Ex-Surgeon General Calls Faith Healing the ‘Most Rank Form of Arrogance’

Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop says faith healing is bunk. But the pediatric surgeon bases his diagnosis on his theological, not his medical, credentials.

Dr. Koop’s denunciation of faith healing is contained in his contribution to a new book, “The Agony of Deceit: What Some TV Preachers Are Really Teaching” (Moody Press).

The book, a collection principally of articles by evangelicals accusing some television evangelists of heresy, was edited by Michael Horton, an Anaheim pastor and president of Christians United for Reformation.

Koop attacked television evangelists who contend that sickness is a sign of sin and that those who are not healed lack enough faith.

“Contrary to what many televangelists will tell you,” he wrote, “there is no connection between specific sin and the judgment of God, in the sense of retributive justice.”

Koop based his criticism on his views as a “Bible-believing evangelical Christian” who believes that God worked miracles in biblical times.

“When a faith healer commands God to perform a miracle, in the absence of a prayer that says ‘Thy will be done,’ ” Koop said, “it is, so far as I am concerned, the most rank form of arrogance. If it were the sovereign will of God that humans be healed of all illness and all afflictions, all humans would be immortal. Isn’t death, after all, the ultimate illness?”