Return of Fuller Class on Miracles Is Delayed

Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena has canceled an experimental and highly popular course on miracles that included a “lab” session in which students were often purportedly healed of ailments.

The class, which has drawn the maximum 250 students since it started in 1982, eventually became what faculty member Jack Rogers called “the most deeply divisive issue on campus in my 15 years here.”

Praying to heal fellow students was a regular part of the course’s healing sessions, which were led by an Anaheim pastor who heads a Pentecostal-like church movement. A revised version of the course is expected to return in the 1986-87 school year, but officials said it will first have to be justified academically and probably will not feature the charismatic “lab” leader, the Rev. John Wimber.

‘Gifts of the Holy Spirit’

It was a daring experiment for the nation’s second largest seminary, a conservative Protestant school of nearly 3,000 students with a predominantly Presbyterian tone based on rational thought. By contrast, Pentecostal theology emphasizes the “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” such as healing, speaking in tongues, prophecy and everyday manifestations of the supernatural--which appear to many Christians to be highly emotional, usually unverifiable and subject to abuse.

Officials of the School of World Mission--one of three schools within the seminary--said the course was started to equip missionary-minded students with experiences in praying for the sick and dealing with claims about the supernatural.

“It’s a very important part of Christian life and piety in Asia, Africa and Latin America,” said Paul Pierson, dean of the School of World Missions.

But the seminary’s School of Theology decided by last spring that their students could no longer be allowed to take the course partly because of questions raised by the healings in the absence of authentication.

“There are things that are appropriate when done in a church that are not appropriate in an academic setting,” said Rogers, professor of philosophical theology and associate provost for church relations. A course on the theology of baptism does not include actual baptisms in class, he said. “To actually purport to do healing within a class structure is, I feel, inappropriate,” he said.

Belief in Healing

Rogers said the theology school faculty is almost unanimous in believing that healing occurs even today (and not simply in biblical times) and that a course in the subject is legitimate if it is given historical and analytical treatment.

After questions were raised by students and faculty members, a convocation to discuss the course was held last October. It was decided that after a committee reviewed the course content and recommended changes, the course, last given in January, 1985, will be offered again “next year,” which many Fuller students interpreted as this spring quarter.

However, a succinct notice published Friday in the school’s weekly newsletter announced that the course, entitled The Miraculous in Church Growth, will not be offered this year.

“This decision was taken to permit time to review the biblical, theological, historical and statistical foundations of God’s usual and unusual interventions in the human process,” the notice said.

The “statistical” analysis refers to follow-up studies conducted, especially by the Roman Catholic Church, on purported cures at Lourdes and elsewhere, according to Larry DenBesten, the seminary’s new provost.

‘Do Our Science’

“Fuller has chosen to say at this moment that we want to go back and do our science,” DenBesten said. A former missionary surgeon in Africa, DenBesten was professor and chairman of gastrointestinal surgery at UCLA from 1977 until he assumed his new post this month. “We need to test the validity of our perceptions,” he said.

Steve Bowie, Fuller’s student body president, said many students hoped the miracles course would be offered again in the spring. “Some students came here just for this course,” he said.

One student who took the course said he was “tremendously disappointed” that Fuller has pulled back from continuing the course in its previous form. “If nothing else, it was a mind-opening experience,” Marion Phipps said.

Hand Was Swollen

On occasion the pastor-leader or a member of the class would say that someone in the room had a particular ailment but would not identify the person further. Once, Phipps said, his right hand was sore and swollen, and although it was not noticeable, a woman stood up in class and said that someone’s right hand was hurting.

“I stood up, and she came over and prayed,” Phipps said. “The swelling, redness and soreness went down within the hour.”

Phipps also said he witnessed two apparent “lengthenings” of class members’ “short” legs during prayer. He felt one was real, but the other wasn’t. “The issue is that there are always charlatans. How do you differentiate the real from the false?” he said.

Peter Wagner, a Fuller professor who gave the lectures for the course, was in South Africa this week and unavailable for comment.

Wimber, an adjunct professor who led the class’s healing sessions, said that on student evaluation reports “90% said they were able to pray for the sick more effectively” after taking the course. He said he believed the course achieved its goal of training people to go to Third World countries with techniques for “healing the sick and casting out demons.”

Concern for Image Denied

Fuller officials said the class was not canceled out of concern for the seminary’s public image. Most of the healings involved minor ailments, spokesman Hugh James said. “We weren’t becoming known as Lourdes of Pasadena.”

However, officials acknowledged that some faculty members were perturbed that Wimber in appearances on religious television or at Christian conferences would often be misidentified as a regular faculty member of the school.

Wimber, 52, said he will not be upset if he is not asked to teach regularly in the class. “If it ends, it ends,” he said. His Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Anaheim “has embraced and/or spawned about 140 other churches in America and is in the process of planting more,” he noted.

Pierson, the world missions dean, said that although Wimber will probably not be back in the same role, he might be invited to the class as a guest lecturer. “I have profound respect for John Wimber,” he said.

“The church has been praying for the sick for 2,000 years,” Pierson said. “Whenever there is a renewal in church history, there is always spurious activity around the edges--those who misapply valid ideas. There has been some alarm that this might happen; I’m not saying it did.

“We have no intention of giving up the course. We look on it as a very exciting experiment.”