Was Kathryn Kuhlman a charlatan?

I'm going to briefly assess the claims of Kathryn Kuhlman. I'm doing this because some unbelievers use her as a standard of comparison to judge the miracles of Christ. Of course, that comparison is fundamentally inapt. We wouldn't expect her to be able to do what Jesus did. But let's play along with the comparison for the sake of argument.

I should say at the outset that my interest in Kuhlman is pretty limited. As such, I have a fairly cursory knowledge of her life and work. I haven't attempted to conduct in-depth research. So this post is less about arriving at definitive conclusions than laying down some markers. These are the questions I'd ask, the considerations I'd bring to bear, in evaluating her claims. 

1. In principle, there are several different possible ways of classifying Kuhlman:

i) She was a charlatan. A deceiver. A gold-digger. 

ii) She was sincere, but self-deceived.

iii) She was a "sensitive" who had natural paranormal abilities.

iv) She was a medium who had occult paranormal abilities. If so, that wouldn't necessarily mean she was consciously in league with the devil.

v) She was a divinely-empowered healer.

The available evidence may be insufficient to pin down the correct classification.

2. Are there reliable sources of information about her and her ministry? 

i) Jamie Buckingham wrote her "authorized biography." He was a graduate of SWBTS, so he's not obviously a flake. The fact, moreover, that he wrote a warts-and-all biography might suggest that he's not  just a shill for Kuhlman. But he is sympathetic. 

ii) William Nolan, a Christian physician, published classic exposés of Kuhlman. I'll be discussing this.

iii) Kurt Koch wrote an exposé. As a Lutheran exorcist, he is not predisposed to dismiss her claims on naturalistic grounds. He's not Martin Gardner. On the other hand, he was opposed to Pentecostalism, so there may be some hostile bias.

3. According to one allegation, she was guilty of financial malfeasance. Diverting funds to finance a "lavish lifestyle." 

i) That would certainly be consistent with the antics of a charlatan. Financial scandals are characteristic of fraudulent faith ministries.

ii) On the other hand, Buckingham defends her. I find his explanation plausible, although the corruption charge is also plausible.

Her ministry's a personality-cult, centered on her. Personality-cults attract a greedy entourage who are there to feather their own nest. So it's possible or probable (I don't know which) that she was personally guileless, but surrounded by sharks. It wouldn't surprise me if she took little interest in the bookkeeping end of the operation. But I don't know that for a fact.

iii) From the little I've read, the accusation is less about personal expenses than professional expenses, viz. fancy robes, a private jet. If so, that's not the same thing as a lavish lifestyle.

However, that would still interject commercialism and showmanship into her ministry. 

iv) According to Koch, she gave Nolan contact information for some of the people she (allegedly) healed. If she was a charlatan, I wouldn't expect her to volunteer that information. I'd expect her to be evasive and uncooperative. So her transparency is consistent with her sincerity. 

In addition, I don't think she took issue with Buckingham's candid, sometimes embarrassing, biography. If she was a charlatan, I'd expect her to insist on a hagiographic treatment.

In sum, there is conflicting evidence regarding her personal integrity. 

4. Now let's review Koch's assessment, from his Occult ABC. He begins with some background information:

From 1946, she conducted an average of 125 healing meetings per year. She used the largest halls in the USA, and her healing meetings were attended by about one and a half million people each year. This figure is given by a doctor named William Nolen.The background of my views is the material I collected during many lecture tours in the USA. At the time of writing, I have been there thirty-four times for tours. I have read Miss Kuhlman's books, I have attended a four-hour healing meeting at the First Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh; and I have had a personal conversation with her. I also have many verbal and written reports from people who attended her meetings.At this point, I must thank most warmly my two principal informants. Mrs. H. Maynard Johnson, wife of the technical director of the Eifel Hospital in Minneapolis, collected twenty-eight cases of healing, with full addresses, from Minneapolis and the surrounding area for me. I also received an excellent, scientifically based article from Dr. H. H. Ehrenstein of Songtime Boston. Names of further assistants will appear in the course of the chapter.

Moving along:

5. First of all, I must give a brief sketch of the style of these healing meetings. After a fantastic organ prelude, Kathryn would appear on the stage dressed in a long blue or white robe. Everyone would stand up. She would say: "How glad I am to have you all here. The Holy Spirit will perform a great work among you." The atmosphere was heightened by an introductory hymn sung by thousands of expectant people. This was followed by prayer and a short sermon. Then Kathryn would suddenly announce, "Up there in the second row of the balcony a man has just been healed of cancer. Please come down to the platform," or "a girl in the seventeenth row has just been healed of a lung disease." It would continue in the same way for several hours. The people who had been healed came to the platform. Kathryn would hold her hands about six inches above the head of each and pray. They then would fall backwards to the floor. Two attendants would catch them as they fell, so they would not hurt themselves. The people who had been healed would lay for ten to thirty seconds unconscious on the floor. When they stood up, they would say that they had a wonderful feeling. While I was watching, I saw even ministers falling to the floor unconscious, one of them a Catholic priest.Kathryn would then ask those who had been healed one or two questions, different every time. For instance, she asked a woman in her fifties, "Do you believe in Jesus?" "No, I am a Buddhist." A young man about twenty years old was asked: "Are you a Christian?" "No, I am an atheist." "Won't you believe in Jesus now that He has healed your wife?" Kathryn asked. A long silence passed. After much pressing on Kathryn's part, he finally said, "I will try."Many people have tussled with the question of how it was that Kathryn could tell which person had been healed of which disease. Many doctors investigated this problem and came up with various answers. Was it clairvoyance or mediumistic contact?

How should we account for her apparent clairvoyance? 

i) It's possible that she really was clairvoyant. I don't rule that out. And I don't consider that less likely than naturalistic explanations. 

However, let's consider some naturalistic alternatives:

ii) "Psychics" do cold readings. This doesn't require any genuine extrasensory insight. 

However, that wouldn't explain how she could know about a perfect stranger at a distance. 

iii) It's possible to obtain information about attendees, then transmit that to the healer. The notorious scam involving Peter Popoff is an oft-cited example.  

However, I have no evidence to support that explanation in the case of Kuhlman. 

By the same token, it's possible to plant imposters in the audience. But, once again, I have no evidence to support that explanation in her case. And it would be difficult for an operation that size to recruit and conceal new plants year after year. How would you keep a lid on that? You'd be very vulnerable to blackmail. 

iv) Self-selection bias. In the nature of the case, her healing services would attract hordes of people with terminal, degenerative, or life-threatening diseases–as well as the disabled. Combine that with the sheer size of the audience, and the odds are high that there will be people in attendance who approximate her descriptions. Every row would have hundreds of attendees. Or so I assume. 

In sum, her apparent clairvoyance is consistent with paranormal abilities, but it might also be consistent with natural means.

6. Ex 105 At the healing meeting in Pittsburgh a woman doctor brought a woman on to the stage. The doctor gave the following report: "This woman had multiple sclerosis in an advanced stage. She used to wear two splints and was almost blind. Her abdomen was partially paralyzed. She had a permanent catheter for three years. Three months ago I went with the patient to one of Kathryn Kuhlman's meetings. The patient was healed. Since then she has needed neither splints nor catheter. The paralysis has disappeared. She is now a nurse in the hospital in which she used to be a patient."There is no reason to doubt the truthfulness of this testimony. We know, of course, that the fact of healing gives us no indication of what power it was that brought it about.

That's impressive as far as it goes. It would certainly be consistent with a genuine healer. But it would be more impressive if Koch (or other reputable sources) could cite more cases like that. Given the huge cumulative number of people who attended her services over the years, if even a fraction were healed, that would be a large absolute number. So it should be possible to obtain many well-attested cases, if she was a genuine healer.

7. Ex 107 A third experience made me begin to have doubts. It was during a personal interview with Kathryn. She suddenly began to pray with me. She held her hands about six inches above my head. At once I began to pray in my heart, "Lord Jesus, if this woman gets her power from You, then bless both her and me. If she has gifts and power which do not come from You, protect me from them. I do not want to come under an alien influence." While Kathryn was praying, two ushers came and stood behind me to catch me as I fell. I felt nothing, however, and stood like a rock without losing my consciousness in the least. Then came a second surprise. Kathryn nudged me gently, probably in order to make me fall. She did not succeed. Then she asked me, "Do you have a healing ministry yourself?" I answered, "In my pastoral counseling it has happened occasionally, but that is not my calling: my task is to preach the Gospel and bring people to salvation."

This is inconclusive. The problem with this example is that, by his own admission, nothing out of the ordinary happened. If he hadn't prayed, and he felt himself "coming under an alien influence," then this would indicate that she had had some sort of paranormal ability, but as it stands, we have no basis of comparison. We don't know if his prayer made the difference. We don't know if there was anything for his prayer to block. 

8. Ex 111 "I went to a second meeting and tried to pray the whole time, but also to watch carefully. After the healing service, K. K. left the platform, and went through the crowd standing in the big hall. Suddenly I felt an oppression and a fear that she should touch me. I closed my eyes, lifted my arms and prayed in Jesus' name that God would help me. When K. K. passed in the place where I stood, she gripped my right arm very strongly for a moment. Nothing happened. After a while, I felt strong power, like electricity, above me, I felt like I was going to die. My arms were paralyzed and I couldn't take them down immediately. 

If this is true, it would be consistent with paranormal abilities. However, it's very subjective. Given, moreover, the highly charged atmosphere of the services, it could be autosuggestive. 

9. One year after meeting with Kathryn, the state of all twenty-eight people said by her to have been healed was as follows: Ten had not been healed, seven had experienced an improvement in their condition, eleven had diseases in which the mind can play an important part. In the whole of this extensive report, there is not one clear case of healing from an organic disease. So for all the trouble taken by Mrs. Johnson, for which I thank her again, nothing has been proved.Dr. Nolen had the addresses and telephone numbers of eighty-two people in Minneapolis sent to him. These people had been to the Kuhlman meeting and had been said to be healed. Some of them were sufferers from cancer, multiple sclerosis, and other diseases. Dr. Nolen followed up those who had been healed in order to get an accurate picture of the whole story.Dr. Nolen also obtained from Kathryn Kuhlman a list of eight people who were alleged to have been cured of cancer. Again the result of his investigations was completely negative.Dr. Nolen comments,

The more I learned of the results of Kathryn Kuhlman's miracle service, the more doubtful I became that any good she was doing could possibly outweigh the misery she was causing ... I don't believe she is a liar or a charlatan or that she is, consciously, dishonest ... I think she sincerely believes that the thousands of sick people who come to her services and claim cures are, through her ministrations, being cured of organic diseases ... The problem is - and I'm sorry this has to be so blunt - one of ignorance. Miss Kuhlman doesn't know the difference between psychogenic and organic diseases. Though she uses hypnotic techniques, she doesn't know anything about hypnotism and the power of suggestion. She doesn't know anything about the autonomic nervous system. Or, if she does know something about these things, she has certainly learned to hide her knowledge.

On this face of it, this undercuts the credibility of her healing claims. The problem is not that she failed to heal everyone who came to her. The disciples failed to heal the demoniac. 

The problem is that, given the sheer number of people who attended her services, even if she only healed a small percentage of attendees, some of those ought to be caught in the sample. 

Now, Nolan's analysis could be offset if we had testimony from other doctors of patients who corroborated healings. But I haven't seen that.

10. A sensational aspect was the way those who had been healed fell backwards. What powers were involved? Was it hypnosis? Kathryn's friends called such people the slain of the Lord.
Dr. Nolen's report, which I have reproduced here in a shortened form, does not answer all the questions raised by these strange healings. In particular, he does not deal with the falling backwards of the patients or he simply calls it hypnosis. Such an explanation is inadequate. Doctors, ministers, and strong-willed people cannot be laid out on the floor, as if they had been knocked out by hypnosis. Here other powers are involved. Again, the sometimes accurate indication of the place where the patients are sitting and of the nature of their diseases sounds remarkably like psychic contact.

With due respect to Koch, I find that unconvincing. Falling backwards ("slain in the Spirit") is such a cliche at healing services that I don't think it's reasonable to chalk that up to paranormal influence. Surely that happens at services where the faith-healer is undoubtedly a charlatan. I think that's a conditioned response. 

In sum, I haven't read any compelling evidence that Kuhlman was a genuine healer. But that could reflect my limited reading. 

UPDATE:

Craig Keener has a well-documented section on Kuhlman in his Miracles, 1:459-68. I think he marshals some impressive evidence for miraculous cures in connection with her ministry.