Amy Collier Artman - The Miracle Lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the Transformation of Charismatic Christianity

LIBRARY OF RELIGIOUS BIOGRAPHY

Mark A. Noll and Heath W. Carter, series editors

Long overlooked by historians, religion has emerged in recent years as a key factor in understanding the past. From politics to popular culture, from social struggles to the rhythms of family life, religion shapes every story. Religious biographies open a window to the sometimes surprising influence of religion on the lives of influential people and the worlds they inhabited.

The Library of Religious Biography is a series that brings to life important figures in United States history and beyond. Grounded in careful research, these volumes link the lives of their subjects to the broader cultural contexts and religious issues that surrounded them. The authors are respected historians and recognized authorities in the historical period in which their subject lived and worked.

Marked by careful scholarship yet free of academic jargon, the books in this series are well-written narratives meant to be read and enjoyed as well as studied

Titles include:

Her Heart Can See: The Life and Hymns of Fanny J. Crosby
by Edith L. Blumhofer

Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief
by Roger Lundin

Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybodys Sister
by Edith L. Blumhofer

Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America
by Barry Hankins

Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Spiritual Life
by Nancy Koester

Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White
by Ronald L. Numbers

George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire
by Peter L. Choi

For a complete list of published volumes, see the back of this volume.

THE MIRACLE LADY

Kathryn Kuhlman

and the Transformation of
Charismatic Christianity

Amy Collier Artman

WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY

GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

www.eerdmans.com

2019 Amy Collier Artman

All rights reserved

Published 2019

2827262524232221201912345678910

ISBN978-0-8028-7670-6

eISBN978-1-4674-5248-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Artman, Amy Collier, 1970- author.

Title: The miracle lady : Kathryn Kuhlman and the transformation of charismatic Christianity / Amy Collier Artman.

Description: Grand Rapids : Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2019. | Series: Library of religious biography | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018041858 | ISBN 9780802876706 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Kuhlman, Kathryn. | EvangelistsUnited StatesBiography. | HealersUnited StatesBiography. | PentecostalismUnited States. | United StatesChurch history20th century.

Classification: LCC BV3785.K84 A78 2019 | DDC 269/.2092 [B] dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018041858

Contents

I n an age of female Christian superstarsleaders like Joyce Meyer, Beth Moore, or Jen Hatmakerit is easy to forget that women were not always allowed under the spotlight and behind the pulpit. Todays religious celebrities owe much of their success to a handful of pioneers who battled convention and prejudice to convince American Christians that a womans voice could win the crowds.

One of those trailblazers was Kathryn Kuhlman, once named the best-known woman preacher in the world and the Miracle Lady. She emerged from obscurity, overcame a scandalous divorce and a muckraking investigation, and fashioned for herself a ministerial career that moved from backwoods crusades to the heights of popular awareness on television. Though largely forgotten now, Kuhlman was responsible for helping usher Pentecostalism into middle-class respectability and win conservative American religion over to the possibility of female stardom.

Amy Collier Artman ably traces Kuhlmans remarkable rise to fame, which began shortly after World War I when Kathryn first felt the call to preach. She was an unlikely candidate with scant theological training and a failing grade in her homiletics class in a small Canadian Bible college. But it was also a time of a short-lived fashion for girl evangeliststhe ill-fated Uldine Utley, for example, preached to thousands at Madison Square Garden at age fourteenand Kuhlman began to find modest audiences in churches and auditoriums. She would eventually establish her own church, the Denver Revival Tabernacle, but her career was nearly doomed when, possibly distraught at the recent death of her father, she agreed to marry evangelist Burroughs Waltrip, who left his wife and two children for Kuhlman. Their marriage was a disaster, as was their mutual ministry, and Kuhlman soon abandoned her husband to resume a solitary preaching life.

Kuhlmans rise to nationaland internationalprominence started almost by accident when she began to gain a reputation as a healer. In 1947, many attending her services claimed to be not only saved spiritually but also delivered from physical distress. This soon became the focus of her ministry, one she pursued with considerable energy and success. Three times a week for a decade she drew crowds of two thousand to fill Pittsburghs Carnegie Hall. In her twenty years of preaching in Los Angeles, she packed the Shrine Auditorium. She was mobbed in Akron, lionized in London, and greeted by a parade and the mayor himself in Las Vegas. When she went on the airat first on radio where her shows always began with Hello! And have you been waiting for me? and then on her television programs Your Faith and Mine and I Believe In Miraclesher fame grew by leaps and bounds. A single, divorced woman with no children who claimed not to be a preacher or a healer, this improbable aspirant to the pulpit grew to become a cultural icon.

Artman is careful to show that Kuhlman was not just a celebrity but an important motivating force in changes to American religion in the twentieth century. When the young Kathryn was beginning her career, Pentecostalism was known as the religion from the wrong side of the tracks, derided as the faith of holy rollers, rustic rubes who were preyed upon by a legion of sleazy hucksters. Faith healer, a label that Kuhlman always shunned, was a term of contempt. It was Kuhlmans cleverly crafted persona and appealing middle-class respectability that helped to turn low-life Pentecostalism into charismatic Christianity, a spiritual approach that transcended denominational borders. She eschewed the over-the-top emotionalism and manipulative performances that had characterized earlier healing services and took no credit for any miracles that might ensue. She claimed never to have healed anyone, saying that was the work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and her broadcasts were notable for the absence of lengthy appeals for donations. Thanks in great measure to Kuhlman, healing ministries could move out from the canvas and sawdust circuit to become, if not mainstream, at least a publicly acceptable manifestation of American faith.

How Kuhlman managed to do this, in spite of her sex, is another important part of Artmans research. She shows how carefully and tactfully Kuhlman had to present herself; she was clearly the boss, surrounded by male subordinates, but still had to affirm traditional gender roles. Like other women before her who dared to take up sacred duties reserved for men, she told critics to raise their concerns with God himself. It was God, not her, who had called her into ministry. I didnt ask for this ministry, she protested. God knows Id much rather be doing something else.