American Faith Healers Again

I had intended to make this issue one devoted to the conference and was going to reprint all the talks and discussions there. However the conference was such an overwhelming success and there was such a fine attendance, that it would be a waste to reprint what so many had heard in person. I therefore asked all those who spoke to give me their second thoughts on their talks, the things they meant to say but forgot, the replies they would like to have made in the discussions, the witty rejoinders that came to them in the middle of the night after we had all gone home. Most of the speakers have had nothing to add but I should like to make a correction to the impression left with my hearers.

While many of the American faith healers are undoubtedly hucksters and con men, using all the tricks I described, it must not be thought that they are basically insincere. They all, or nearly all, genuinely believe in miracles and expect them to happen. The purpose of all the singing, preaching and laying on of hands is to create an environment in which miracles can happen. Even the blatant money raising and commercialism is only so that more healing missions can be organised, so that more people may be enabled to witness miracles. If only they can inspire a sufficient degree of faith in their audience then they will see miracles in abundance. So the evangelist works like a slave, entreating, exhorting, commanding that the miraculous be seen by all. If the miracles do not happen then that is not his fault, the congregation has let him down. He has done all that man can do, he has fulfilled his part of the bargain and they have failed him, their faith was not sufficient. (Indeed, being a faith healer is killing work, only the very vigorous last more than a few years, they need time to recover after such a strenuous effort.)

So the healing service must be seen as a theatrical performance, an interaction between the evangelist and audience. If the preacher uses a few tricks of the trade, then that is all part of the theatrical hocus-pocus. No one is dismayed because a radio transmitter is used to relay information, just as no one minds if a microphone is used at a pop concert. It is not real, it is an act. We know that it is not real blood that spurts from Scarpia's chest when Tosca stabs him and we know that the Desdemona will take her curtain call after Othello has strangled her. We willingly suspend disbelief. We do this so as to enter into their situation. We become Desdemona and Othello and (God forbid) Tosca and Scarpia. We are only willing to do this if the characters are capable of stirring us. Great drama gains credibility only if it takes a meaning that can not be confined to the stage. We can not invest much effort in the Young Doctors as they are so uninteresting, they have no point of contact which our world. The audience for faith healers are prepared to make the effort to enter into the world of healing since they too believe in miracles and they see them as the supreme experience in their lives. A genuine healing, is far more enthralling than the East Enders, this is the real McCoy. They can bear witness to the truth of the miracle, they have seen it with their own eyes. This is better than

Michael Jackson, they can't wait for the healer to come back again. Moreover, they are not alone, the whole congregation is united in a single purpose, the creation of an atmosphere in which miracles can occur. Hence the element of pretense is not seen as fundamentally evil or deceitful. To condemn him is to condemn themselves.

The main function of the healing service is, then, to generate faith. Outsiders see only gullibility and fraud, participants see faith. Thus Zossima in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov shows that it is not that miracles create faith but that faith creates miracles. The fact that many miracles fail shows the need for more faith. Thus a failure does not generate doubt but inspires the need for more faith. There are some things in life that can only come about through faith in their possibility. Friendship is impossible if the belief in the possibility of friendship does not exist. You act friendly in order to establish friendship. You cannot fall in love if there is no belief that love is possible, you must have a predisposition to love. The healing service is a kind of stage rehearsal just in case the real performance of actually witnessing miracles comes into being. This is part of the fevered excitement and intense expectation of the meeting. Evangelists vary in the extent to which they take themselves seriously, some admit that most of their attempts fail, some will even acknowledge that they use tricks and practice a measure of deception but they would defend that on the ground that they are God's instruments for generating faith and if their offering is whole-hearted enough it will be blessed; the outcome can be left to God. The point of interest comes at the distinction between pretending to trick others (in this case for their good) to getting tricked by one's own lie so that is becomes no longer a lie but something one sincerely believes. For example, it seems that President Reagan now genuinely believes that he bore arms in the Second World war and was in action on many battlefields whereas we now know that he never left Hollywood. Each faith healer must be judged on the extent to which he practices self deception and whether if this is explained to him he wishes to continue to deceive himself. Thus if we went to a healing service we would say that the participants were caught up in a scenario that we would find neither credible, helpful nor meaningful. They would certainly find it full of meaning and one of the greatest experiences of their lives, full, rich and exciting. They would pity us for missing out on this wonderful experience.