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Kathryn Kuhlman (May 9, 1907 – February 20, 1976) was an American Christian Evangelism, preacher and minister who was referred to by the press as a faith healer.
As a teenager, Kuhlman had a "deep spiritual experience", otherwise referred to as her being "converted" at age 14 "at an evangelistic meeting... in a small Methodist church". Her New York Times obituary states that she began preaching at age of 16, 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".
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.
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.
She was friendly with Christian television evangelist Pat Robertson, and made guest appearances at his Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and on the network's flagship program The 700 Club.
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. Richard Casdorph produced a book of evidence in support of miraculous healings by Kuhlman. Hendrik van der Breggen, a Christian philosophy professor, argued in favor of the claims. 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.". 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".
Eventually, Waltrip divorced his first wife and left his family, and moved to Mason City, Iowa. On October 18, 1938, she secretly married "Mister," as she called him, in Mason City. The two started a revival center called Radio Chapel, with Kuhlman helping Waltrip raise funds for the new venture. The marriage is said to have brought Kuhlman no peace, An excerpt from the book, The Miracle Lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the Transformation of Charismatic Christianity, see Further reading. and they eventually separated, childless, in 1944, and divorced in 1948. 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."
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.The source states this regret as being second only to "any betrayal of her loving relationship with Jesus", see Buckingham 1976, op. cit.
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.
Hank Hanegraaff, writing in Counterfeit Revival, has suggested that Kuhlman might be viewed as an important forerunner to the present-day charismatic movement. 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. Burke did meet her and was counseled by her, having claimed a miracle healing in her service as a young boy.As a child, minister-turned-moviemaker Richard Rossi was fascinated with Kuhlman.
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". The Kuhlman version was later included on the 1992 bootleg recording Ghosts, titled "Into the Spirit Womb".
Career
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 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 agreed to join her. Her Kuhlman's first sermon was in a run-down pool hall in Boise, Idaho,
a sequence of events that has Kuhlman's independent ministry beginning in that year. In a 1970 write-up in the Pasadena Star-News, it was suggested she had no Theology. At some point, she is said to have "studied the Bible on her own for two years", after which she sought and received ordination from the fundamentalist Evangelical Church Alliance.
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. 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. According to Kuhlman, the lawsuit was settled prior to trial.
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. 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.Nolen, William9780394490953, Random House. ISBN 9780394490953 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.
Personal life
Kuhlman met the married Texas evangelist Burroughs Waltrip (b. 1903), in 1935, when he was a guest speaker at Kuhlman's Denver Revival Tabernacle, and the two began a romantic relationship. 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. 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.
Death
In July 1975, a doctor diagnosed Kuhlman with a minor Heart failure; in November, she had a relapse. As a result, Kuhlman underwent open-heart surgery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during which she died on February 20, 1976.
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. After Kuhklman died, her will led to controversy. 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."
Published works
The following is a list of some of Kathryn Kuhlman's published works.
Further reading
See also
Works cited
(1976). 9780882703183, Bridge-Logos Foundation. ISBN 9780882703183
External links
Categories: 1907 Births, 1976 Deaths, 20th-century Protestants, People From Lafayette County, Missouri, American Methodists, Burials At Forest Lawn Memorial Park, American Faith Healers, American Charismatics, Oral Roberts University People, American People Of German Descent, American Evangelicals, Women Evangelists, 20th-century American People
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