Houses of Healing: Sacred Space, Spiritual Practice, and the Transformation of Female Suffering in the Faith Cure Movement, 1980–90
In the autumn of 1876, while attending the nation's Centennial celebration, Miss Harriet M. Barker contracted a case of typhoid fever that left her crippled. While she managed to “get about” on crutches for several years, Barker's health “was gradually failing.” By the spring of 1881, she...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2006
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| In: |
Church history
Year: 2006, Volume: 75, Issue: 3, Pages: 598-611 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In the autumn of 1876, while attending the nation's Centennial celebration, Miss Harriet M. Barker contracted a case of typhoid fever that left her crippled. While she managed to “get about” on crutches for several years, Barker's health “was gradually failing.” By the spring of 1881, she was “completely prostrated.” For the next four years, Barker remained a “helpless invalid” whose case “seemed to baffle even the best medical skill.” Although she tried various treatments, “all remedies were of but little avail,” and her physicians eventually deemed her incurable, predicting that she had only a few months to live, at most. “During all these years of suffering,” Barker later recounted, “I prayed so earnestly for patience and resignation to God's will, and for the most part rested quietly, and, as I believed, submissively, under what I felt was His needed teaching of me.” But as “the weary years dragged on,” Barker recalled, “I began to think of the subject of Divine Healing.” At first, she reported, the possibility of healing by faith “seemed a great way off—something for only a chosen few.” Although she became “more convinced of the reality of this belief” through discussions with friends who were “deeply interested” in the possibility of faith cure, Barker confessed that she “was still much in the dark about the matter” and could not “see it clearly enough to grasp it for myself.” |
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| ISSN: | 1755-2613 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Church history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0009640700098656 |