13.2: Healing and Exorcism in a Charismatic Community

To illustrate the way of shamanic mediation in Christianity I have selected some excerpts from an excellent descriptive study by William Joseph Sneck of the Word of God community (abbreviated "WoG" below), an intentional community of Charismatic Roman Catholics in Ann Arbor, Michigan, founded in 1967. As Sneck explains, this group has evolved into the world headquarters of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement. Sneck's study focuses on describing and understanding the "spiritual gifts" of prophecy, healing, and deliverance (exorcism). The first excerpt lists a series of propositions assembled by Sneck that in his judgment explain the main tenets of belief of Word of God members regarding spiritual gifts.⁵

1. God exists and is personal and active in His world, not remote and unconcerned.
2. Through Scriptural revelation especially, but also through the continuing revelation called prophecy, He calls a people to Himself to worship Him and serve each other.
3. God wants to initiate a personal relationship with this people and with each individual person.
4. Living in a community [in some degree, at least] is a necessary condition for this relationship; a community provides the locus of the relationship and of the reception and practice of various signs of God's favor, the spiritual gifts.
5. Praise is a most important human response to this relationship, and is often proclaimed "in tongues," ancient, extinct or foreign languages not studied or learned by the one offering praise [i.e., glossolalia, in which persons surrender themselves inwardly to the Holy Spirit to pray within them].
6. God speaks to the heart and mind of each person. Sometimes this "speech" takes the form of actual words heard interiorly. This interior prompting to utter prophecy, to heal (or not to heal!), to behave in some definable fashion is called the "Lord's leading," or a "sense from the Lord."
7. Through the exercise of the gift of "discernment," one learns by practice to distinguish between one's own thoughts and desires, the "Lord's leading," and promptings of "the Evil One," or the devil/Satan/demons. (The demonic realm is just as real for charismatics as is the divine.)
8. The Lord's will is that men be whole and sound, physically and psychologically. Trust in Him has physiological and emotional correlates: healing the hurts of body and spirit should occur regularly and normally in a Christian community.
9. Often the "Lord's leading" takes the concrete form of a "Word of Wisdom," some concrete, practical and sound advice for a person or the community when a decision must be made.
10. A "Word of Knowledge" is another concretization of the "Lord's leading" wherein a counselor suddenly intuits a definite fact about his counselee's past life, often embarrassing and even forgotten by the latter, and employs his knowledge to further the process of inner healing.
11. "Expectant faith" is the best attitude for all to cultivate in anticipation of the Lord's dealing with His people to promote their personal growth, increase their numbers, and generally make the planet into a loving unity of brothers and sisters.
12. The history of cultures is best interpreted apocalyptically and eschatologically, that is, people, nations, and political systems not dedicated to the Lord are moving toward their own destruction, but the Second Coming of jesus Christ will quite soon initiate a universal Kingdom of justice, love and peace.

Curiously, Sneck spends very little time discussing what to Charismatics is absolutely requisite to the receiving and implementation of spiritual gifts, namely, the experience of"Baptism in the Holy Spirit." According to Charismatics and Pentecostals, a person can become a Christian, receive the sacrament of Baptism, participate regularly in worship and the other sacraments-indeed, even experience being "born again" in surrendering devotionally to "the Lordship of Jesus Christ"-and still not have become connected with the supernatural power of the Spirit of God to live the Christian life as God fully intends. That connection they refer to as "Baptism in the Holy Spirit." In rare cases, they concede, it could take place without further steps. But normally for it to take place, a person must (a) seek it sincerely in prayer, (b) have others who have already received it lay hands upon her in prayer that she receive it, and (c) open herself to being "taken over" or "possessed" by the Holy Spirit (often but not always meaning entering a state of trance) and having its power released in her life to accomplish the work to which God calls her in the context of the Christian community. A typical way in which the "Baptism in the Spirit" is said to be manifest is glossolalia, or "speaking in tongues." But it is not the only way or necessarily the most favored way. There are other spiritual gifts, as the Apostle Paul writes in the First Letter to the Corinthians (12:4-11 [RSV]):

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation o f the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of -tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

Sneck proceeds first to describe experiences of the gift of prophecy, which from the biblical list just given (in the understanding of members of the Word of God Community) includes not only "prophecy'' per se but also "word of wisdom," "word of knowledge," "discernment" ("the ability to distinguish between spirits"), and "interpretation of tongues."6 In portions of his study not reproduced here, Sneck discusses at length how members of the community go about discerning whether a putative prophecy is valid or genuine (i.e., "really from God") or not, and how the practice of the gift of prophecy has "matured" in the experience of the community.

The content of prophecies could be divided several ways: encouraging ("My People, I love you.") and exhortatory ("Repent. Change X in your life."); intended for the whole Community or for just a single individual; pragmatically concrete or poetically haunting. With eyes closed, the prophet speaks or sings in naturally flowing cadences, and in the first person as though in the name of the Deity. Often crucial phrases are repeated. Contrary to the popular understanding of the term, relatively few prophecies concern the future.

Abigail, self-described as cranky and crotchety, was told in prophecy, "The lion must be tamed slowly. I will diminish your snarl." She attributes her greater success in controlling her temper and her tongue to this and other similarly supportive prophecies.

Here is an example of a prophecy spoken to the entire community:

Remember the darkness that I have called you from and rejoice. Remember the bondage from which I have freed you, and rejoice. Remember how you were alone and spread far apart, and see how it is that I have brought you together and made you into a people, and rejoice. It is I who have brought you to birth, and it is I, myself, who have called each one of you by name. Yes, it is I, myself, who have promised to be your God and have made you into a people, and know that you have only begun to see what I would do among you.

Prophecies which do deal with the future often refer to coming political, economic and social cataclysms and warn the people to prepare especially through loyalty and obedience to their leaders. Prophecy has, to some extent, been brought under the control of the Community's leadership in that there is a "prophecy group" to which experienced prophets belong and who alone are entrusted with the task of prophecy at the large community gatherings-though all are encouraged to "yield to" the gift in smaller group settings, e.g., the households.

Sheila, a member of the prophecy group, provided the following definition of prophecy:

"Prophetic" for me is less, really less a prediction ofthe future-/ haven't had any experience with that-as it is just really speaking the word of God's love, God's wisdom, God's plan for the body {of the community], for my life as an individual, for our life as a family. It's operative in our family life. ... I've been learning what it means to move more from a genera/sort of sense of what Cod wants to a more specific-speaking of Cod's love in general for us is always good; I think the Lord will always speak generally of His love for us. I guess by the word "prophetic" what I mean is getting a sense of how Cod sees things more clearly. The Lord wants to give us wisdom in different areas, whether a direction for the whole Community or a specific word of wisdom for somebody there at that meeting: Cod's Word, in a sharper way than just by reading Scripture, really penetrates through and speaks out.

In addition to defining prophecy, Sheila speaks concretely about her belief in and experience of the realities referred to ... [as in the list given above] propositions one and three ... : namely, that God's existence is not debated but a reality woven into daily family life; furthermore, that humans can and do enter into relationship with God; that God provides direction, encouragement, support, "wisdom," the various other gifts, etc. This experience of a relational awareness of and interaction with the Transcendent forms the fundamental basis of the religious experience of Community members. . . .

At the time of the study Sheila was a young mother of several children, a full-time homemaker. Yet she was very active in the Word of God community, an official member of the prophecy team. She initially joined the Catholic Renewal Movement in her college years and initially was quite skeptical about any and all of the gifts, but her experience led her to acceptance and eventual participation.⁷

Sheila ... presents the case of a person who was given the gift of prophecy without having ever heard about it previously. At the time of the interview, she was a member both of the prophecy team and the official prophets, but seven years previously she had never heard of prophecy.

My first experience of prophecy happened soon after I first turned my life over to the Lord. I was praying after Mass in chapel. Besides personal hassles, I was worried over my mother's health. I felt very clearly something outside myself speaking very clearly about my mother's health. The Lord told me to stop thinking and kneel down and listen to Him. I was skeptical ofpeople who claimed to hear the Lord. I remember thinking, "I must be thinking this up." My relationship with Cod was very distant then: I used to ask myself, "Is He real?" A friend came in then. It was like a large voice anyone could hear. It shook me up a lot. I got up and left-it frightened me. The friend asked, ''Are you O.K.?" The priest asked me the same thing. Then I began to "prophesy," in the form, "Cod said this; I said that." Later that evening the priest felt I'd gotten the gift of prophecy. I was afraid ofthe gifts and didn't use it for two or three years till/ came here.

After leaving college where this event had happened, Sheila had a similar experience as a young teacher. Again it was in a chapel but this time there was a physical"anointing," a feeling of God touching her on the shoulder, like a shock. Having arrived at Ann Arbor, she was encouraged by a coordinator [of the Community] to use the gift. She had had many doubts. She thought it was a "heavy thing," but now feels it is quite natural, and is as at ease with it as "in praying in tongues or reading Scripture." Use of the gift grew in conjunction with her spiritual life as she grew in her knowledge of the Lord's love for her and the body's [i.e., the Community's] love for her. She appreciates the encouragement she got especially in the 1972 meetings with the ... [prophecy team, which made a serious practical study of the gift of prophecy]. "It was good to hear other people's apprehensions, doubts, victories."

At first, Sheila found it harder to control the physical reactions to feeling the urge to speak: these were not an anointing, but rapid heartbeat, foot-tapping and chest-heaving indicating fear about speaking. Her style of delivery evolved over time. She used to think there was only one right way to speak: solemnly. It was hard for her to understand that on some occasions God speaks in different ways. She had to learn how to "let the Lord use you so the Word comes across in the right way: by singing out softly and sweetly, or loudly and boldly." She was encouraged and found that various modes worked. When she felt very detached personally from the Word, she spoke calmly. When she was personally affected, it came across differently. She wants to make her prophecies shorter. Usually she has only a couple of words, occasionally just the sense. When younger in the gift, she would stumble a lot. Her fluency grew "partially through the response of the body, mostly from a sense from the Lord that 'That's right on to exactly what I wanted to say."' Sometimes after speaking, she may have a sense that there is more to be proclaimed, and then others at the meeting will say it. During a prophecy, she feels the power of the Lord. Afterwards she might feel weak, or occasionally like wanting to dance. Sometimes she prophesies just to herself. "God's Word, when spoken precisely and simply, puts us in a wavelength of connection with the Lord." If it's a hard saying, she admits difficulty yielding to it as when having to pronounce repentance prophecies. More recently, she has felt a real connection between prophecy and the whole of her life: "I feel a direct sense from the Lord on how to proceed or not to proceed."

Sheila uses her gift in many contexts. The following brief vignette shows Sheila working with an individual.

Prophecy works really powerfully for individuals. I get a sense of how God really loves them. I still have trouble with authority figures and older people. At the women's retreat last Spring God spoke through me to a woman about her love, her holiness. She wept. The Lord said to me /!You respect that woman just because she's lived that long and is precious to me."

Interested in discovering just how the prophets' sense of "the Lord" differed from their own cognitive processes, I received the following simple reply from Sheila: "It feels better when the Lord does it. I feel more peace, clarity, precision, confidence. When I prophesy over somebody, there's a real confidence that now or twenty years from now there would be fruit."

Sneck next takes up the spiritual gift of healing.⁸

Members of WoG use this term for two different but related spiritual gifts:

1. Healing of memories, by which is meant the removal of subjective pain surrounding memories of past events, plus the termination of reactive effects on others like bitterness to family members, inability to relate lovingly with one's parents, etc.
2. Physical healings of all sorts of body ailments, major and minor. In discussing their healings, subjects often spoke about both types occurring together. . . .

Sneck explains that "at the time of the research, it was the consensus of those interviewed that WoG members were 'mature' in the gift of prophecy, but 'young,' that is, quite inexperienced, still needing more 'wisdom,' in the gift of healing."⁹ Even so, numerous healings of both kinds are recounted, some from the perspective of the person healed and some from the standpoint of the person through whom the healing takes place. Some healings are immediate, some are gradual (sometimes involving repeated healing prayer), and some expected healings apparently do not take place. Sneck deals at length with how the Community deals with these experiences. They do not see themselves in competition with the medical community but work in conjunction with standard medical practice and consider healing resulting from medical practice as "from the Lord" as well.

The spiritual gift of healing is viewed by the Community as being given to the entire group, especially when gathered in prayer, and members do not regard the gift as limited only to a few. However, several have come to specialize, so to speak, by serving on healing teams, and the Community regards some as having a special gift-that is, a special effectiveness-for this work. Preparation for healing prayer will involve intensive prayer in expectant faith that some gift of healing be given by the Lord and that guidance be given to those in charge, occasional fasting (e.g., going from sundown to sundown with no food except liquids and juices), and seeking to eliminate from their lives anything that might be an obstacle to the healing power of God (e.g., an unrepented sin, lack of full confidence in God's interest in healing and power to heal, or not being fully surrendered to the Holy Spirit). They speak of the importance, though not inevitable requirement, of desire for healing and expectant faith for healing in the person who would be healed. Lois, a fortyyear-old member of the community whose lifelong battle with cancer was won through prayer for physical healing, describes the usual procedure:¹⁰

... [After learning the condition for which the person seeks healing, t]he coordinators pray directly to the Lord. Then they rebuke the disability with or without a direct exorcism. Then they thank the Lord for what He's already doing. (In my case [i.e., Lois's case], the pain had already gone, of course. [Sometimes the persons receive assurance of healing, although they are still ill.]) Sometimes someone gets a relevant Scripture passage. There is praying in tongues or in silence, usually accompanied by laying of hands on the shoulders, hands, or head [and possibly upon the part of the body needing healing]. . . .

A twenty-two-year-old male university graduate, Hilary, who is one of the persons commissioned by the Community to pray with others for healing, describes a healing success:¹¹

. . . I prayed with a brother who had a problem with tiredness. He would be sleepy all daYt couldn't get into his work. I sensed an evil spirit bothering him. I had an understanding, insight, intuition that the cause was an evil spirit, a spirit of fatigue. I commanded it to leave. The brother shared about it at a gathering: it had happened for a long time. He wasn't bothered subsequent to prayer. The thing indeed was changed.

Hilary's interaction with the spirit is dubbed "taking authority over" the evil spirit. Hilary, university educated, struggles to put into words his experiences with "spirits" while preserving his modern viewpoint and identity:

... We prayed twice with someone who had begun losing his sight. The first time I sensed something would really happen when we prayed. God was working in our prayer. We prayed a second time. It wasn't a case you could see something resulting immediately. My partner took authority over an evil spirit. I was thinking about it, but he did it. That was a factor. It's real vague, hard to sense what connection that might have with physical reality. I often sense that evil spirits are involved as a real factor. Sometimes I can name the spirit, often I can't. It might be a mean or angry spirit, a harassment weighing someone down. I internally get angry at it.

In this case, the eye ailment was cured as mysteriously as it had come on. The physicians had prescribed mega-vitamins; the healers had used prayer and exorcism. The person got well and thanked both sets of professionals!

Geraldine, another member of the healing and prophecy teams, was a young wife who worked as a waitress and a nonresident head of a women's living situation.¹²

Although physical concomitants seem to occur regularly with prophecy, and the literature ... indicates that healers too experience sensations, among the healers interviewed only Geraldine said she has felt such; in fact, Hilary has ... mentioned not having these "charismatic signs and feelings." In Geraldine's own words:

... A month ago, a sister [i.e., a member of the community] came to be prayed with for her knee: she had had an accident. I didn't feel we even needed to pray: she seemed to have faith from her expression. I felt like the Lord was there and wanted to do something immediately. It was the only time I experienced something happen in my hands. They were hot as I put them on her leg. I was telling the Lord o f His goodness. Then she stood up, started shaking her leg. Something was cracking. The pain was gone. She limped for a few days but the pain was gone. I don't feel that God doesn't heal because a person doesn't have enough faith, but the way a person looks at the Lord has a lot to do with when and how the Lord will heal.

Elaine and Frank worked together on the healing team. At the time, they were university students. She was one of the official prophets of the community and he was also on the evangelism team that recruited members for the Community. Elaine describes their procedure.¹³

... We meet after the Thursday gathering. We try to make them feel relaxed. From two to twelve people might come. (There were usually more than twelve on the several occasions I [Sneck] had visited the healing prayer room. Perhaps Elaine means that she and Frank would see this many.) There's a spirit ofpraise in the room. (After prayer together) we go around and ask what each wants healed. Sometimes we just ask the Lord for healing. Our approach is not to figure out a person's whole life and get everything worked out, but if we sense more is going on, for example anxiety, we suggest they talk to their head [i.e., their overseer] if they're in the Community. Sometimes we take authority over evil spirits. If they're not in the Community and we sense lots is going on, the best thing is to cast out evil spirits, ask the Lord what's best and give them words of encouragement.

After praying with each awhile, we ask why they came and what they want praying over for, for example, eczema. Sometimes we feel, "that's it/' and pray for it. Other times we ask more questions like "How long have you had it?" (When do you ask more questions?) It's a combination of our own sense that we need to know more, and how much time we have.

So much is out of our hands. There's no formula. The Lord gave us power to heal; He gave us instructions to lay hands on the sick. It's different for each person. We don't consciously seek the next step, but just trust the Holy Spirit to lead us. we ask them and they pray too. We ask how they experienced our prayer sometimes. Sometimes we have advice: "See your head."

If, say, there's a pain in their arm or they're not able to move it, we sometimes advise them to use it. We tell them to act in faith and do things never done with their arm before.

We end all together. The leader concludes with words about faith, about healing, etc.

Again in this narration, we hear about reliance upon the internal "sense from the Lord" about how best to proceed. There is also a balanced awareness that not all problems can be solved at once or even prayed for on a particular occasion. A distinction is made in the "prescription" given to Community and non-Community members. While Christians generally pray for the absent sick, the leader of the large prayer meeting always announces that only people with personal ailments should go to the healing room. Earlier in the Community's history, people could go for prayer by proxy, as it were, but this practice had been abandoned in favor of the presently described procedure.

Elaine's partner, Frank, adds his commentary. He, like Hilary, behaves forcefully and vigorously during healing prayer services though his soft-spoken conversational tone would not lead one to anticipate such intensity. He repeats a theme emphasized by Elaine: praise of God is an important element in a healing ritual. Notice too in his speech the frequent use of the words, "real" and "really." (Perhaps the attentive reader has caught on already to the somewhat idiosyncratically frequent usage of these words by WoG members.)

. . . I've been on the healing team since January. I missed about a month and a half because of a hundred and one special reasons. People have been coming with real serious kinds of illness to more minor things. When we pray with people in the healing prayer room, we experience really having a lot of faith and really believing that the Lord is really doing something to them and promised something or working some sort of healing. We encourage people not to get real worried and uptight and put pressure on themselves, but to look to the Lord. They should expect a healing from the Lord-maybe not this particular night, but maybe later on. Spiritually I felt real good about this.

. . . In this brief statement, he has already suggested a way to balance the need to help a healee relax while appealing for his faith-response. He puts the emphasis on the healer's expectancy while also working to draw it from the healee. Frank continues:

... Ididn'tseealotofmiraculoushealings. Iprayedoveraguywhowas bubbling over with praise of the Lord. I felt that at that time he really was healed. There was an improvement, greater freedom, lack o f pain.

About a year and a half ago, Hilary prayed with a crippled brother whose foot straightened up and he could walk with a degree of freedom not experienced before. I prayed with him two or three times in the Fall and Winter. Each time he's made some improvement.

Both Frank and Elaine feel that healings should take place in an atmosphere characterized by praise as much as by expectancy. Yet Frank does not expect instantaneous healings in the way [some others do] .... We may wonder whether the delay in experience shapes the reduced expectation or vice-versa. Frank then spontaneously brought up the day of fasting [which the healing team had undertaken recently] ....

. . . Three weeks ago we fasted and had a day for the healing team, the first such. I felt the Lord encouraged us to take more authority. Since then there's been greater faith and more people are getting healed. I prayed over a brother with running ears. They stopped running while we were praying. While he was telling a friend later about the healing, he was feeling skeptical about the cure of the ear and it started to run again! He rebuked the Evil One, told him to stop, and it stopped running! From this he learned a spiritual lesson: we're to take authority over our own body in the name of the Lord.

By hearing many such vignettes as these repeated many times in public sharings and in private conversations, the WoG member's sense of the immanence of both divine and demonic activity is shored up, and finds echoes in the experience of each.

Deliverance prayer, or exorcism, has already been referred to in connection with healing prayer. If the Community's experience with the gift of healing is, in its members' own words, less "mature" than their experience with the gift of prophecy, their experience with the gift of deliverance is even less "mature." Sneck tells of some considerable disturbance, confusion, and uncertainty in the early months of their dealing with deliverance prayer-which, by the way, did not emerge until some time after the Community was founded. It was as if they were slowly learning by trial and error from the ground up how to utilize and how not to utilize the gift of deliverance, with little if any guidance from a living tradition of its practical use. Elaine describes dealing with a case of anxiety:¹⁴

... Ionce knew a person was nervous. Iknew anxiety would interfere with trust in the Lord. At other times there was no outward physical thing I could see. I wouldn't hear actual words that a person is anxious-it's more just a sense. I experience prophecy the same way, just a sense of what the situation really is. (Does the sense include what to do as well as the diagnosis?) From past experience, for example, with anxiety, I would pray for the person first. I would ask the Lord to relieve the anxiety. IfI felt a spirit ofanxiety, there's a different sense of what it is. (What's the difference between psychological anxiety and spirit-caused anxiety?) When I sense an evil spirit, I feel there's more seriousness, a darkness. It's not natural, not caused by circumstances in the world. It's an ugly spiritual force, against the Lord, evil. Sometimes I feel fear till/ recall the Lord has the victory: then I feel anger. I come against it, banishit. IcallonthenameoftheLord. Ipraythatthepersonisinthe Father's hand. In casting out the spirit, I address the spirit in the name of the Lord. (Afterwards, do you feel different?) There's an external difference in sensations, a physical calmness on them. They'll praise the Lord. I sense that the ugly, dark, evil thing is no longer present.

The final account is by Ursula, a single woman in her forties and the most practiced of those learned in inner healing.¹⁵

...ImetwithXandYweeklyforayear.Theydidallthetalking. Iprayedat the beginning and at the end. Both were suicidal. Isensed a spirit ofself-destruction. I felt the Lord wanted me to pray for deliverance. X broke down and cried a lot. He said he felt relieved. He hasn't talked about it with me since. Also Y: for a while he came everyday since he worked nights. He was so upset, so distressed, so disturbed. Before seeking him, Ispent two hours in prayer. I had no training. We were members of the same household though. I didn't know what to do. I thought, ''Take a long walk." We walked around campus. He was sent to another city. After ministering to him there, they said they couldn't minister to him any more. Then he came back here to live after trying yet another city. He came to me ... where I live and said, "You're the most mature Christian around, an older person." I asked my head who said, "There's no one else." Y said, "I need the support of the Community."

I remembered in prayer time the verse, "Christ stood before Pilate and didn't answer." He was very disturbed this one day. I didn't know if he would attack me. So I was quiet-though that's what the Lord wanted.

The Lord said, "There's a spirit in him trying to destroy him. It's named selfdestruction."

He asked, "What's the matter with you?"

"I'm fighting a battle with the Lord."

"You better do what the Lord says."

"I don't want to."

"You better."

I addressed the Lord and then said, "In the name of Jesus I cast out the spirit o f self-destruction."

After I prayed some time, he just changed, relaxed and was peaceful. As he was going out he was joyful. He said, "You really love me, don't you?" He couldn't believe it.

The Lord brought me to this situation. I thought, "I really ought to go and study counseling." But it's the Lord who's doing it for them. I see a great change in them. They're not strong and well yet. People were scared of Y; I never was. He was angry. Once he kicked a barrel and it went rolling down the street. I'm not called to pray for just anybody: a specific prayer for healing must come from Cod if He moves you. Ifa person asks, that's kind of a sign. With Jesus, people would ask, make the first approach.

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Reprinted by permission of the author from William Sneck, Charismatic Spiritual Gifts: A Phenomenological Analysis (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981 ), pp. 130-131, 132-134, 158-161, 171-172, 184, 192-194, 198, 201, 202-205, 219, and 230-231.

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