I just watched another installment of "Our America" which focused on faith healing.
I didn't see the first ten minutes so I don't know exactly what was the medical problem of the man they followed, but his legs were atrophied from non-use, he spoke indistinctly as though he had had a stroke, and he seemed to have limited use of his arms and hands. He went to Morningstar Church in South Carolina to be healed. The minister had his own story of drugs, crime, and redemption. He evidently had had successful faith-healing tours through India and other parts of the third world, successful in the sense that he was living comfortably from the money he made. He had been caught in an affair with his child's nanny from which he was trying to come back.
The scenes of the gatherings for faith healing was straight out of bedlam, people crying and screaming, speaking gibberish and rolling on the floor. The minister was doing the usual drill of yelling into people's faces through a microphone, repeating a single word over and over before pushing them back where they could be caught and put on the floor.
A couple young people were interviewed. They were learning how to be faith healers. They also had sad stories of abuse and/or neglect as children, drugs, etc..One young man said that he had gone to heaven. When he was asked to explain how he knew he was in heaven, he talked about a golden curtain and a golden staircase, neither of which I recall reading about in the Bible.
Watching all these sad desperate people screaming and jumping around and hoping for healing was rather frightening for me. I could guess that a lot of them were not great students in school and didn't know much about medicine or science or even how to educate themselves as lay people in those areas. I imagine a lot of them grew up in households where the parent[[s) were out working a lot and didn't have much time for them. They were ready to listen to any snake oil salesman with a large sound system and the right choice of music. And some of these people vote! And somehow I don't think they would vote for someone who tried to present a rational approach to issues.
Of course the man they followed did not get his miracle. They also followed up on a woman with cancer and found out her cancer had gotten worse, something the church would never announce. After all, if you're not healed, it's your own fault for not having faith, for letting the demon of doubt enter you. That's the really scarey part, this teaching that you must never question or doubt what the minister says.
The reporter tried to put a positive spin on the story by saying that these people were getting hope, not to mention a possible way to earn money. Even the man in the wheelchair they had followed was not discouraged but talked about getting a glorified body after he died.
My concern is that this mindless following of charletans gets manifested politically in examples like denial of global climate change, perpetuating of misinformation and pseudoscience, and following idiots like Palin and Bachman.
