Pat Robertson Controversies - Criticism of Robertson's Faith Healing

Criticism of Robertson's Faith Healing

In the 1970s and 1980s Robertson was a faith healer. James Randi devoted a chapter of his book The Faith Healers, criticising Robertson faith healing. Randi commented that "in 1986, soon after the full importance of the AIDS epidemic began to become evident, Robertson was attempting to cure it" by proclaiming people cured after prayer. Randi commented, "Gerry Straub, a former associate of Pat Robertson and his television producer, pointed out in his book Salvation for Sale the astonishing fact that God seemed to time miracles to conform with standard television format," and "God would stop speaking to Pat and stop healing exactly in time with the theme music." Randi explained that "in 1979, it appeared to Robertson's staff that their boss had been taking lessons from Oral Roberts" and "proposed to film the Second Coming!". The project was eventually publicly dropped, but "budget allocations are made for their development." Martin Gardner also criticized Robertson's faith healing in Gardner's work Beyond Reason.

Read more about this topic:  Pat Robertson Controversies

Famous quotes containing the words criticism, faith and/or healing:

    The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.
    Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

    I am not fooling myself with dreams of immortality, know how relative all literature is, don’t have any faith in mankind, derive enjoyment from too few things. Sometimes these crises give birth to something worth while, sometimes they simply plunge one deeper into depression, but, of course, it is all part of the same thing.
    Stefan Zweig (18811942)

    In the deserts of the heart
    Let the healing fountain start,
    In the prison of his days
    Teach the free man how to praise.
    —W.H. (Wystan Hugh)