the evidence (p. 5). But perhaps the problem is systemic in the American Constitution: “Protected by the First Amendment,” he admits, “anyone capable of speaking in public became eligible to dispense interpretations of holy writ and to claim healing powers. An occasional individual took his or her inspiration from vaudeville, applying psychological techniques and razzmatazz to build an act that the IRS would never trouble, Congress would never question, and the law would find insulated by the Constitution against charges of fraud and deception.” (p. 32)
The origin of modern faith healing is traced to the Roman Catholic reliquary. “Included are pieces of the True Cross (enough to build a few log cabins) … jars of the Virgin Mary’s milk … 16 foreskins of Christ, Mary Magdalene’s entire skeleton (with two right feet) … not to mention a few shrouds, including the one at Turin” (p. 14). Lourdes, the French village where Bernadette Soubirous reportedly had her first of 18 sightings of Virgin Mary in a cave in 1858, is a veritable mecca for all sorts of miracle cures by Roman Catholic faithful. However, little does the Vatican discuss about the fact that Bernadette “was herself chronically ill, and she chose to visit hot springs in another town to treat her ailments. She as taken into a convent and died slowly and painfully in 1879, at age 35, of tuberculosis, asthma, and several complications. Her father, crippled and partially blind, died still afflicted” (p. 23). George Bernard Shaw’s observation on Lourdes is timeless (quoted on p. 270):
All those canes, braces, and crutches and not a single glass eye, wooden leg, or toupée.
No matter, hawkers of religious kitsch outside the grotto continue to do well as long as the superstitious are sick and desperate.
In North America, the Charismatic movement has developed the faith healing business into an art. ORU founder Oral Roberts’ letters are reproduced as examples (see scanned Appendix IV). He tells his flock:
God didn’t tell us to come to Him and he would put us in poverty. He said, “I’ll prosper you.” We’re not out to get your money, but we’re sure out to get your money increased. We’re sure out to get you prospered. (p. 63)
Ah, the better to hear you with, said the wolf in the Red Riding Hood. When that does not work, as on January 4, 1987, he infamously announced that if he didn’t get “[US]$8 million by the end of that March, God would call him to heaven before his time. Why he would need such a relatively small sum, in view of the immense wealth of his organization, we will never know. He easily could have raised most of that sum just by selling any of his homes in Beverly Hills, Tulsa, or Palm Springs, or by putting up his Angus cattle up for auction. His son Robert might have held back on his purchase of the 7,100-square-foot mansion he as just then moving into. The two [US]$600,000 winter homes Oral has in California might have been sold. There were so many ways” (p. 63).
Another famous antic by Oral Roberts is also recorded, his “vision” of a 900-foot stature of Jesus “at exactly 7 p.m. on May 25,” 1980, where this Jesus reportedly “reached down, put his hand under the City of Faith [in Tulsa, Oklahoma], lifted it, and said to me, ‘See how easy it is for me to lift it’” (p. 188-89). The prayer letter that went out with this “vision” raised US$5 million! His money-making visions are accompanied by “Expect a Miracle” coffee mugs for donations of US$20, an Oral Roberts commentary Bible for US$120, and a jigsaw puzzle and music recording featuring Oral and Richard Roberts and their favourite horse for just US$10. Today, Richard Roberts continues to look into the eye of many a Torontonian to ply his trade and to command evil spirits of crooked backs to come out.
Another of our TV personalities featured in Randi’s book is Peter Popoff. Despite the disgrace of impersonating God’s revelation using radio frequency in 1987 (entire chapter 9 of the book; also see the Paranormal Magazine link below), Mr. and Mrs. Popoff continue to ply their trade unashamedly into the 21st century with magic healing water. Besides their TV audience, their supporters include thousands on their mailing list who sometimes get a packet of pink crystals to be dissolved in water and a small wafer with the following unholy instructions:
... after this prayer blessed wine and bread have been put in your Bible three days take them out in faith. ... Eat the bread, eat the health of the body of Jesus. ... Then pour the wine into a small amount of water and drink it. (You will actually see the water become unfermented wine; the kind Jesus used.) ... When you place your PRAYER SLIP in the envelope, try to include the amount the Lord put on your heart for His work. IT’S YOUR MEASURE OF FAITH FOR THIS IMPORTANT TIME! (p. 77)
While “pulling at least a million and a quarter dollars a month,” Popoff was publicly led “to loan $500 to Jesus, that we were going to borrow on our Visa card” to pay for a Bible vandalism incident he is suspected to have staged himself (p. 165-66). But a Welland, Ontario, lady who had sent him “well over $13,000” through seed faith could not retrieve a single cent when her Popoff-inspired “stichomancy” failed and she had trouble repaying the loans on that amount. Not even the pleading of her Toronto pastor worked. Randi also notes a Chicago Sun-Times report of an elderly woman who surrendered her entire $21,000 life savings to Popoff but couldn’t get back any when the need arose (p. 170-73).
Randi’s net is cast wide. Jim and Tammi Faye Bakker are mentioned but not discussed at length, as their trial for the Heritage USA scam appeared to have been ongoing at the time of writing (p. 198). Others implicated in the Charismatic healing scam include Pat Robertson, who uses a shotgun approach for his “Word of knowledge,” a classic ploy to “point out” personal information of individuals in a statistically large-enough target group. Examples include Robertson’s claim to look into people’s lives:
I have a Word of Knowledge that someone has trouble with a tracheotomy. God is miraculously healing it! ... I see stomach pains at this moment. The Lord has healed you. (p. 199)
There is a woman in Kansas City who has sinus. The Lord is drying that up right now. Thank you, Jesus. There is a man with a financial need—I think a hundred thousand dollars. That need is being met right now, and within three days, the money will be supplied through the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit. Thank you, Jesus! There is a woman in Cincinnati with cancer of the lymph nodes. I don’t know whether it’s been diagnosed yet, but you haven’t been feeling well, and the Lord is dissolving that cancer right now! There is a lady in Saskatchewan in a wheelchair—curvature of the spine. The Lord is straightening that out right now, and you can stand up and walk! (p. 199)
As Gerry Straub, a former Pat Robertson employee points out about the Word of knowledge ploy:
There is nothing “mystical” to understand; it was simply “statistical.” Robertson’s little faith-healing procedure is a charade—he simply “calls out” an illness and predicts its cure, and with millions of viewers the statistical probabilities are that someone will have the disease named and that they will naturally recover. People put their faith in the belief that God speaks to Pat. (p. 200-201)
CRITIQUE
The most glaring omission in this book is the “ministry” of Benny Hinn, the “master of mesmerism,”[1] who continues to hog the airwaves with his slaying and healings. Less glaring are “foreign” (to Americans) healers, such as Reinhard Bonkke, Paul/David Cho Yonggi, Rodney Howard-Browne, and Carlos Annacondia, he of gold dust and gold dental fillings. Among the American omissions would be James Robison, the Kenneths Copeland and Hagin, Morris Cerullo, and Peter Wagner.
We can, however, appreciate the value the insights of one who is neutral, nay, hostile even to true Christian faith, who might deign a benign if slightly condescending smile at those whose lives are surrendered to the risen Christ. The secular humanist has little sympathy for faith in anything outside of human reason and self-worship. He is misinformed that Jesus’ recorded miracles were nonorganic:
Until I consulted him [Randi’s friend who advocates faith healing while “closely connected with the evangelical movement], I had not included that in my list of standards [on evidence for the miraculous], but when this man pointed out to me that healing as related in the Christian Bible was always instantaneous in nature, and because he speaks for several charismatic Christian organizations, I have adopted his requirement. However, Dr. Morton Smith, professor of ancient history at Columbia University, has observed that nowhere in the Bible is Christ said to have replaced any body part, and no modern-day evangelist is going to call on any person who needs a new ear or a finger to be grown back. It now begins to appear that Christ may have been simply one more of the many performers of that period who “cured” hysterical conditions like paralysis, loss of speech, deafness, and blindness—all of which are known to be brought on sometimes by entirely emotional causes. Indeed, Christ’s modern faith-healing imitators are rather close in their performances to what we are told about the original. (p. 286-87)
Wishful thinking from an atheist perhaps, but the New Testament does detail Jesus’ putting back Malchus’ ear and raising of dead Lazarus after four days’ burial. These are not hysterical conditions by any stretch. For a better informed theology on faith healing, I would recommend Hank Hanegraaf’s Counterfeit Revival.
But Randi has boldly called the emperor’s new clothes where many an Evangelical leader has not, for one reason or another. And that in itself is invaluable—more Christians need to be warned and forewarned.
Yet our evangelistic concern remains. What may seem to cause even benign amusement by secular humanists cannot be so benign if it stumbles them from faith in Christ to faith in science and in self. James Randi, sadly, concurs with Professor Morton Smith of Columbia University that “[early] Christians engaged in magical practices, and magic was a criminal act [in Roman law]” (p. 35). The Charismatic justification of “speaking in tongues,” which parodies the New Testament spiritual gift, gives rise to the author’s cynical comment that 1 Corinthians 14:2 is “a biblical explanation of the fact that no one is able to understand the chatter [of Charismatic glossolalia]” (p. 36). A gross misinterpretation of Scripture has allowed an atheist to make a mockery of the “biblical explanation.” On another occasion, the author witnessed the exposure of shameless lies by a Toronto preacher. Tested for his supposed gift of interpretation, this preacher “provided a running translation for me [Randi], only to find—to his dismay—that I’d made that recording two weeks previously in his own church—and his translation at that time had been very, very different indeed” (p. 37). So God takes the rap and the submission to God’s infallible Word is taken into question: for, says Randi,
... there is a feeling that religion provides firm, inarguable values that are predigested, infallible, eminently acceptable (within the believer’s immediate social milieu), and satisfying. In addition, no intellectual effort is required to adopt them, and the pressure for adopting them is very strong. The pressure may be the strongest influence in the lives of some people. (pp. 51-52)
Of voodoo’s emphasis on the demonic, he opines,
It is not only voodoo worshipers who believe such medieval nonsense; all Christians who believe in the Holy Bible must also believe in demons, devils, and other such creatures, and they must believe that those entities cause disease and that they can be ‘cast out’ by proper ceremonies, simply because it’s in the Book. If they deny the reality of those creatures, they deny the Bible, and thus their faith. It is not a matter of choice, but dogma. (italics original, p. 55)
A.A. Allen’s attempt at “resurrections” brought forth this Bible-impugning howler: “At one point, Allen advertised a plan to raise the dead, in accordance with biblical instructions to the apostles to do the same. The dreadful possibility that corpses would begin stacking up at his Miracle Valley headquarters brought him to a quick stop on that one” (p. 85). When queried why someone he had just “healed” died within 48 hours of the “miracle,” Rev. W.V. Grant “just smirked and said, ‘Everyone Jesus ever prayed for, died!’ (p. 117)” One Charismatic doctor, James Hayes, M.D., who attempted in the September 1986 issue of Charisma magazine to claim a miraculous healing but refused to share the X-ray evidence, had the cheek to ask Randi whether he was “willing to be born again.” Of the investigator, journalist Al White, Randi says “Al White is a devout, church-going Christian” (p. 120) and defends him as “well-informed and careful” (p. 121). But the waters have been muddied, and it would take extraordinary grace and honesty to un-muddy the waters and usher those like the author towards salvation.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
Benny Hinn and Auto-suggestion bookmarks: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tmcccenglish/links/Benny_Hinn_and_Autos_001044479122
Bourrie, Mark. 1998. Flim Flam: Canada’s Greatest Frauds, Scams, and Con Artists. Toronto: Hounslow. TPL 364.16309 BOU – Those who were burnt in the Bre-X hype are more astute than the children of the Kingdom when it comes to learning their lesson. The perpetrators of the Busang “gold” miracle are dead from a suspicious helicopter fall, an early aneurysm, or begging the courts for subsistence money in the Cayman Islands. Convicted or disgraced televangelists, in contrasts, continue to hoodwink the Christian public and smear His name.
Hank Hanegraaf. 1997. Counterfeit Revival: Looking for God in All the Wrong Places. Dallas: Word. (Reviewed elsewhere on this site; available at Toronto Public Library: MALVERN 269 HAN)
Paranormal Magazine. 1987. “God’s Frequency Is 39.17 Mhz: The Investigation Of Peter Popoff.” http://www.bible.ca/tongues-popoff-39-17Mhz.htm
Randi, James. 1982. Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus. TPL 133.8 R – In this volume, Randi explains the “magic” of fairies, UFOs, extraterrestrials, levitation, Scientology, psychic surgery, divining rods, etc. He exposes televangelist Jack Van Impe’s manipulation of the so-called “Jupiter Effect” to warn his audience that the world would be “seven times hotter” in 1989 (p. 239). He argues that counterfeit religious claims, unchecked, could lead to an encore of Jonestown 1978 (p. 248).
-----. 1992. Conjuring: Being a Definitive Account of the Venerable Arts of Sorcery, Prestidigitation, Wizardry, Deception, & Chicanery and the Mountebanks & Scoundrels who have Perpetrated These Subterfuges on a Bewildered Public. NY: St. Martin’s. TPL 793.8 RAN – Chapters 25 and 26 deal with “The Manipulators” and “The Mentalists,” respectively. “Assisted by his charming wife, Swan, costumed as a page boy, [Richard Valentine Pitchford, a Manipulator and a card magician known as] Cardini created a very high standard for a generation of magicians. He had mastered the technical aspects of his sleight of hand to the point that it no longer occupied his attention, which as turned entirely to his mime and timing skills” (pp. 194-95). Way before Bre-X, Conte Alessandro di Cagliostro in the 1700s pretended to be able to “locate gold and buried treasure for paying clients,” an act followed sixty years later by Mormonism’s founder Joseph Smith (helpfully pointed out by Randi, p. 201) and the Bre-X gang.
-----. 1995. An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural: James Randi’s Decidedly Skeptical Definitions of Alternate Realities. New York: St. Martin’s. TPL 001.903 RAN – “Faith healing” receives a full four columns, focusing on Christian Scientists, a medicine-denying cult that reportedly has a lower life expectancy in their schools than the U.S. average (p. 93). Randi traces faith healing to one “Greatraks the Stroker” in 17th-century England, by whose power, according to one report, “the blind fancied they saw the light which they could not see—the deaf imagined that they heard—the lame that they walked straight, and the paralytic that they had recovered the use of their limbs” (p. 94). “Glossolalia” gets two columns of coverage and is defined as “gibberish which is believed by the faithful to be a secret prayer language understood only by God” (p. 107). Randi notes the prooftexts of Acts 2:4 and 1 Corinthians 14:2 but, unsurprisingly, is unable to interpret them accurately. But he does note that such utterances are not modern; the Roman Sibyl “babbled that way” and so did the Moslems. “Mesmer, Dr. France Anton (1734-1815),” a Viennese medical doctor who manipulated the willing French aristocracy with hypnotism and trances, gets slightly over a column (pp. 152-53). His use of “animal magnetism,” by which his “entranced socialites ... gurgled, sighed, and moaned when they weren’t screaming in ecstasy at their latest expensive diversion” gave rise to the term mesmerism. “Royal touch” was “a tradition of divine healing through the touch of special persons” of European royalty, purportedly based on Matthew 10:8. Thankfully, the practice ended in 1712, when Queen Anne “touched” Dr. Samuel Johnson when he was just 30 months old.
Skolnik, Peter L. 1972. Fads: America’s Crazes, Fevers & Fancies from the 1890’s to the 1970’s. NY: Thomas Y. Crowell. TPL 309.17309 SKO – From talking dolls and the Flappers to the Beatles and Beyblades, Americans have always led the world with fads. But you’d never guess the picture below. No, it’s not the Pensacola Brownesville “revival”; it’s the Elvis crowd at Philadelphia, 1957 (p. 126).
