The miracle lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the transformation of Charismatic Christianity

The Historian ISSN: 0018-2370 (Print) 1540-6563 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rhis20 The miracle lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the transformation of Charismatic Christianity by Amy Collier Artman, Grand Rapids, MI, William B. Eerdmans, 2019, xii, 242 pp., $28.00 Scott Billingsley To cite this article: Scott Billingsley (2020) The miracle lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the transformation of Charismatic Christianity, The Historian, 82:1, 81-82, DOI: 10.1080/00182370.2020.1722446 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00182370.2020.1722446 Published online: 14 May 2020. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 26 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rhis20 THE HISTORIAN 81 patients, advocates, treatment providers, policymakers, and labor unions. The book concludes with the recent turn toward reducing prison populations in an era of lowered crime rates. However, when stigmatized ex-offenders and formerly hospitalized persons lack effective programs and resources, especially housing, they face formidable obstacles in community reintegration. Well into the twenty-first century, it is apparent that – in contrast to most other developed nations – political leaders have failed to implement effective, cost-efficient, humane, and universally available healthcare. Consequently, we continue to impede the recovery of those with mental illness and at great cost, a cost that, one way or another, we all bear. Arguably, the revolving door of homelessness and the criminal justice system is the more expensive, least therapeutic, and most shortsighted option. Fred E. Markowitz Northern Illinois University http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2026-791X © 2020 Fred E. Markowitz https://doi.org/10.1080/00182370.2020.1722510 The miracle lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the transformation of Charismatic Christianity, by Amy Collier Artman, Grand Rapids, MI, William B. Eerdmans, 2019, xii, 242 pp., $18.99 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-8028-7670-6 Amy Collier Artman has written the most important biography of Kathryn Kuhlman in a generation, and one hopes that this is the beginning of a renewed scholarly interest in Kuhlman’s life, ministry, and influence. Like many scholars of the Pentecostal and charismatic revivals, Artman focuses on respectability. How and why do sectarian religious groups move from the periphery to the center, and from the margins to the mainstream? She calls this phenomenon “gentrification,” and she renders it the organizing principle of her story. In fact, she maintains that “Kuhlman’s life provides an orienting narrative, a road map for studying the gentrification of charismatic Christianity” (8). Kuhlman, Artman contends, rejected the “faith healer” label and “considered herself more educated, more socioeconomically advantaged, more intelligent, more sophisticated, and more respectable” than the popular faith healers of her day (45). She presented a more restrained view of charismatic Christianity that was easier for mainstream American Christians to accept. Kuhlman’s decision to present testimonies rather than healing services on her first television program, Your Faith and Mine, allowed her to provide “a comfortably mediated experience of charismatic Christianity” that set her apart from her contemporaries (70). Artman further contends that Kuhlman does not receive the proper credit for her leadership of the healing and charismatic revivals. She places Kuhlman on a plane with Oral Roberts and Rex Humbard as a leader for these movements, arguing that she established and maintained successful radio and television ministries, pastored a church, and gained a national following as a healing evangelist. Artman is correct that Kuhlman should be recognized as a leader of the healing and charismatic revivals and should stand today alongside men such as Roberts and 82 BOOK REVIEWS Humbard. After all, she was the only woman on television in the 1950s and 1960s who was the head of her own ministry, carefully crafting her television image by always being center-stage while drawing on a supporting cast of men in the background. There was never any doubt that Kathryn Kuhlman was in charge. Artman’s contention, however, that charismatic Christianity was widely accepted by mainstream Christians is less convincing. Kuhlman rounded off the rough edges of the charismatic experience by displaying only tightly controlled testimonies and not full healing services. Her show was popular among mainstream Christians so long as it was not too exotic. As Artman points out, Kuhlman was popular partly because she was different from the other healing evangelists. She was more restrained and more sophisticated, i.e., she seemed “normal.” All of that changed when Kuhlman filmed a healing service in Las Vegas in 1975. On her TV shows, she and her guests talked about miraculous healings and being slain in the Spirit, but viewers of this film could now see “the same events with all their attendant chaos and emotion” (157). By removing “the mediating presence of testimony” and letting the public see a miracle service and all that this entailed, Kuhlman threatened the gentrified image she had so carefully crafted (157). Artman is absolutely correct that Kuhlman deserves a place alongside the male leaders of the healing and charismatic revivals. She has revived a discussion of one of the most important religious figures of the twentieth century, and I suspect that this book will further the conversation about the significance of women’s roles in these and other conservative movements. Scott Billingsley University of North Carolina at Pembroke © 2020 Scott Billingsley https://doi.org/10.1080/00182370.2020.1722446 Bourbon justice: how whiskey law shaped America, by Brian F. Haara, Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 2018, xiii, 182 pp., $26.95 (cloth), ISBN: 9781640120853 What exactly is bourbon? At its most basic level, bourbon is a type of whiskey made in the United States. Bourbon is defined by American law as a distilled beverage (between 80 and 40% alcohol by volume) made from a fermented mash of grains (at least 51% corn), stored in charred new oak containers (at no more than 62.5% alcohol by volume), and produced in the United States. This seemingly simple definition, established by Congress in 1964, represents the culmination of decades of legal cases that shaped what bourbon is and what it is not. Unlike the other types of “brown water” available at bars and stores, bourbon is a special product with a complicated legal history. Competition and innovation have created a great deal of variation between different bourbons. The grain recipe, period of aging, level of alcohol, and source or sources of the final product help define the packaging, look, smell, and taste of a bourbon. In Bourbon Justice: How Whiskey Law Shaped America, Brian F. Haara uses legal cases and commercial law to demonstrate that “no single commodity has contributed more to the development of American legal history than bourbon” (2). The author articulates three main points. First, he argues that bourbon is distinctively American. While other distilled spirits predated bourbon, he makes a case that the beverage was integral to the formation of American