Can patients with advanced stomach cancer be cured by punching them in the gut, especially if the blow comes, in the name of God, from a faith healing pastor?

According to Newt Gingrich's Faith Coalition Leader Dutch Sheets, the answer is yes.

As a new story in The Nation by journalist Mariah Blake, Christian Dominionists Go Gingrich, describes, Dutch Sheets is one of a number of New Apostolic Reformation leaders who are now backing the presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich.

Follwing Gingrich's upset win in the 2012 North Carolina Republican primary, Sheets endorsed the Gingrich effort and then joined Gingrich's hastily scrambled Faith Leaders Coalition, which is dominated by C. Peter Wagner's NAR.

Speaking at The Ramp ministry in Hamilton, Alabama, on November 20, 2010, Sheets described being present onstage in the 1970s when his father, a charismatic pastor, healed a woman with an advanced stomach tumor, by hitting her in the gut, "as hard as he could", with a stage microphone.

As Dutch Sheets told his audience, the woman's stomach, which made her look "seven months pregnant", then deflated to normal size.

The form of faith healing, through violent physical assault, that Sheets described was a common occurrence at the 2008 Lakeland, Florida revival headed by evangelist Todd Bentley, the subject of a 2008 Southern Poverty Law Center report.

Bentley's violent "faith healing" can seen in this footage, broadcast on God TV, in which Todd Bentley kicks in the stomach a man who is advertised as having Metastatic Stage 4 Colon Cancer.

The cancer patient doubles over from the kick and falls to his knees. Bentley tells him, "I had to be obedient to the Lord, sir, but I believe that colon cancer is coming right out of your body, in the name of Jesus." Bentley goes on, "Now, you're probably feeling a little more pain now. Look, when we're dealing with cancer, sometimes, it's a spirit. We're going to draw it out."

While Dutch Sheets, notably, did not endorse the ministry of Todd Bentley, who became heavily controversial among evangelicals for his violent faith healing tactics and unusual theological claims, Bentley was endorsed (see footage of the public event) by a broad coalition that included International Coalition of Apostles head C. Peter Wagner and other top NAR leaders including Rick Joyner, Randy Clark, Che Ahn (now Chancellor of the Wagner Leadership Institute), Bill Johnson, John Arnott, and Stacey Campbell.

In a February 19, 2009 podcast Dutch Sheets detailed an ambitious Internet-driven plan to "infect" one million young Americans per year with the dominionist Seven Mountains ideological imperative - that believers should infiltrate and take places of influence in key sectors of society and culture. The 7 Mountains are: business and finance, religion, the family, education, media, arts and entertainment, and government. (see here, for extended story)