When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law

by Shawn Francis Peters

Relying on religious traditions that are as old as their faith itself, many devout Christians turn to prayer rather than medicine when their children fall victim to illness or injury. Faith healers claim that their practices are effective in restoring health - more effective, they say, than modern medicine. But, over the past century, hundreds of children have died after being denied the basic medical treatments furnished by physicians because of...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019530635X
• ISBN13: 9780195306354
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent treatment of a fascinating, but largely unknown problem

This book discusses the practice of religious healing in various forms, focusing mainly on those practices that deprive children of medical treatment. It covers not only Christian Science, but also several lesser known churches, nearly all of which exist in some form today. It contains a wealth of historical information on faith healing, including its theological foundation in Christianity, the legal conflict between faith healing and child abuse, and efforts to remove religious exemptions from child neglect laws. For me, the most interesting part discusses modern attempts to prove the efficacy of prayer in medicine. The potential buyer is warned that the subject matter can be quite disturbing. The author presents a long series of grisly examples in which children suffered horrible deaths for lack of basic medical treatment. They span approximately the last 150 years and include some very recent cases. The book is very well written, though at times it gets a little repetitive. For example, after the first few mentions, the reader no longer needs to be reminded about the healing techniques mentioned in the epistle of James or that CHILD is an advocacy group. It is a very quick, but also gut-wrenching, read that presents numerous intellectual challenges.

When Prayer Fails

When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law, by Shawn Francis Peters, looks at the legal limits of religious freedom in the United States when applied to faith healing in relation to children. While the right to refuse medical treatment due to devout religious beliefs is acceptable in adults, what happens when the children of those who practice these beliefs are also denied medical treatment? The answer is hundreds of unnecessary casualties. Peters' book looks at the origin and history of faith healing, its many young victims and how the law and juries have struggled for centuries trying to advocate a child's right to medical care. The right to religious freedom has long been a cherished value in the United States, but the first amendment has been used since its creation as justification for the intentional withholding of medical treatment from children. Peters shows the many religious sects and their followers that have come on trial, both in court and public opinion, for the hundreds of deaths of children who were treated with prayer, anointment, and the laying of hands alone. Peters takes the reader through the history of faith healing and the resulting court cases of neglect and manslaughter that accompany it. Starting with the Peculiar People, a religious group based in Britain in the mid 1800s, the reader is shown dozens of different gruesome child deaths and court cases. Most memorable is the Wagstaffe case of 1868, in which a couple was charged with manslaughter after their 14 month old daughter died of a lung infection after being treated with only prayer and anointment. While the common-law of the time did not encompass medical negligence for the charge of manslaughter and the couple was acquitted, the result was the first law pertaining specifically to the rights of children in the form of provided food, shelter, clothing, and medical aid from their parents. It would take another decade for this law to be upheld in court cases against the Peculiar People, and many of the members continued to come on trial for the deaths of their children despite the known legal consequences. This law would be later used in US courts as precedent in similar cases. Next Peters takes a look at the migration of faith healing to the United States and the reform in laws protecting children that took place during the mid to late 1800s, such as the beginning of government intervention in cases of neglect and abuse. John Alexander Dowie is one of the main figures responsible for the dramatic rise in faith healing in the United States. Migrating to Chicago from Sydney, Australia, Dowie and his ministry vehemently refuted medicine and practiced healing strictly from a narrow interpretation of the Epistle of James. Dowie and his followers were in and out of the US courts throughout the 1890s and early 1900s, with courts struggling to hold any type of conviction. Public opinion, however, condemned Dowie as a fraud and he was eventually forced to lea