Pentecostalism and Divine Healing? | Grant Wacker

Is healing somehow tied to prayer, a result of Divine intervention, related solely to doctors and medicine, or merely a coincidental part of life? What happens when people fervently pray for healing and it does not happen? “Divine healing” is at the core of a movement within Christianity called Pentecostalism. In this episode, Dr. Todd von Helms and emeritus historian Dr. Grant Wacker discuss Pentecostalism and the possibility of Divine healing. They also shed light on the differences between Pentecostalism in the United States compared to other parts of the world. Professor Grant Wacker grew up in a Pentecostal home before graduating from Stanford and Harvard and going on to teach the history of Christianity for nearly 50 years at UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University.

Professor Wacker joined the Duke Divinity School faculty after teaching in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1977 to 1992. He specializes in American Christian history. He is the author or co-editor of nine books, including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (2001, Harvard University Press), America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (2014, Harvard University Press), One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham (Eerdmans, 2019), and more than two-hundred articles, essays, and book reviews. From 1997 to 2004, Professor Wacker served as a senior editor of the quarterly journal, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture. He is past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, the American Society of Church History, and a senior trustee of Fuller Theological Seminary. Along with three teaching awards, he directed twenty-six Ph.D. or Th.D students at UNC or Duke.