Outchurched

From The Guardian: (emphasis added)

Apparently this faith healer can’t be healed of her exceptional ability to capitalize on her brother’s cancer:

Darlene Bishop, a tele-evangelist with a nationwide following, does not do things by half. When she and her husband Lawrence erected a statue of Jesus on the grounds of their mega church in Monroe, Ohio, they made it 62 feet high.

No less gargantuan are her claims about the power of prayer to overcome illness. Through a series of sermons, books and a television show, Sisters, broadcast on religious satellite channels throughout the US and abroad, she preaches that God has the power to heal even the most deadly diseases, including cancer.

But the contention is now the subject of a court action. Four of Mrs. Bishop’s relatives are suing her over her claim that God cured their father - her brother - of throat cancer. He died of the disease 18 months ago.

In her book Your Life Follows Your Words, Mrs Bishop tells how she overcame her breast cancer through prayer, and how her brother was also cured. There is no mention of his death in the book, which she says is due to the fact that it was published at a time when he had been in remission for more than a year.

But the volume is still on sale through her website (price $15) under the blurb: “How God healed her of breast cancer and her brother healed from throat cancer”.

…

His children, Bryan, Justin, Olivia and Christian, have issued a lawsuit for wrongful death against Mrs Bishop because they claim she persuaded Perry to stop chemotherapy and rely instead on God’s healing. They contend in legal depositions that at the moment Mrs Bishop and her brother were touring the country preaching about the miracle of his recovery, they were both aware that he had been advised by doctors that his illness was terminal.

The incomparable J-Walk Blog post on Mrs. Bishop contains a bit more wtf-ness regarding her ability to grow her breasts from a c-cup to a d-cup by merely adding lip gloss before walking through the metal detector at the airport… and as, always, the comments over at J-Walk are worth a read.

This entry was posted by Rev. Dan on Saturday, January 6th, 2007 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Media, Christlikeness?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.