Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Evangelical Shams and snake oil

Few things annoy me more that men of god who masquerade as faith healers. Besides bilging gullible people out of their hard earned savings, they can cause actual harm. People who buy the divine healing me line are likely to alter their associated medical treatment, even stop it altogether. Take the poor rube who believed he was cured of throat cancer, only to die from the decease a few months later.  

A tele-evangelist with a large following across the United States is being sued by relatives over her claim that prayer cured her brother's throat cancer.

Darlene Bishop's claims appear in her book, Your Life Follows Your Words, which fails to mention that her brother, the songwriter Darrell "Wayne" Perry, died of the disease 18 months ago.

Source: Evangelist sued for claiming that God heals

The faith healer's logic is a beautiful thing. It entraps the unwary with inescapable logic. They claim to bring the healing power of God to bear on all matter of ailments, yet when the sick fail the heal it becomes a problem of lack of faith on the part of the sick. As in, the sick do not have sufficient faith to be healed. If the sick respond to medical treatment and recover, then the faith healer steps in a claims credit.

The Darrell Perry story is more compelling. It appears as if faith healing played a part in a strategy for his pastor wife to write a sequel to her first book on faith healing in which she claims to have been healed of breast cancer. Ms. Perry acted to prevent her husband from receiving treatment instead urging her husband to find healing through the lord. Greed motivates - Perry's estate is estimated at over a million dollars. Ms. Perry is the executor.

 

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As a Catholic and a Cop, I find people like that disgusting. To offer false hope and then claim that the reason someone is sick is because of a lack of faith is, I consider, hearsay and should be criminalized.

Matt