Parallels in Non-Christian Healing

Shared Experiences of Christians and Healing Touch Practitioners

In previous writings, I have compared some of the common touch points between ESP and the “gift of prophecy” as it is practiced in Pentecostal-Charismatic circles. My operating hypothesis throughout has been to see both the Christian and non-Christian versions of this “gift” as operating according to the same mechanism, while the religious significance can vary depending on the context or purported origin of the ability.

As part of my studies at the Rhine Education Center, I was recently tasked with reading through some published articles on healing, one of which was a 2017 survey of Healing Touch (HT) students and practitioners by Margaret Moga,¹ an HT healer herself.

I will say at the outset that I know very little about HT or related practices like Therapeutic Touch (TT) or Reiki. But my impression while reading the article was to note the substantial number of phenomenological overlaps between what Charismatic Christian healers report and what HT practitioners report.

Presently, I am exploring the idea—no firm conclusions as of yet—that both Christians and non-Christians are tapping into an innate healing ability. I am influenced in this direction by some of the following overlapping features.

Heat & Heaviness

Moga reports:

• A majority of HT practitioners and students sensed that energy was moving when their hands became warm and/or tingling

• The majority of respondents “often” feel areas of heaviness, prickly sensations, and/or warmth while moving their hands through the client’s biofield

• Healers often report unusual tactile sensations, such as heat, cold, pulsations, tingling, or prickliness in their hands or a sensation of a “current” within their body

The heat, heaviness, and related feelings that are reported by HT practitioners have an uncanny resemblance among Pentecostal-Charismatic healers.

Francis MacNutt, writing in the context of Agnes Sanford’s healing ministry, notes that heat is “the most common of all physical phenomena connected with healing. Often it centers upon the affected organ and sometimes remains as an indication that the body is being healed long after the prayer is over.”² Similarly, some Christian healers report “a gentle trembling of power,” wherein they “feel their hands shake as a kind of current of power moves through them. This trembling lasts as long as the healing prayer continues.”³

My readings at the Rhine Education Center also included a 1984 article on “psychic healing” (PH) by Daniel Benor.⁴ And lest the term frighten any of my readers, it should be known that “psychic” is used in the sense of “metanormal” or “unconventional.” It does not carry occult overtones in its proper context.

According to Benor’s report: “Healers often report that they sense heat, tingling, cold, prickliness or other sensations in their hands when engaged in these practices. Likewise, healees often report that they experience similar sensations as the healers’ hands move around their bodies.”

This report of a mutual feeling of healing flow between healer and healee is so common in the Pentecostal-Charismatic world that it almost seems superfluous to go looking for examples. This happens regularly enough in the church that I attend, the most recent example taking place just over a month ago. John Wimber, citing the instance from Mark 5 where Jesus “realized that power had gone out from him” (v. 30), notes that “Over the years I have felt something like it several hundred times when praying for people’s healing.”⁵

Participants pray for healing through the laying on of hands at a John Wimber conference circa 1985.

“Electricity” & Healing Flow

Related to sensations of heat and heaviness are distinct sensations of “electricity” that pass through the healer.

Moga writes that

Several healers noted electrical or static sensations, such as, “an electric current surrounding my hands and moving up to my elbows”, “I have received an occasional shock, like a static charge”, and, “felt like an electrified brillo pad as my hands passed over the area of the [laser-treated] tumor”

In A Magical World, I note both Bruce Van Natta’s miraculous healing which was occasioned by a healing prayer of a friend, where “it felt like electricity had come out of his hand and into my body. . . . the electricity traveled right down into my belly.”⁶ Van Natta’s fatal intestinal injury ended up turning into a miraculous recovery. Van Natta himself later prayed successfully for Chris Gunderson’s gastroparesis, who “felt an electric shock starting from his shoulder and going through his stomach.”⁷

Along such lines, Randy Clark recalls an incident where a woman prayed over him. And as she did,

I felt electricity go through my entire body. I felt the anointing and presence of God. I hadn’t felt it the whole time I was praying for the sick, but when this woman prayed, I felt saturated in God’s presence.⁸

Francis MacNutt writes that Christian healers sometimes experience a “transfer of power” which sometimes feels like “a gentle electric current.”⁹ He further shares a poignant testimony, albeit in the context of deep emotional healing (“inner healing”) rather than physical healing:

At that moment I truly felt God’s presence in me when Father [MacNutt] put his hands on my head and prayed for my interior healing. . . . From that moment, I felt completely electrified. I began to tremble. The person next to me began to tremble also. It seemed as if an electric current went through me as if it were the grace of God, as if it were a cleansing. We felt that our Lord himself had descended upon us. God acted forcefully; I rested interiorly. I felt peace for the first time, because I forgave while I, in turn, was forgiven for what I had done, for what I had kept hidden within me for such a long time. When I returned to myself (I suppose I can say this) I felt wonderful!¹⁰

Vicarious Pain & Words of Knowledge

Moga writes that “On occasion, some healers felt their client’s symptoms.” She highlights the statement of one HT practitioner who responded: “I have felt uncomfortable sensations in my body related to the client’s symptoms—stomach ache, backache—which dissipate as the session progresses.”

I have shared previously of a family member who would experience such “vicarious pain” leading up to instances of healing.¹¹ This is a widely recognized phenomenon in the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement. Francis MacNutt writes:

I also know several healing evangelists who suddenly experience pain in some part of the body during a healing service. To them this means that someone in the audience is suffering from an ailment or injury in that same area. If they call this out from the platform and pray, that person is healed and the pain will cease.

Receiving such preternatural information (“words of knowledge”) in connection with healing was the modus operandi of John Wimber and his traveling companions in the 1980’s, as I recount elsewhere:

In between teaching sessions, Wimber and his associates stand on stage and speak out not only the intricate details of the conditions that God wants to heal, but they also mention numerous features about the attendees themselves—leaving no doubt for the person with the injury or condition that they are the one in mind. The words of knowledge offered by Wimber and his associates from the stage are astonishingly specific.¹²

Wimber associate Blaine Cooke delivers from the conference stage a series of “words of knowledge” about people’s symptoms.

These words of knowledge were often remarkably specific, to the point where anthropologist David C. Lewis called them “very difficult to dismiss in terms of probability theories.”¹³

Similarly, Moga notes that “the HT practitioners and students emphasized the visual imagery which they receive during healing sessions,” imagery which she points out was often very specific to the healee’s private life.

Non-Linear “Bursts” of Healing

Moga’s article does not mention this detail, but I find it interesting that in Bill Bengston’s studies of healing cancerous tumors in mice, he notes that “Healing occurs in sudden non-linear ‘bursts.’” In his work, he found that healings tend not to happen in a linear, gradual manner but rather occur all at once. The hypothetical example he provides is that someone may practice healing on a mouse for 10 straight days and see no results, but on the 11th day, the tumor completely implodes!¹⁴

Similarly, a common practice in the Pentecostal-Charismatic world is to continue praying until healing occurs. One popular practitioner reports an incident where he prayed for a man’s ankle 72 times until the (very indulgent) healee reported improvement. The first 71 attempts at healing yielded null results.

Of course, I don’t point this example out as a great proof of healing. I only mention this as it illustrates the recognition in Charismatic healing circles about the non-linear nature of healing prayer.

Healing Environments

I wrote previously on Randy Clark’s advocacy for creating an “atmosphere of expectation” with regards to healing. Moga writes that “mindfulness” and “conscious intentionality” are important parts of Healing Touch therapy. Similarly, Benor writes:

• Most healers report that a focused state of mind similar to that achieved in meditation is the first step to achieving PH . . .

• Some healers may not need to do this as a separate step, as they may be constantly in a centered state . . .

• Others appear to be able to enter such a state very rapidly¹⁵

There seems to be a consensus that success in healing is associated with certain “gathered” or “centered” states of mind. Some Christians may use different language, such as an atmosphere of “reverence” that is cultivated in a group prayer setting. But the underlying sense of mindfulness and intentionality seems to play a role in both Christian and non-Christian healing.

First Reflections

What do these overlapping features mean for Christians who practice healing? Are Charismatic Christians simply “psychic healers”? This seems reductive. Do all non-Christian healings arise from a “counterfeit” source? This seems ad hoc and unsatisfactory.¹⁶

My personal suspicion is that the Charismatic gifts of healing are best understood as the Holy Spirit’s activation and elevation of an innate ability of the human person. Others “outside the camp” may also be tapping into the same ability, yet outside the context of the body of Christ. This does not mean that they are consorting with “occult” or “evil” forces. Instead, the ubiquity of healing across cultures and times reinforces the notion that human beings are more than simple “collocations of atoms.” Christian modalities of healing should be understood, then, as an aspect of grace perfecting nature. The ability to heal is a part of our nature (albeit a highly mysterious one), and the grace of God can use and elevate this natural ability for holy purposes. Or as Saint Paul says, “for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7).

Update 10 April 2025

My colleague Matt Arnold brought to my attention a relevant essay by Philip Johnson, “Energy Healing: A Christian Theological Appraisal.” Some readers may find it a helpful supplement to what I have written here. I certainly did.

1. Margaret Moga (2017). Exceptional Experiences of Healers: A Survey of Healing Touch Practitioners and Students. Journal of Exceptional Experiences and Psychology. 5. 24-34.

2. Francis MacNutt, Healing. Revised and expanded edition. Notre Dame: Ave Maria, 1999.

3. MacNutt, Healing.

4. Daniel J. Benor, “Research in Psychic Healing,” in Alternative Medicines: Popular and Policy Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1984), 96–121.

5. John Wimber and Kevin Springer, Power Healing, 1987, Reprint (New York: HarperOne, 1991), 143.

6. Matthew C. McGuire, A Magical World (Independent: 2024), 256.

7. McGuire, A Magical World, 255.

8. Randy Clark, Power to Heal (Shippensburg: Destiny Image, 2015).

9. MacNutt, Healing.

10. MacNutt, Healing.

11. McGuire, A Magical World, 262.

12. McGuire, A Magical World, 129.

13. David C. Lewis, “Signs and Wonders in Sheffield: A Social Anthropologist’s Analysis of Words of Knowledge, Manifestations of the Spirit, and the Effectiveness of Divine Healing,” in Wimber and Springer, Power Healing, 249, 253.

14. More information about Bengston can be found at his website and Psi Encyclopedia entry.

15. Benor, “Research in Psychic Healing,” 96.

16. This is the approach promoted in Randy Clark and Susan Thompson, Healing Energy: Whose Energy Is it? (Mechanicsburg: Global Awakening, 2013).