Candy Gunther Brown if professor of religion at Indiana University and an expert on both the global charismatic movement as well as healing and how it is measured scientifically. As content creator for Pentecostals & Charismatics for Peace & Justice, I was able to conduct an interview with her which you can read here. An excerpt:

MICAEL GRENHOLM: You edited the anthology Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, which discusses various aspects of this international and rapidly spreading movement. In its final chapter, you write: ”The globalization of divine healing networks fuels the twin engines of supernaturalism and democratization, which together forcefully propel the global expansion of Christianity.” Could you expand on that? CANDY GUNTHER BROWN: People in the Global North are taking cues from Christians in the Global South who tend to pray more expectantly for healing. Likewise, Christians in the Global South have tended to rely on pastors and leaders to do the praying; they’ve taken cues from the expectation of Christians in the Global North that any believer can pray effectively for healing.

This is a very interesting thought. I’ve often said that the North should give more money to the South in order to fight poverty whereas the South should share revival fires to the North in return, and while I think that Brown agrees with that she points at something more fundamental. Church democracy is great and biblical (1 Cor 14:26) and it’s actually something besides finances that us Northeners are able to share to our brothers and sisters in the Majority World.

I was so blessed to see this video today from Iris Global showing how deaf are healed and people are saved when Heidi Baker and her team do outreach evangelism. Iris is an American missionary organization based in Mozambique that really get at what Brown is calling for. I know that Brown has visited and researched them.

What if there are things in Northern churches that are really good and God-given that other areas lack, despite the South having more church growth and seeing more miracles? It’s an interesting idea and yet another reason for the church to promote a global partnership of churches and international exchange. A global common purse where we have everything in common economically would be an amazing and radical way to put that in practice.