 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman | |
|---|---|
 Richard Roberts and Kathryn Kuhlman in 1975. | |
| Born | (1907-05-09)May 9, 1907 Johnson County, Missouri, U.S. |
| Died | February 20, 1976(1976-02-20) (aged 68) Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Occupation | Evangelist |
| Spouse(s) | Burroughs Allen Waltrip, October 18, 1938– ? 1948 (divorced) |
Kathryn Kuhlman (May 9, 1907 – February 20, 1976) was an American Christianevangelist, preacher and minister who was referred to by the press as afaith healer.
Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman was born on May 9, 1907[1][better source needed] inConcordia, Missouri, where her father was mayor.[2] She was one of four children ofGerman-American parents,[1][better source needed] Joseph Adolph Kuhlman and Emma Walkenhorst.[citation needed] One report states that Kuhlman's father was Baptist and her mother wasMethodist, and the latter as having been "an excellent Bible teacher".[1][better source needed]
As a teenager, Kuhlman had a "deep spiritual experience",[2] otherwise referred to as her being "converted" at age 14 "at an evangelistic meeting... in a small Methodist church".[1][better source needed] HerNew York Times obituary states that she beganpreaching at age of 16,[2] 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".[1][better source needed]
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion with: a more complete account of her career, including from the missing years between 1928 and the 1960s. You can help byadding to it.(October 2025) |
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 husband] Everette",
Everette [having] missed a meeting inBoise, Idaho. The pastor of the [host] church encouraged Kathryn to step out on her own. Helen [the Parrott ministry pianist] agreed to join her. Her [Kuhlman's] first sermon was in a run-down pool hall in Boise, Idaho[,][1][better source needed]
a sequence of events that has Kuhlman's independent ministry beginning in that year.[1][better source needed] In a 1970 write-up in thePasadena Star-News, it was suggested she had notheological training.[3][dead link] At some point,[when?] she is said to have "stud[ied] the Bible on her own for two years", after which she sought and receivedordination from the fundamentalistEvangelical Church Alliance.[2]
Kuhlman had a weekly TV program in the 1960s and 1970s calledI Believe In Miracles, which aired nationally. She also had a 30-minute nationwide radio program, which featured sermons and frequent excerpts from herfaith 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 nascentJesus movement.[4]
By 1970, she had moved toLos Angeles, conducting services for thousands of people hoping to be healed, and was often compared toAimee Semple McPherson.[3]
She was friendly with Christian television evangelistPat Robertson,[citation needed] and made guest appearances at hisChristian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and on the network's flagship programThe 700 Club.[citation needed]
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.[5][6] 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.[7] According to Kuhlman, the lawsuit was settled prior to trial.[8]
A retrospective inTulsa World in 2016 estimated that two million people had reported that they had been healed in her meetings over the years she was active.[9] In the 1970s, physicianWilliam 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.[10][page needed][11][12][13][14] 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.[8][15][verification needed]
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.[16] Richard Casdorph produced a book of evidence in support of miraculous healings by Kuhlman.[17][full citation needed] Hendrik van der Breggen, a Christian philosophy professor, argued in favor of the claims.[18][full citation needed] AuthorCraig 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.".[19][full citation needed] Kuhlman'sNew York Times obituary noted that "Richard Owellen, a member of [a] cancer‐research department of theJohns Hopkins Hospital who appeared frequently at Miss Kuhlman's services, testified to various healings that he said he had investigated".[2]
Kuhlman met the married Texas evangelist Burroughs Waltrip (b. 1903[20]), in 1935, when he was a guest speaker at Kuhlman's Denver Revival Tabernacle, and the two began a romantic relationship.[21] 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.[21][better source needed][verification needed]
Eventually, Waltrip divorced his first wife and left his family, and moved toMason City, Iowa.[4] On October 18, 1938, she secretly married "Mister," as she called him, in Mason City.[22] The two started a revival center called Radio Chapel, with Kuhlman helping Waltrip raise funds for the new venture.[4] The marriage is said to have brought Kuhlman no peace,[22] and they eventually separated, childless, in 1944, and divorced in 1948.[citation needed] Regarding the marriage, Kuhlman stated in a 1952Denver Post interview that Waltrip "charged—correctly—that I refused to live with him. And I haven't seen him in eight years."[23][page needed]
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.[23][page needed][24]
In July 1975, a doctor diagnosed Kuhlman with a minorheart flare-up; in November, she had a relapse.[25] As a result, Kuhlman underwent open-heart surgery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during which she died on February 20, 1976.[2]
Kathryn Kuhlman was buried in theForest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery inGlendale, California. A plaque in her honor is in the main city park in Concordia, Missouri, a town in central Missouri on Interstate Highway 70.
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.[26] After Kuhklman died, her will led to controversy.[27][dead link] 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 theIndependent 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."
Hank Hanegraaff, writing inCounterfeit Revival, has suggested that Kuhlman might be viewed as an important forerunner to the present-daycharismatic movement.[28] She influencedfaith healersBenny Hinn andBilly Burke. Hinn has adopted some of her techniques and he also wrote a book about Kuhlman, as he frequently attended her preaching services.[29] Burke did meet her and was counseled by her, having claimed a miracle healing in her service as a young boy.[30]
As a child, minister-turned-moviemakerRichard Rossi was fascinated with Kuhlman. In 2007, a BBC article mentioned Kuhlman as an influence on a young Rossi, that led him for a time to conduct similar faith-healing services.[31][32]
In 1981,David Byrne andBrian Eno sampled one of Kuhlman's sermons for a track which they created during sessions for their collaborative albumMy 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 unidentifiedexorcism, with this modified version being released as "The Jezebel Spirit".[33] The Kuhlman version was later included on the 1992bootleg recordingGhosts, titled "Into the Spirit Womb".[citation needed]
The following is a list of some of Kathryn Kuhlman's published works.
She began preaching at the age of 16, following what she described as a deep spiritual experience. After studying the Bible on her own for two years, she was ordained by the Evangelical Church Alliance, a fundamentalist group.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)The Jezebel Spirit Byrne.
