The Lesser Lights

There are a multitude of minor figures who belong in this discussion, but will be lumped together in this chapter because their histories do not add anything substantially new to the faith-healing picture. However, there are certain flavors and novelties to be found here that color in the picture somewhat. I can safely predict that faith-healers who fail to find themselves listed here or in the main body of this book will crow to their audiences that they escaped mention because they are genuine. That is a false assumption.

Danny Davis

Willard Fuller is not the only divine dentist. In Bakersfield, California, the Reverend Danny Davis conjures amalgam every Sunday. One amusing aspect of his miraculous tooth-filling is that recipients often notice that the “new” fillings are “cross-shaped,” and Davis declares that shape to be “God’s seal of approval.” What he fails to mention is that ordinary dental fillings more often than not are cross-shaped to provide physical strength to the structure. But, it might be argued, God of course knows that, and uses the best configuration in His work, too. Once, when Davis took his act to the state of Virginia, investigator John Whipple from the State Department of Health was sent to check out his claims. He concluded:I heard about Davis and decided to see if he was practicing dentistry without a license. I expected to find a mobile dental clinic, but I didn’t. In fact, there was no physical dentistry going on—nothing that would involve my department—unless you think we should license God.

And that was the limit of this man’s investigation. He had no interest whatsoever in whether people who attended the Davis show were there to receive actual dental attention, as promised in the advertisements. He was concerned only with whether there were tools of the trade in use, and whether Davis had a license to use them. There was no further investigation of Danny Davis, and he was free to continue his flummery unchecked in the state of Virginia.

Kathryn (“The Great”) Kuhlman

Kathryn Kuhlman was a colorful Pentecostal Baptist faith-healer who dressed in flowing, filmy garments very much in the image of a wrinkled, red-haired angel. In 1967, she was presented with the key to the city of Philadelphia, which gives one a good idea of how secure that city is. Dr. Robert Nolen, in his book Healing, did long-term follow-ups on 23 of Kuhlman’s claimed healings. There were no cures among 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, according to Nolen, and she died four months later. Kuhlman depended upon a limited number of stunts to accomplish her performance. As mentioned previously, she is credited with developing the sit-’em-in-a-wheelchair gimmick. She was also adept at the “shotgun” technique whereby she announced (as do W. V. Grant, Father Ralph DiOrio, and Pat Robertson) that a certain number of people in the audience were being healed of a certain disease, without specifying who they were. (Alan Spraggett, a would-be parapsychologist who investigated Kathryn Kuhlman, was ecstatic to discover in her claims similarities to those made by psychics. He quickly accepted Kuhlman as a genuine operator because she matched the “paradigm” he expected.) Kathryn Kuhlman, who at one time appeared on more than 50 TV stations every week, died in 1976 of pulmonary hypertension following open heart surgery, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.