"Religious Quackery"

The faith-healing service, at which a minister lays hands on the lame, the halt and the blind while praying for a cure from God, is a growing U.S. religious practice. Pentecostal Preacher Oral Roberts, best known of the nation's circuit-riding faith healers, has made the practice a standard feature of his big-time revival meetings, which draw crowds of up to 30,000. Even some Episcopal ministers conduct healing services.

Last week a committee of doctors, ministers and theologians appointed by the United Lutheran Church in America warned the church's 2,500,000 members to steer clear of healing. "Faith healers," the committee wrote in a report that will be submitted to the church's June convention, "are often less concerned with the spiritual and physical well-being of people than with the demonstration of their personal power or the attainment of prestige and financial gain. This is religious quackery."

The committee granted that God could indeed perform miraculous cures, but "it cannot be assumed that, because of Christ's victory in their lives, Christians can expect healing effects not available to other people." The report charged that healers:

>"Fail to recognize as God's gift to man proven scientific methods."

>"Endanger the whole spiritual life of believers by ... leaving the implications that failure to be cured is due to lack of faith on the part of the afflicted."

>"Make a spectacle of human misery and exploit the hopes and fears, the frustrations and disappointments of the desperate, the disturbed and credulous."

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