Kathryn Kuhlman (1907—1976)
Country of Origin
Countries/Regions of Ministry
Traditions
Ministries
Kathryn Kuhlman helped to reshape Pentecostal/Charismatic theology and praxis by introducing
a new depth of awareness of the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit. She popularized
the experience of being “slain in the Spirit,” but her most notable innovation resulted
from discarding healing lines, cards, and healing theology based upon the faith of
adherents. Instead, she invited pilgrims into a transcendent experience of the manifest
presence of the Holy Spirit, which rested upon a foundation of love.
Humble beginnings provided Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman with a perspective she never lost:
“Everybody wants to be a big preacher, a great preacher, a famous preacher, a wealthy
man, a celebrity…I know where I began. I know from whence I have come.” (Where she came from: b. May 9, 1907, where, parents, school/church).
Raised on the American Pentecostal Sawdust Trail, schooled at the feet of Pentecostal
masters such as Aimee Semple McPherson and A. B. Simpson, and widely lauded by the
Charismatic movement that swept North America in the mid-century, Kuhlman was rarely
benefitted by the embrace of any group. Her services, although deeply spiritual, were
a far departure from normative Pentecostal experience. Kuhlman introduced an entirely
new way of understanding healing as well as a new methodology for practicing the gift
of healing. Heretofore, classical Pentecostal healing evangelists employed several
standard strategies for demonstrating and administrating their gifts of healings by
moving their enormous crowds through long healing lines. Often, seekers were lined
up for hours while one-by-one the evangelist and other attendants would anoint each
person with oil, lay hands of each individual head, and pray specifically for whichever
disease or malady the seeker might communicate.
Sawdust trail evangelists often accused the sick individual of lacking the prerequisite
faith if he or she went home unhealed following their services. Kuhlman lamented:
Too often I had seen pathetically sick people dragging their tired, weakened bodies
home from a healing service, having been told that they were not healed simply because
of their own lack of faith. My heart ached for these people as I knew how they struggled,
day after day, trying desperately to obtain more faith, taking out that which they
had, and trying to analyze it, in a hopeless effort to discover its deficiency which
was presumably keeping them from the healing power of God. And I knew their defeat,
because they were unwittingly looking at themselves, rather than to God.[8]
Although Kuhlman based her understanding of the justification for healing in the atonement,
she went another step to anchor her theology in the manifest presence and person of
the Holy Spirit. She wrote, “The secret of the power of the healing of sick bodies
is found in the person of the Holy Spirit.”[9] Her understanding of healing did not stop there, however. For Kuhlman, the access
of faith rested not in a doctrinal understanding but in Christ’s love.
In 1947?, inspired by this new revelation, Kuhlman preached a series on the Holy Spirit. As
she delivered her message, she shook under the power herself. The next day, a woman came up to her and claimed she had been healed of a cancerous tumor while
Kuhlman had been speaking. Kuhlman considered this the “beginning of miracles” in
her ministry.[10] From 1947 onward, her ministry would be characterized by the ministry of healing.[11]
In time, Kuhlman would announce or “call out” miracles in various sections of her
auditoriums and invite those who felt themselves to be healed to join her on the platform.
Customary at her services, the evangelist neither formed healing lines for seekers
nor laid hands on heads. Instead, she simply declared that a healing was taking place
in the seating area in which a seeker was located, a method some called a word of
knowledge or divinely imparted information regarding the Holy Spirit’s healing activity.
The individual might attest to experiencing a sensation and some change in symptoms,
and therefore would be invited to the platform to share the perception. Later, that
person would be advised to seek the confirmation of a medical doctor before medicines
or treatments were discontinued.
Kuhlman held regular services attended by thousands in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Oakland,
Miami, Chicago, and other major cities throughout the U.S. and Canada. She also held
meetings in Sweden in 1974 and in Jerusalem in 1974 and 1975.[2] Weekly television shows were broadcast throughout the United States and Canada for
more than a decade until her death in 1976; 490 half-hour shows were televised by
CBS Television in Los Angeles. Fifty radio stations carried her 30-minute broadcasts,
five days a week, covering most of the U.S. and Canada. Overseas broadcasts reached
much of Europe.[3] Newspapers around the world carried her name, and even Laugh-In’s Ruth Buzzi hammed
her gestures and voice, in an act that Kuhlman enjoyed and responded to with a letter
and a gift of flowers.[4]
The scale and depth of Kuhlman’s ministry was predicated upon a pivotal event that
occurred early in her career. She often reflected about a time when she said she “died
to self” and surrendered all to God. This “death” to her own desires included her
decision to leave the previously married Burroughs Waltrip and live as a single woman, laying aside her longings for companionship and family.
As an author, Kuhlman produced three full-length, hardcover books published by Prentice-Hall
and later released in paperback by Pyramid, and republished by Bridge Publishing[5] in 1992 and 1993. Books she authored include I Believe in Miracles (1962), which sold more than two million copies; God Can Do It Again (1969), Nothing Is Impossible with God (1974). She also authored seven companion books published through Bethany Fellowship.[6]
By the time of her death, February 20, 1976, millions around the world, believers
and skeptics alike, attested to the healing virtue displayed in Kuhlman’s ministry.
A New York Times obituary recognized that she was unusually touched by a spiritual presence, reporting:
Kathryn Kuhlman, regarded by devotees and doubters alike as one of America’s most
popular evangelists and faith healers, died Friday at Hillcrest Medical Center in
Tulsa, Okla., where she had been since undergoing open-heart surgery Dec. 28. … For
more than a quarter century, Miss Kuhlman crisscrossed the nation, holding prayer
and healing sessions and inducing "miracles," which she attributed to God, but which
skeptics labeled psychosomatic.”[1]
She never built a building or erected a church but, through the Kathryn Kuhlman Foundation,
she made numerous charitable donations to ministries and missions, including college
scholarships to Wheaton College, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, National Medical
College in Hong Kong, Evangel College, Kent State University, Carnegie Mellon University,
and Oral Roberts University.[7] Although a towering figure, Kuhlman always seemed approachable and familiar. She
touched multitudes, but she never lost touch with her humble roots.
Margaret English de Alminana
Southeastern University
Notes
[1] Gary Settle, (February 22, 1976). "Kathryn Kuhlman, Evangelist And Faith Healer,
Dies in Tulsa." New York Times. Retrieved 2020-6-15.
[2] Kathryn Kuhlman, vitae provided by Carol Gray, executive director of the Kathryn
Kuhlman Foundation, 4411 Stilley Road, Brentwood, PA., 11/19/2010, 2.
[3] Kathryn Kuhlman, vitae provided by Carol Gray.
[4] “A Biographical Survey of 20th Century Female Pentecostal Leadership and an Incipient
Egalitarian Struggle,” Margaret English de Alminana (Ph.D. diss., Glyndŵr University,
U.K., 2011).
[5] The company was renamed Bridge-Logos Publishing after Bridge merged with Logos
International.
[6] Kathryn Kuhlman, vitae provided by Carol Gray, executive director of the Kathryn
Kuhlman Foundation, 4411 Stilley Road, Brentwood, PA., 11/19/2010, 2.
[7] Kathryn Kuhlman, vitae provided by Carol Gray, 3.
[8] Kathryn Kuhlman, I Believe in Miracles, (New York: Pyramid Books, 1962), p. 212.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] The cassette recording of Kuhlman’s message entitled “The Beginning of Miracles”
was one of the most requested, and was the first essay in a posthumous collection
of radio messages entitled “Heart to Heart With Kathryn Kuhlman.” The story was also
printed in a booklet entitled What Is the Key? which was published in the early 1960s. This pamphlet was offered during broadcasts
of I Believe in Miracles free of charge to anyone who requested it by self-addressed stamped envelope. The
standard narrative Kuhlman recounted regarding the beginning of miracles in her ministry
is contained in these two versions. Kathryn Kuhlman, What is the Key? Box 1, Collection
212, The Kathryn Kuhlman Collection, Archives of the Billy Graham Center, Wheaton,
IL., in Artman, Amy Collier, “’The Miracle Lady’: Kathryn Kuhlman and the Gentrification
of Charismatic Christianity in Twentieth-Century America,” (PhD diss., The University
of Chicago Divinity School, 2009), p. 65.
For Further Reading:
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Kuhlman, Kathryn. Greatest Power in the World. Bridge-Logos, 2008.
- Kuhlman, Kathryn. I Believe in Miracles. Bridge-Logos, 1992.
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de Alminana, Margaret. Kathryn Kuhlman: A Theology of Miracles: Understanding Spiritual Encounter. Bridge-Logos, 2021.
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Buckingham, Jamie. Daughter of Destiny. Bridge-Logos, 1999.
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Artman, Amy Collier. The Miracle Lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the Transformation of Charismatic Christianity. Eerdmans, 2019.
©10/6/2026