Kathryn Kuhlman

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Kathryn Kuhlman (May 9, 1907 – February 20, 1976) was an American Christian evangelist, preacher and minister who was referred to by the press as a faith healer.

Early life

Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman was born on May 9, 1907<ref name=AnonHealingRevival/>Template:Better source in Concordia, Missouri, where her father was mayor.<ref name = NYTobit>Template:Cite web</ref> She was one of four children of German-American parents,<ref name=AnonHealingRevival>Template:Cite webTemplate:Better source</ref>Template:Better source Joseph Adolph Kuhlman and Emma Walkenhorst.Template:Cn One report states that Kuhlman's father was Baptist and her mother was Methodist, and the latter as having been "an excellent Bible teacher".<ref name=AnonHealingRevival/>Template:Better source

As a teenager, Kuhlman had a "deep spiritual experience",<ref name = NYTobit/> otherwise referred to as her being "converted" at age 14 "at an evangelistic meeting... in a small Methodist church".<ref name=AnonHealingRevival/>Template:Better source Her New York Times obituary states that she began preaching at age of 16,<ref name = NYTobit/> a matter otherwise stated as her having begun "sharing her testimony" at that age, in a ministry involving the Parrotts—her older sister, Myrtle, and brother-in-law and "itinerant evangelist, Everett B. Parrott".<ref name=AnonHealingRevival/>Template:Better source

Career

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According to one source, at an evangelistic meeting much later than her sixteenth year, in 1928, her sister "Myrtle and Kathryn preached to cover for [Myrtle's husband] Everette",

Everette [having] missed a meeting in Boise, Idaho. The pastor of the [host] church encouraged Kathryn to step out on her own. Helen [the Parrott ministry pianist] agreed to join her. Her [Kuhlman's] first sermon was in a run-down pool hall in Boise, Idaho[,]<ref name=AnonHealingRevival/>Template:Better source

a sequence of events that has Kuhlman's independent ministry beginning in that year.<ref name=AnonHealingRevival/>Template:Better source In a 1970 write-up in the Pasadena Star-News, it was suggested she had no theological training.<ref name="Kuhlman1970"/>Template:Dead link At some point,Template:When she is said to have "stud[ied] the Bible on her own for two years", after which she sought and received ordination from the fundamentalist Evangelical Church Alliance.<ref name = NYTobit/>

Kuhlman had a weekly TV program in the 1960s and 1970s called I Believe In Miracles, which aired nationally. She also had a 30-minute nationwide radio program, which featured sermons and frequent excerpts from her faith healing services in music and message. Her foundation was established in 1954, and its Canadian branch in 1970. Late in her life she was supportive of the nascent Jesus movement.<ref name="Believers' Portal">Template:Cite web</ref>

By 1970, she had moved to Los Angeles, conducting services for thousands of people hoping to be healed, and was often compared to Aimee Semple McPherson.<ref name="Kuhlman1970">Template:Cite news</ref>

She was friendly with Christian television evangelist Pat Robertson,Template:Cn and made guest appearances at his Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and on the network's flagship program The 700 Club.Template:Cn

Employee lawsuits

In 1975, Kuhlman was sued by Paul Bartholomew, her personal administrator, who said that she kept $1 million in jewelry and $1 million in fine art hidden away and sued her for $430,500 for breach of contract.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Two former associates accused her in the lawsuit of diverting funds and of illegally removing records, which she denied and said the records were not private.<ref>Template:Cite news Template:Dead link</ref> According to Kuhlman, the lawsuit was settled prior to trial.<ref name="Pittsburgh1975"/>

Controversies regarding faith healing

A retrospective in Tulsa World in 2016 estimated that two million people had reported that they had been healed in her meetings over the years she was active.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In the 1970s, physician William A. Nolen conducted a case study in Philadelphia of 23 people (following his 1967 medical fellowship), individuals who has said, during one of her services, that they had been cured of some malady.<ref>Template:Cite bookTemplate:Page needed</ref>Template:Page needed<ref name="NoHealing">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Nolen's long term follow-ups concluded that there were no cures in those cases. One woman who was said to have been cured of spinal cancer threw away her brace and ran across the stage at Kuhlman's command; her spine collapsed the next day and she died four months later.<ref name="Pittsburgh1975">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Kuhlman">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Verification needed

Nolen's analysis of Kulhman came in for criticism from believers. Lawrence Althouse, a physician, said that Nolen had attended only one of Kuhlman's services and did not follow up with all of those who said they had been healed there.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Richard Casdorph produced a book of evidence in support of miraculous healings by Kuhlman.<ref>Template:Cite bookTemplate:Full</ref>Template:Full Hendrik van der Breggen, a Christian philosophy professor, argued in favor of the claims.<ref>Template:Cite bookTemplate:Full</ref>Template:Full Author Craig Keener concluded, "No one claims that everyone was healed, but it is also difficult to dispute that significant recoveries occurred, apparently in conjunction with prayer. One may associate these with Kathryn Kuhlman's faith or that of the supplicants, or, as in some of Kuhlman's teaching, to no one's faith at all; but the evidence suggests that some people were healed, even in extraordinary ways.".<ref>Template:Cite bookTemplate:Full</ref>Template:Full Kuhlman's New York Times obituary noted that "Richard Owellen, a member of [a] cancer‐research department of the Johns Hopkins Hospital who appeared frequently at Miss Kuhlman's services, testified to various healings that he said he had investigated".<ref name = NYTobit/>

Personal life

Kuhlman met the married Texas evangelist Burroughs Waltrip (b. 1903<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>), in 1935, when he was a guest speaker at Kuhlman's Denver Revival Tabernacle, and the two began a romantic relationship.<ref name=":0" /> After it began, Kuhlman's friends tried to encourage her to not marry Waltrip, friends whom she told that she could not "find the will of God in the matter"; however, she is said to have reasoned that Waltrip's wife had left him, rather than he leaving her, a matter about which available sources are unclear.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite webTemplate:Better source Note, this source internally cites 39 references, but only presents 9 at its end, and in other ways appears to represent a work that was crudely cut-and-pasted into this digital form, from another unnamed source.</ref>Template:Better sourceTemplate:Verification needed

Eventually, Waltrip divorced his first wife and left his family, and moved to Mason City, Iowa.<ref name="Believers' Portal" /> On October 18, 1938, she secretly married "Mister," as she called him, in Mason City.<ref name="EerdWord"/> The two started a revival center called Radio Chapel, with Kuhlman helping Waltrip raise funds for the new venture.<ref name="Believers' Portal" /> The marriage is said to have brought Kuhlman no peace,<ref name="EerdWord">Template:Cite news An excerpt from the book, The Miracle Lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the Transformation of Charismatic Christianity, see Further reading.</ref> and they eventually separated, childless, in 1944, and divorced in 1948.Template:Cn Regarding the marriage, Kuhlman stated in a 1952 Denver Post interview that Waltrip "charged—correctly—that I refused to live with him. And I haven't seen him in eight years."Template:SfnTemplate:Page needed

Kuhlman expressed remorse on many occasions for her part in the pain caused by the breakup of Waltrip's marriage, citing his children's heartbreak as particularly troubling to her, and claiming it to be the single greatest regret of her life.Template:SfnTemplate:Page needed<ref>The source states this regret as being second only to "any betrayal of her loving relationship with Jesus", see Buckingham 1976, op. cit.Template:Page neededTemplate:Verification needed</ref>

Death

In July 1975, a doctor diagnosed Kuhlman with a minor heart flare-up; in November, she had a relapse.<ref name="ObitPittsburgh">Template:Cite news</ref> As a result, Kuhlman underwent open-heart surgery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during which she died on February 20, 1976.<ref name = NYTobit/>

Kathryn Kuhlman was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. A plaque in her honor is in the main city park in Concordia, Missouri, a town in central Missouri on Interstate Highway 70.

Kathryn Kuhlman Plaque, Concordia, MO
Kathryn Kuhlman Plaque, Concordia, MO

Legacy

The Kathryn Kuhlman Foundation continued, but due to lack of funding, it terminated its nationwide radio broadcast in 1982. The foundation shut down altogether in April 2016.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> After Kuhklman died, her will led to controversy.<ref name="Bequests1976">Template:Cite news Template:Dead link</ref>Template:Dead link She left $267,500, the bulk of her estate, to three members of her family and twenty of her employees. Smaller bequests were given to 19 other employees. According to the Independent Press-Telegram, her employees were disappointed when they learned that "she did not leave most of her estate to the foundation as she had done under a previous 1974 will."

Hank Hanegraaff, writing in Counterfeit Revival, has suggested that Kuhlman might be viewed as an important forerunner to the present-day charismatic movement.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> She influenced faith healers Benny Hinn and Billy Burke. Hinn has adopted some of her techniques and he also wrote a book about Kuhlman, as he frequently attended her preaching services.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Burke did meet her and was counseled by her, having claimed a miracle healing in her service as a young boy.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

As a child, minister-turned-moviemaker Richard Rossi was fascinated with Kuhlman. In 2007, a BBC article mentioned Kuhlman as an influence on a young Rossi, that led him for a time to conduct similar faith-healing services.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1981, David Byrne and Brian Eno sampled one of Kuhlman's sermons for a track which they created during sessions for their collaborative album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. After failing to clear the license to Kuhlman's voice from her estate, the track was reworked to use audio from an unidentified exorcism, with this modified version being released as "The Jezebel Spirit".<ref name="duke">Template:Cite book</ref> The Kuhlman version was later included on the 1992 bootleg recording Ghosts, titled "Into the Spirit Womb".Template:Citation needed

Published works

The following is a list of some of Kathryn Kuhlman's published works.

Also published as/by:
  • God Can Do It Again. 1969.Template:Full
  • Nothing Is Impossible With God. Bridge-Logos Publishers. 1974.Template:Full
  • Never Too Late. Bridge-Logos Publishers. 1975.Template:Full
  • A Glimpse into Glory: A Spirit-Filled Classic. Bridge-Logos Publishers 1979.Template:Full
  • Twilight and Dawn: The Great Physician's Second Opinion. Bridge-Logos Publishers. 1979.Template:Full
  • The Greatest Power in the World: A Spirit-Filled Classic. Bridge-Logos Publishers. 2008.Template:Full
  • Victory in Jesus and the Lord's Healing Touch. Leopold Classic Library. 2015.Template:Full
  • Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Publisher - Kathryn Kuhlman. 2022.Template:Full

Further reading

See also

Works cited

References

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