Does Faith-Healing Work? Paul Kurtz
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Does Faith-Healing Work? Paul Kurtz he Reverend Ernest Angley is a popular television mitted still earlier by a side entrance. The plan was that James preacher. His "Ernest Angley Hour" and the "Ninety Randi would pose as a decrepit cripple and that I would lead Tand Nine Club" are beamed to a growing number of him in by the hand. Randi, with his white beard and flowing television stations. Ernest W. Angley Ministries claims the two brown cape, played the part well. He had a cold and kept programs air in over more than one hundred markets in the coughing pathetically as he limped along. He looked terrible! United States, Canada, the Philippines, and Africa. A native of We went up to the side door and were beckoned to come right North Carolina, Angley came to Akron, Ohio, in 1954 and in by two sympathetic attendants. We were helped into a wing built his Grace Cathedral there in 1957. He recently purchased of the church where several ill and crippled people were already his own television station in Akron, TV-55, and in 1985 took waiting, some in wheelchairs. 1 kept assuring Adam Jersin over the extensive television production facilities of Rex (Randi's pseudonym), in a voice loud enough for everyone to Humbard, who had been located in Akron but moved away hear, that he would feel much better after the service and that, after suffering financial difficulties. Although Akron's tire fac- in any case, "when you get back to the hotel you can put on a tories have virtually all closed, it still holds forth as a kind of hot-pack to relieve the pain." Shortly thereafter an attendant gospel center. helped us to two of the seats up front that had been cordoned The image Ernest Angley portrays is actually rather off and reserved for invalids. Seated behind us was a partially comical. He is short and chunky, and his thick brown hair paralyzed elderly woman who had been helped out of her looks very much like a toupee. His speech is unpolished, has a wheelchair. We discovered that most of those present, in the deep Southern (somewhat feminine) accent, and closely resem- front rows, at least, knew one another and seemed to attend bles an old-time populist preacher. He stretches the word the services regularly. Soon another elderly cripple arrived on "Jesus" ("Jee-ee-su-us") into four syllables and often implores crutches and was greeted by the ushers and by several other his viewers to put their hands on the television screen as he people nearby. shouts "Hee-ea-ul." The church gradually began to fill up. Our colleagues Angley has gained surprising notoriety as a faith-healer. entered through the front door and positioned themselves in On his television shows he goes through his curious antics of various parts of the auditorium. Two of them were equipped "healing" all kinds of afflictions: from cancer, diabetes, multiple with tape-recorders, and Randi and I were carrying hidden sclerosis, and alcoholism to deafness and blindness. The maga- recorders to tape the proceedings. The stage set the tone of zine he edits, The Power of the Holy Ghost, contains enthusi- what was to follow: It was decorated with two huge bouquets astic testaments of healing: One woman reports that Angley of flowers and various shrubs and trees—all of which appeared cured her of back trouble; another testifies that he cured her to be fake. anorexia bulimia; still another claims that an aneurism at the The service began promptly at seven o'clock with lively base of her skull disappeared after she made a phone call to musical entertainment. There was a fifty-piece choir and musical Angley's hotline. ensemble, including three trumpets, four guitars, a drum, a piano, and an organ. The music was very well done, aping a A Safari to Ernest Angley Country Broadway show, with a sprinkling of jazz and Gospel music. Thirty minutes later the Reverend Angley appeared, nattily With this in mind, FREE INQUIRY and the Committee for the dressed in a gray suit and a tan striped tie. Early in the program Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) decided to investi- Angley began his appeal for funds, first asking for a "tithe gate Angley's healing first-hand. On January 10, I assembled a offering" and then a "love offering." As the ushers came up the seven-member team and we set off for Akron to attend one of aisles, Randi flashed a twenty-dollar bill, but he managed to Angley's services. We drove to Grace Cathedral, a handsome palm it and put an empty envelope into the collection plate. I building on the outskirts of the city. On the adjacent grounds enclosed a five-dollar bill and filled in my name and address stands a gleaming white marble statue of an angel, which I am because I wanted to get on Angley's mailing list. We calculated told represents Angley's deceased wife. that there was a hefty take that evening since an estimated 800 The Friday-night service was to begin at 7:00 P.M.; how- people were present, and most of them gave twice. ever, the doors were open at 6:00 P.M., and invalids were ad- .Angley droned on, delivering an incomprehensible sermon. He complained that he had many enemies but considered their Paul Kurtz is the editor of FREE INQUIRY. He is also the criticism free advertising. (Angley's TV-55 had been attacked in editor of the recently published A Skeptic's Handbook of Para- the Cleveland Plain Dealer the previous week for its daily psychology (Prometheus). programming of grade-B Hollywood movies with lots of sex and violence, which Angley had previously deplored.) Basically, 30 FREE INQUIRY Angley's message was that we must be absolutely obedient to God and on guard against Lucifer. If we were to trust every- thing to God, he promised, our troubles would disappear. He also promised his expectant audience that the presence of God would soon manifest itself in the cathedral and miracles would occur. ngley had his own troubles in 1984, which he recounts in Athe little booklet Cell 15, on sale at the book table in the church. On July 11, 1984, while on a tour of Western Europe, he was imprisoned in Munich. He had been charged with practicing medicine without a license and with promising "sure cures." He was held on suspicion of fraud. Angley's trip to West Germany was accompanied by con- siderable fanfare. He had taken out full-page ads in German newspapers announcing himself as "Wunderheiler." There were 187 PR men, guards, attendants, and other camp-followers in his entourage, and his arrest caused a great deal of confusion among them. When he was released on bond, he threatened to Ernest Ang ley sue, but left Germany hastily. What Angley does not mention in Cell 15 is that on July shouting, "Hee-ea-ul, Jee-ee-su-us!" She immediately fell back 8, 1984, a Swiss woman, Anna Berner, had died of a heart into the arms of the three attendants standing behind her and attack at one of his healing sessions. Moreover, German law was then laid out flat on the floor and covered with a blue silk requires a license to practice medicine at public gatherings. cloth. Angley claimed that it was not he who healed but God and Angley quickly proceeded down to the front of the church, that he was only an instrument of God's power. According to touching three more persons, each of whom fell back in a Angley, his arrest provoked an international incident. He also swoon into the arms of the attendants. He next went to Randi, took credit for a storm that hit Munich the day after his who came hobbling forth. "I command the evil spirit to leave departure, hurling hailstones "as big as tennis balls and grape- you. In the name of Jesus I pronounce you whole." He touched fruit" on the city, injuring 300 and inflicting severe damage. He Randi on the forehead, and Randi immediately fell back and insists that Jehovah had vent his wrath on the citizens of was caught and laid out on the floor. Later he said that he had Munich because of his arrest. wanted to play along with the act to find out what was going Is Angley a healer? Does he cure people? In Cell 15 he on. recounts the death of his wife, Angel, which he says was a Angley next approached me and beckoned that I come terrible blow to him. As nearly as we can determine, his wife's forth. "Oh my gosh," I thought to myself, "Randi was the name was Esther Lee and she died in 1970 of colitis. According alleged cripple, not me." Angley must have thought I didn't to Angley, one day "Angel" suddenly became ill. He called the look too well either. I quickly covered my tape recorder with my family physician in Cleveland and was told to bring her to the hat and stood up. He touched me on the forehead and cried hospital in an ambulance immediately. An hour later she died. out, "In the name of Jesus, he-ea-ul." I was not going to take Angley collapsed upon hearing this grim news. Why couldn't part in this charade, so I stood my ground and did not fall he save her? His rationalization runs as follows: About five or back. Angley again hit me on the forehead, somewhat harder, six weeks before her death "an anointing" came upon her to go and the attendant held my shoulder, but I didn't give in.