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A few months later, ABC television's Nightline program reported that followers of the church had spread to 19 states and five foreign countries. Their own study suggested that pregnant women who followed church teaching died in childbirth at a rate eight times the national average; their children were three times more likely to die.

These two stories, of Joyce Landorf and the Gilmores, typify the divisions within the church over divine healing. The issue of healing usually arises not in the mustiness of a seminary classroom or during calm moments of reflection; rather, it strikes at moments of great vulnerability and torment. I know of no other Christian doctrine that excites such fervor.

Whether of TMJ or meningitis or cancer or any of "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," divine healing offers, at last, a way out. The sufferer feels an urge to lunge toward the shimmering, mystical hope that God will somehow act counter to the prognosis and provide escape.

Those who espouse divine healing have grown far more vocal in recent years. Publishers and religious broadcasters parade people before the spotlight to testify of remission from cancer, a lengthened leg, or deliverance from arthritis. One of the largest TV ministries claims to have files bulging with 60,000 reported cases of divine healing.

As a committed Christian involved in the field of medicine for four decades, I view the upsurge of enthusiasm over healing with mixed emotions. Although I share the same goals as the faith healers I see on television, in technique and style we differ enormously. I believe in the divine component of healing. But my own contributions to patients come after years of study and the application of rigid scientific principles to the laws governing human physiology. When I treat a leprosy patient's badly deformed hand, it may take two or three years of successive surgeries and gradual rehabilitation to free that hand from a frozen, useless state into something more usable Not once have I seen a missing finger suddenly grow back. And yet, some faith healers seem to promise an entirely new kind of medicine, an instantaneous healing that defies the normal process of science.

(As I watched the more extreme "faith healers," I have noticed they possess one remarkable advantage over traditional medical practitioners. When a patient fails to respond to a doctor's treatment, he or she can always blame (and sue) the doctor for maltreatment or the drug company for inadequate testing. In contrast, the faith healer lays blame solely with the patient: "Your faith alone will determine the success of this treatment." The healer's reputation remains unspoiled whether the patient recovers or dies.)

I have thought long and hard about this issue, for if all that some television evangelists claim is true, then I am in the wrong business. Have I wasted my life doing slowly and painstakingly what could have been done in the twinkling of an eye?

A Time to Question
I believe the time has come to question the extreme faith-healing perspective with its bright promise that "confession brings possession." Some of its medical claims seem dubious and even dangerous (as in the case of David Gilmore). But one aspect of the movement troubles me supremely: it seems to ask me to put absolute faith in something that ordinarily does not prove true in life. God neither protects Christians with a shield of health nor provides a quick, dependable solution to all suffering.

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July (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47