Healing or heresy?

It’s a Sunday night inside Pasadena’s famed Ambassador Auditorium, known for decades as “the Carnegie Hall of the West” due to its hosting of historic classical, opera and vocal concerts by the likes of Frank Sinatra. Tonight, a rock band is kicking out an intensely danceable groove and hundreds of people are leaping up and down, hands in the air, and singing.

Yet this is no ordinary rock concert. The band is leading a sing-along chant about Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and the dancers are in the middle of a 33-day “revival” hosted by Harvest Rock Church — an evangelical Christian church which owns the auditorium and uses it for its religious services — in preparation for the arrival of a minister named Todd Bentley, who has been making huge waves in Christian circles.

Bentley has been camped out in Lakeland, Florida, since April 9, when he brought his Canada-based ministry to town for a religious revival initially intended to last a few days and expected to reach an audience of about 300 people a night. But Bentley felt that God had a change of plan in store for him, and the few days soon turned into more than four months of nightly meetings that now draw more than 7,000 people a night from around the globe. Add it all up and Bentley has preached to almost a million people in just over 120 days.

That drawing power — and his alleged ability to heal the sick in a highly dramatic fashion that on several occasions has involved kicking the ill who come before him — has led to Bentley being interviewed by the likes of CNN’s Anderson Cooper and FOX News Network’s Geraldo Rivera. He’s proven to be a colorful guest, breaking the stereotype of evangelists as oily slicksters in suits by sporting a silver stud just below his lips and covering himself in a wild jigsaw puzzle of tattoos that have drawn as much criticism as praise from some corners of Christendom.

Over the weekend of July 26 and 27, Harvest Rock brought him to USC’s 10,000-seat Galen Auditorium in the hopes of bringing Los Angeles literally to its knees.

Bentley’s SoCal sojourn raised several questions, not the least of which is the longstanding issue of what really happens when people claim to be healed of physical scourges by ministers. And in an age when legendary evangelist Billy Graham is retired and slowly passing from the scene, is Bentley aiming to claim the mantle of America’s evangelical leader?

“Todd is charismatically inclined because he’s part of a tradition existing since the 1906 Pentecostal outpouring on Azusa Street in which Pentecostal religious movements and denominations were birthed,” says Che Ahn, pastor of Harvest Rock Church.

“Those movements’ leaders were evangelical Christians who believed the gifts ascribed to God’s Holy Spirit in the Bible were for today: speaking in tongues, prophecy, and healing. Todd became born again and entered the ministry after a Toronto revival that started in 1994. That Toronto Outpouring was a revival that went on for 12 years of nightly meetings and reached over four million people. But what’s happening with Todd is an entirely different level,” Ahn explains.

Indeed, with Bentley’s crowds varying in size from 4,000 to 12,000 people a night and an estimated 1.5 million more watching live online video streams, he’s reaping unprecedented attention at an overdrive pace. Even Ahn, who’s been a born-again Christian for nearly 35 years and a friend of Bentley’s for more than a decade, says Bentley has “an international, immediate greater exposure than anything I’ve ever heard of.”

So who is Bentley, and how did he come to attain such influence? His own biography, confirmed in numerous other articles on his movement, describes a rough childhood in which he was a drug and alcohol addict in his teen years, and an adulthood in which his spiritual conversion in 1994 “delivered him from a lifestyle involving criminal activity, youth prisons, drugs, sex, satanic music and bondage.”

With a back-story like that, Bentley has been able to draw the attention of followers of all ages, mixing his rocker past with a positive yet fiery speaking style to pique his listeners’ attention.

Watching him stalk a stage as a rock band blasts behind him and he leads his followers in crying out to God and angels is also — depending how you look at it — infinitely more inspiring or entertaining than the dry speaking style of past leaders from Jimmy Swaggart to Billy Graham. And through the magic of YouTube, both his followers and detractors have posted eye-catching videos of him doing things like kicking an alleged Stage 4 colon cancer patient in the stomach to expel the disease.
That dramatic shift in style is fitting, according to USC religion professor Todd Miller, because the Religious Right itself is shifting.

“I don’t think anyone is going to just step in and assume the Graham mantle. There’s been growth in the Pentecostal movement and Graham was not that, he was a very straight-lined evangelical,” explains Miller, who has personally studied Pentecostal movements in more than 20 countries. “And the era of one big spokesman for Christendom is over, thanks to all the pluralism of movements.”
Nonetheless, Miller also notes that the idea of faith healing stretches back in Christian history all the way to its founder, Jesus, and his original disciples, who were described throughout the New Testament and other early Christian writings as casting out demons and healing the sick. As Ahn noted, the modern faith-healing movement has its roots in the work of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who in 1906 founded the Foursquare Gospel movement which embraced the Bible on a full and basic literal level and the Los Angeles landmark Angelus Temple, in which items like crutches hang on display after their owners claimed to have been healed there.

One doubter who expresses disbelief amid the swirl of attention for Bentley is Dr. Michael Shermer, a former born-again Christian who is now head of the Altadena-based Skeptic Society. The international group he leads normally focuses on seeking proof for scientific rather than religious phenomena, but regarding faith healers, he feels an obligation to point out what he believes are completely earthbound reasons for their success.

“Like with most alleged faith healers, audience members tend to fall down due to social pressure,” says Shermer, discussing the odd phenomenon of faith healers who cause their followers to faint just by touching them, a factor the healers credit to the power of the Holy Spirit entering people. “There’s a willing suspension of disbelief in effect, like in watching a movie, and the people involved enjoy the process and seeing if something happens. You want to be part of the event and be accepted, so you fall because it’s expected of you and everyone around you is falling too.”

Shermer says he has participated in the “healing” process, recalling that when he did the minister involved “pushed me down, as he put his hand on my head and shoved me.” He believes that most healers are “con artists,” playing on people’s emotions — the desperate momentary need to feel better or need to fit in before a crowd of other believers — but the underlying illness will remain once the initial burst of excitement and energy wears off.

“People want to believe this stuff, they’re deceived, duped, tricked. No one has ever been healed as far as we know, ever. People just say it but they don’t show proof from doctors,” says Shermer. “Even with a doctor’s note, medical diagnoses are never perfect anyway, so it really doesn’t mean anything. The people who get remission from cancer aren’t the only ones who’ve been prayed for. The people who die from cancer are prayed for too.”

Ahn responds that those who claim to be healed do visit their doctors to ensure their progress and obtain proof. He reels off stories of people he’s personally seen heal broken bones, overcome massive heart problems without surgery, and even reattach detached retinas.

“Onstage we’re asking people, what do you feel right now? You said you had cancer, the pain is gone, the tumor that was the size of an apple is gone now. Todd is tracking down these people and asking for documentation and doctors are seeing it and saying ‘we don’t understand this,’” says Ahn. “We had that in our church, a woman who had breast cancer and lung cancer treated at City of Hope. A group met at her house and prayed for her, and the next time she went to the doctor they found that a cancer the size of an apple in her breast had dissolved and the doctor now says ‘cancer-free.’ Go get an X-ray and make sure. We’re not the healers. God is the healer.”

Writing in response to a series of questions a week after his Galen Auditorium appearances, Bentley addressed the issue of his “seemingly violent acts” such as kicking people by saying that he feels led by God to act that way, that such incidents are rare and that he always asks the permission of the person involved.

“It is also important to note that Fresh Fire (Bentley’s ministry) does not ‘claim’ anyone is healed. We never tell anyone to stop taking medication or to cancel surgery. While we believe miracles happen, providing medical documentation is difficult due to the strict privacy laws in the US,” writes Bentley. “What we have done is to give reporters who come to Lakeland contact information for some of the more notable healings so the reporter can then ask individuals directly for their medical records.”

At the Galen Center on July 27, nearly 8,000 people almost filled the 10,000-seat auditorium — matching the crowd from the night before. Yet while Bentley laid hands on thousands of attendees the night before, he claims exhaustion and a scheduled post-revival meeting require him to cut the night short. Instead of laying hands on anyone who wishes to come forward, he and his inner circle lead hundreds of pastors into a special backstage room, where his staff and volunteers line them up in military precision so that Bentley can lay hands on the pastors in the hopes that they will then be able to channel his power to their own flocks.

An usher sneaks me into the room and then into one of the lines so that I can experience having Bentley lay hands on me. Full disclosure requires me to note that I’m a practicing Catholic, a completely different strain of Christianity that doesn’t normally embrace the idea of faith healers. My goal is to see what happens when I get touched — will I collapse or stand unfazed?

And so Bentley passes by, tapping my forehead as another team member flicks me in the chest. I don’t fall, but all around me pastors are dropping like flies. About 80 percent of those in the room are hitting the floor.

Ultimately, I don’t know what to make of the spectacle around me. Most people are lying down calmly, perhaps shaking their heads side to side, but occasionally a person is reduced to crawling past on all fours, twitching and shaking in what appears to be an uncontrollable frenzy. But I have felt nothing. Does this mean I am the devil’s spawn?

One person stands out in the crowd behind me: an Anglican Catholic priest named Father Christopher Kelley from St. Mary of the Angels Church in Los Feliz. He’s in full black shirt and white collar dress, standing out from the crowd since Catholic leaders don’t normally engage in this style of worship. His reason for checking Bentley out is undeniably stirring. “I have a niece in San Antonio who was born with cerebral palsy, and has been confined to a wheelchair her entire life. She also had a hand that was always clenched because of the disease,” says Kelley.

“She heard about Todd Bentley and watched his Florida meetings online, and one night he prayed
for those with cerebral palsy. The next day, her hand unclenched and worked fully for the first time and has stayed functional for two months now,” he says. “Since then, her legs have gone from having a discolored purple hue to normal flesh color and she’s able to move them more than before. Even a dislocated hip has realigned. She is slowly recovering beyond what doctors ever expected. She’s a creative miracle in progress, and each improvement happened after Bentley prayed for those with her condition.”

In the end, perhaps it all comes down to faith or the lack thereof. Shermer of the Skeptic Society notes that “doctors very rarely say ‘you’ll never walk again,’ but people remember things in that dramatic way.”

“Feeling better gets the credit in the end,” says Shermer. “And if what it takes is going to a faith healer, then that’s what gets the credit. No one ever really knows.”