The Healing Revival is a term used by many American Charismatics in reference to a Christian revival movement that began in June 1946 and continued through the 1950s. The period of revival gave rise to the modern evangelical and charismatic movement.
Revivalism is increased spiritual interest or renewal in the life of a church congregation or society, with a local, national or global effect. This should be distinguished from the use of the term "revival" to refer to an evangelistic meeting or series of meetings.
Billy Graham launched his own evangelical campaign in September 1947, but Graham was not directly affiliated with the healing revivalists. The period of revivals was described by Christian writer John Crowder as "the most extensive public display of miraculous power in modern history."[1] Some, like critic and radio personality Hank Hanegraaff, rejected the entire healing revival as a hoax, and condemned the subsequent evangelical and charismatic movements as a cult.[2] Divine healing is a tradition and belief that became increasingly associated with Evangelical Protestantism.[3] The majority of American Christianity's fascination with divine healing played a significant role in the popularity and inter-denominational nature of the revival movement.[4]
William Franklin Graham Jr. was an American evangelist, a prominent evangelical Christian figure, and an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became well-known internationally in the late 1940s. One of his biographers has placed him "among the most influential Christian leaders" of the 20th century.
Hendrik "Hank" Hanegraaff, also known as the "Bible Answer Man", is an American Christian author and radio talk-show host. Formerly an Evangelical Protestant, he joined the Eastern Orthodox Church in 2017. He is an outspoken figure within the Christian countercult movement where he has established a reputation for his criticisms of non-Christian religions, new religious movements and cults, as well as heresy in Christianity. He is also an apologist on doctrinal and cultural issues.
Oral Roberts and William Branham are described by historian David Edwin Harrell as the two giants of the movement. William Branham, who died in a 1965 car accident, is widely regarded as the initiator and the pacesetter of the revival, and described by Harrell as the movement's "unlikely leader."[5][6] Roberts emerged as the most popular figure and left the most lasting legacy, including the university bearing his name. Referring to Branham’s first series of meetings in St Louis’ in June 1946, Krapohl & Lippy have commented: "Historians generally mark this turn in Branham’s ministry as inaugurating the modern healing revival".[7]
Granville Oral Roberts was an American Charismatic Christian televangelist, ordained in both the Pentecostal Holiness and United Methodist churches. He is considered the godfather of the charismatic movement and one of the most recognized preachers worldwide. He founded the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University.
David Edwin Harrell Jr. is an American historian who is best known for his scholarship of Religion in the United States. He is a Professor Emeritus at Auburn University, where he served as the Breeden Eminent Scholar of Southern History and retired in 2006. He has written biographies of Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, and Homer Hailey, as well as other works about Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement. In 2006, he published Unto a Good Land: A History of the American People, a college textbook that discusses the effects of religion in the history of the United States.
Oral Roberts University (ORU) is a private evangelical liberal arts university in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Founded in 1963, the university is named after its founder, evangelist Oral Roberts, and accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. The university enrolls approximately 4,000 students.
Branham was the source of inspiration for T. L. Osborn's worldwide crusade ministry and dozens of other smaller ministries involved in the Healing Revival.[8] Other major figures of the revival were Jack Coe and later A. A. Allen. Many of these ministries shared their healing testimonies in The Voice of Healing, a periodical published by Gordon Lindsay, which created cohesion for the group in its nascent years. Voice of Healing was renamed Christ For the Nations in 1971.
Tommy Lee "T.L." Osborn was an American Pentecostal evangelist, singer, author and teacher, whose established ministry was based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In his six decades of ministry, he hosted the Good News Today program, who was also best known for his mass-miracle ministry to millions.
Jack Coe was a Pentecostal evangelist, nicknamed "the man of reckless faith". He was one of the first faith healers in the United States with a touring tent ministry after World War II. Coe was ordained in the Assemblies of God in 1944, and began to preach while still serving in World War II. In the following twelve years, he traveled the U.S. organizing tent revivals to spread his message. Coe was frequently the center of controversy, preached extensively through the South, and employed some 80 persons."
Asa Alonso Allen, better known as A. A. Allen, was a minister with a Pentecostal evangelistic healing and deliverance ministry. He was, for a time, associated with the "Voice of Healing" movement founded by Gordon Lindsay. He died at the age of 59 in San Francisco, California. Allen was buried at his ministry headquarters in Miracle Valley, Arizona.
In 1956, the healing revival reached its peak number of evangelists holding campaigns, as 49 separate evangelists held major meetings.[9] By 1960 the number of evangelists holding national campaigns dropped to less than a dozen.[9] Several perspectives have been offered regarding the decline of the healing revival. Crowder suggests that Branham's gradual separation from Gordon Lindsay played a major part in the decline.[10] Harrell attributed the decline to the increasing number of evangelists crowding the field and straining the financial resources of the Pentecostal denominations.[11] Weaver similarly agreed that Pentecostal churches gradually withdrew their support of the healing revivals primarily over the financial stresses put on local churches by the healing campaigns.[12] The Assemblies of God led the way, being the first to openly withdraw from the healing revival in 1953.[12] Weaver pointed to other factors which may have played a role in destroying the initial ecumenism of the revival: tension between the independent evangelists and the Pentecostal churches caused by the evangelists' fund-raising methods; denominational pride; sensationalism; and doctrinal conflicts, particularly between the Oneness and Trinitarian factions within Pentecostalism.[12]
The Assemblies of God (AG), officially the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, is a group of over 140 autonomous but loosely associated national groupings of churches which together form the world's largest Pentecostal denomination. With over 397,000 ministers and outstations in over 256 countries and territories serving approximately 69.1 million adherents worldwide, it is the fourth largest international Christian group of denominations and the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world.
April 1948 cover of Voice of Healing magazine
Results
A result of these major healing ministries of the post-War era was a renewed belief and emphasis in divine healing among many Christians, and this was a part of the broader Charismatic Movement, a movement which today numbers about 500 million worldwide.[13]
↑ Harrell, D. E., All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America, Indiana University Press, 1978 p. 25.
↑ Weaver, C. D., The Healer-Prophet: William Marrion Branham (A Study of the Prophetic in American Pentecostalism), Mercer University Press, 2000, p. 139.
↑ Krapohl, R. H., & Lippy, C. H., The Evangelicals: A Historical, Thematic, and Biographical Guide, Greenwood Press, 1999, p. 69.
Pentecostalism or Classical Pentecostalism is a Protestant Christian movement that emphasises direct personal experience of God through baptism with the Holy Spirit. The term Pentecostal is derived from Pentecost, the Greek name for the Jewish Feast of Weeks. For Christians, this event commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus Christ, as described in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.
Charismatic Christianity is a form of Christianity that emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts, and modern-day miracles as an everyday part of a believer's life. Practitioners are often called Charismatic Christians or Renewalists. Although there is considerable overlap, Charismatic Christianity is often categorized into three separate groups: Pentecostalism, the Charismatic Movement and Neo-charismatic movement. According to the Pew Research Center, Pentecostals and Charismatic Christians numbered over 584 million or a quarter of the world's 2 billion Christians in 2011.
The Elim Pentecostal Church is a UK-based Pentecostal Christian denomination.
The charismatic movement is the international trend of historically mainstream Christian congregations adopting beliefs and practices similar to Pentecostalism. Fundamental to the movement is the use of spiritual gifts (charismata). Among mainline Protestants, the movement began around 1960. Among Roman Catholics, it originated around 1967.
William Joseph Seymour was an African American, holiness preacher who initiated the Azusa Street Revival, an influential event in the rise of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. He was the second of eight children born to emancipated slaves and was raised in extreme poverty in Louisiana.
The Latter Rain, also known as the New Order or New Order of the Latter Rain, was a post–World War II movement within Pentecostal Christianity which remains controversial. A distinction should be made between:
William Marrion Branham was an American Christian minister and faith healer who initiated the post–World War II healing revival. He left a lasting impact on televangelism and the modern Charismatic movement and is recognized as the "principal architect of restorationist thought" for Charismatics by some Christian historians. At the time they were held, his inter-denominational meetings were the largest religious meetings ever held in some American cities. Branham was the first American deliverance minister to successfully campaign in Europe; his ministry reached global audiences with major campaigns held in North America, Europe, Africa, and India.
Prosperity theology is a controversial religious belief among some Protestant Christians, who hold that financial blessing and physical well-being are always the will of God for them, and that faith, positive speech, and donations to religious causes will increase one's material wealth. Prosperity theology views the Bible as a contract between God and humans: if humans have faith in God, he will deliver security and prosperity.
The Neo-charismaticmovement is a movement within evangelical protestant Christianity. The Neo-charismatic movement is considered to be the "third wave" of the charismatic Christian tradition which began with Pentecostalism, and was furthered by the evangelical charismatic movement. Neo-charismatics are now believed to be more numerous than the first and second wave categories, combined, as a result of the growth of postdenominational and independent charismatic groups. As of 2002, there were estimated to be approximately 295 million adherents or participants in the neo-charismatic movement.
William David Upshaw served eight years in Congress (1919–1927), where he was such a strong proponent of the temperance movement that he became known as the "driest of the drys."
The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is a movement which seeks to establish a fifth branch within Christendom, distinct from Catholicism, Protestantism, Oriental Orthodoxy, and Eastern Orthodoxy. The movement is largely associated with the Pentecostal and the Charismatic movements and advocates the restoration of the lost offices of church governance, namely the offices of prophet and apostle. Inspired by the G12 movement, it grows by recruiting pastors of independent congregations and nondenominational churches, by assimilating members from other churches through cell group meetings, and by frequent Church planting and rapid expansion, including foreign missions around the globe.
James Gordon Lindsay was a revivalist preacher, author, and founder of Christ for the Nations Institute.
The Apostolic-Prophetic Movement in Charismatic Christianity is seen by its participants as a restoration of the neglected elements of the Five-Fold Ministry described in the New Testament book of Ephesians 4:11-13, "some apostles, and some prophets; and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers; for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ." This movement is rooted in the Third Wave Charismatic or Pentecostal experience.
The Assemblies of God USA (AG), officially the General Council of the Assemblies of God, is a Pentecostal Christian denomination in the United States founded in 1914 during a meeting of Pentecostal ministers at Hot Springs, Arkansas. It is the U.S. branch of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, the world's largest Pentecostal body. With a constituency of over 3 million, the Assemblies of God was the ninth largest Christian denomination and the second largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States in 2011.
Walter Robert McAlister was a Canadian Pentecostal minister who founded the New Life Christian church in Brazil. In 1913 McAlister was the trigger point of the creation of Oneness Pentecostalism when he preached at a Pentecostal camp in Los Angeles that the "in the name of Jesus" baptismal formula was to be preferred over "in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost". This led to a group, led by McAlister, Glenn Cook, and Frank Ewart rebaptizing themselves and forming what became the "Jesus only" or Oneness Pentecostal movement.
A Revivalist is a person who holds, promotes, or presides over religious revivals. A secondary definition for revivalist is a person who revives customs, institutions, or ideas. The definition has become more robust in recent decades, and has been revised and adapted by American Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians to be someone who “recognizes that God’s manifest presence transforms lives and cultures.” A revivalist can also include someone that either presides over, or actively pursues, a religious re-awakening or restoration to spiritual ideas, orthodoxy, religious or personal experiences, and/or communal pursuit of divine occurrences.
Pentecostalism is a renewal movement within Protestant Christianity that places special emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through baptism with the Holy Spirit. It emerged from 19th century precursors between 1870 and 1910, taking denominational form from c. 1927. From the early 1930s, pentecostal denominations multiplied, and there are now several dozen, the largest of which relate to one another through conferences and organizations such as the Australian Pentecostal Ministers Fellowship. The Australian Christian Churches, formerly known as the Australian Assemblies of God, is the oldest and longest lasting Pentecostal organization in Australia. The AOG/ACC is also the largest Pentecostal organization in Australia with over 300,000 members in 2018. Until 2018, Hillsong Church was one of 10 megachurches in Australia associated with the ACC that have at least 2,000 members weekly. According to the church, over 100,000 people attend services each week at the church or one of its 80 affiliated churches located worldwide.
The Evangelical charismatic movement represents the evangelical churches that have an emphasis on the gifts of the Spirit. Started in the United States in the 1960s, the "second wave" has influenced churches of all Christian denominations and contributed to the creation of many independent evangelical churches. The movement is distinguished from Pentecostalism by not making the speaking in tongues (glossolalia) a necessary evidence of Spirit baptism and giving prominence to the diversity of spiritual gifts. According to figures from Pew Research Center in 2011, the movement identifies 305 million believers.
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