Faith Healing

Faith healing is the practice of treating illness or relieving suffering by the calling for divine help or by asserting that the mind or spirit can control the body. The term is sometimes used synonymous with divine healing or spiritual healing. These terms cover a wide range of views. At one end of the spectrum is the assertion by some proponents of a faith healing that sickness does not exist except as a mental condition. They refuse medical assistance on the ground that accepting treatment would show lack of faith on their side.

Other people seek spiritual help or divine healing only in cases where medical science has not cured them. At the other end of the spectrum is the belief that faith healing can be associated with the standard practice of medicine. Its supporters agree that a patient’s state of mind or spirit affects the health of his whole being.

Past and present physical and emotional ills have been attributed to supernatural causes. In these cultures, the healing practitioners have ordered evil spirits to depart and have provided potions and charms for the sick persons. In the East, Buddhist, Taoist, and Shinto physicians have been venerated. In the Mediterranean World, the Old Testament tells how priests and prophets were associated with healing in Ancient Israel.

Early Christians attributed healing powers to Jesus and the Apostles. Healing was always seen as coming from God and related to a trust in Him. In Acts of the Apostles, Peter told a beggar: “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!” Peter took the lamed man, raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.

In the development of Christianity, the Church, both Orthodox and Roman Catholics institutionalized healing by recognizing and authenticating miracles, the church ever offered prayers and blessings to those sick. It provided medical care through religious orders and missions, these approaches are still being used to this day.

The Church Sacrament of anointing the sick can be traced at the book of James 5:14-16. During the reformation, many Protestants reacted against practices that they felt represented medieval superstition, and they rejected anointing as sacrament. With the continuing development of science in the field of medicine and the religious skepticism in the Western world, many phenomenons that considered disease as a natural tendency and development, yet they believe in healing by faith.

In the 20th Century, the interest in faith healing was somehow started by one Phineas P. Quimboy; he was active at healing in New England by the middle of 19th century. Quimboy was influenced by idealistic metaphysics by Sweden Borg, Hegel and Emerson.

Interest in faith healing grew with other groups in the latter part. This new concern stems in part from the failure of science to provide cures for some diseases like diabetes and aids and in part for the recognition that there is a connection between emotional and body disorders. There is also a desire among Christians to experience all the gifts coming from the Holy Sprit. Examples of this interest can be found in many different places.

The Centenary celebration in 1958 at Lourdes, a French shrine at which numerous cures have been reported, attracted an estimated six million pilgrims. Divine healing services among the Pentecostals and by some evangelists attracted the crowd. The Order of St. Luke the physician, a non-monastic order of clergy and laymen has gained popularity in the States.

This new interest in faith healing differs somewhat from the older versions in the sense that this time they regarded it as a gift from God. Healing is accompanied and often accomplished by anointing oil, the laying on of hands, and prayers. The pastoral psychology and pastoral care movements may be seen as attempts to unite more closely the medical and religious dimensions of healing.

Faith healing has been studied by ecclesiastical commission of various denominations in the US and in the world. These studies by Roman Catholics, the Protestant and other religions concluded that faith healing has its best theological context. In different ways, they all agree that healing comes from one God. They call for the improvement of medical science while urge churches to provide the best religious care from those suffering from illness.

Faith healing may be regarded as disillusionment but in the end this is one best solution and alternative to medicine.