faith healing

Charismatics emphasize practices that used to be fringe in American Christianity, such as "ideas of faith healing or miracles, prophecy, and the occult/demonic forces of opposition," are normalizing as charismatic Christianity surges, he added.

By the time Gannon became aware of faith healing, the practice had been allowed in many U.S. states for 40 years.

Those suffering from depression are often quietly sent not to doctors or psychologists but to clergy members or shrines, such as the Hindu temple Mehandipur Balaji, where people are committed to undergo faith healing.

Zion was founded in 1900 as a Christian theocracy by John Alexander Dowie, an evangelical and early Pentecostal preacher who drew thousands to the city with his faith healing ministry.

It has all sorts of religious teachings which he takes from various strands of African-American religious traditions, as well as things like New Thought, which is a 19th-century Protestant idea, very American, faith healing.