On Wednesday, August 14, 1907, The Kansas City Star and The Kansas City Times published an article about a complaint made to health authorities regarding the healing practice of Charles Fillmore. There are other stories about Unity healing but to the best of my knowledge, this is the only independent account we have of the actual healing method used by Charles. Here is the full text of the story.

A “HEALER” SATISFIED HER.

One of the City Physicians Investigated but Wasn’t Needed.

H. C. Booe of 4121 Charlotte street went to the police headquarters Monday night to complain that Lottie Gerber, 17 years old, a friend, was ill at her home, 4035 West Prospect place, and that her father refused to call a doctor for her. He said Daniel S Gerber, the girl’s father, believed in “healers.”

“While we [were] there a healer came,” Booe said. “All he did was to rub her hands and say ‘Peace, Peace!’ Then he would say, ‘Now, I have caught the pain. I have hold of it with my hands.’ He would blow in his hands then and say, ‘There, the pain is all blown away now.’”

Booe was sent to the city physician’s office. Dr. Paul Lux went to investigate and found the girl, as well as her mother, in bed. The girl, he found, had typhoid fever complicated with muscular rheumatism. The mother was recovering from an illness following an attack of cholera morbus. Both were being treated by Charles Fillmore, president, of the local branch of the Unity Society of Practical Christianity, a “faith cure” sect. The girl was being prayed over, but at the same time she was being given the treatment prescribed by physicians for typhoid fever. She said she had never asked anyone to send for a doctor and was satisfied with the “healer’s” treatment. No action will be taken in the case.

Pastoral ministry is filled with opportunities for missteps. We can easily misunderstand problems, overpromise solutions and get in the way of effective healing methods. I share this story because it illustrates the humbleness of ministry as pastoral consciousness and skills, as practiced by one of our founders, Charles Fillmore.

He understood that the spiritual problem, as experienced by the young girl, was fear and pain. He might have recognized deeper issues and understood their cause, but he also knew that her immediate need was for some peace and freedom from pain. He spoke words of peace, and as he rubbed her hands, he tried to assure her that he had caught her pain and that peace was possible for her. Second, he did not promise any solution to her particular health problem.

Charles Fillmore knew that sickness affects our spiritual state of being as much as our physical well-being. He remained focused on the girl’s spiritual state as best he could, leading her to a peaceful image of being free from pain. Most importantly, he did not get in the way of any other healing pathway, which, in this case, was the medical care she received from physicians for typhoid fever.

I know how simplistic the healing methods described in this story might appear to an average reader. But the average reader needs to know that ministers, as God’s apparent servants, are asked to provide solutions for whatever problems science cannot address. That is not an easy task. So we do our best with the knowledge we have and the tools at hand. Hopefully, we will have the same humbleness that enabled Charles to foster healing without getting in the way of anyone’s quest for wholeness.

The following three insights describe my thoughts about pastoral ministry. The first two are grounded in the best of current social psychology and neuroscience scholarship. The final one, and the final one in this credo, addresses how I see pastoral ministry evolving when medicine is redefining the body. We need to go beyond disseminating Unity tracts[1]. If there is a call to action in this credo for my ministerial colleagues and friends, this is it.

[1] Unity Tracts. https://www.truthunity.net/tracts/about-unity-tracts