Agnes Sanford: Apostle of Healing and First Theologian of the Charismatic Renewal, Part 2, by William L. De Arteaga

In a story related to this author by Mrs. Barbara Schlemon, Agnes was scheduled to give a healing lecture in a nearby town, and the minister who was to drive her found her in her home amidst her house plants with arms upraised and deeply in prayer. He asked Agnes what she was doing and she said “I’m praising the Lord with my prayer group, and they are doing a better job!” Psalm 96:11-12 would support this unusual view:

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the Lord, for he comes, (NIV)

Agnes wrote a powerful book on this aspect of her spiritual life, Creation Waits (1978). In it, she gives multiple examples of her experiences with nature prayers. In her view, the secret to prayer power in this area is standing in the authority of a child of God:

“It is far more effective to talk directly to sea or sky, wind or storm, than simply to ask God to do this or that. We are God’s agents upon this earth. When praying for people we ask in His name and by His power, because we so often lack the necessary understanding of the people for whom we pray. In praying for nature, however, it is more effective to speak directly to wind or storm or tempest. That, after all is the way Jesus stilled the storm. “Peace, be still!”⁴⁶

Pat Robertson, of “The 700 Club,” used a similar prayer and command to veer a hurricane away from the Virginia coast. His prayer, although successful (the hurricane suddenly turned out to sea) became a point of ridicule and a negative factor in his 1988 presidential bid. Needless to say, Mrs. Sanford’s nature ministry to nature seemed especially “far out” to more traditional, cessationist-influenced Christians and added ammunition to the charge that she was a shaman.

Mrs. Sanford’s later theology was quite insightful and prophetic. She felt many charismatics were immature, and divisive of the unity of the church as a whole. Her book, The Healing Gifts of the Spirit (1966) was written in the early years of the Renewal and there she warned her readers that receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit was “strong medicine.” A person who has a weak self-concept, or a poorly disciplined Christian life, may have serious problems handling the energies of the Holy Spirit⁴⁷ She was particularly leery of the value that the new charismatics placed on the gifts of tongues. Especially destructive, she believed, was their doctrine of “initial evidence,” derived from the older Pentecostals. She saw that this belief often produced nothing more than subconscious babble, an opinion often mentioned among charismatic leaders, but rarely written.⁴⁸

Tags: apostle, charismatic, healing, renewal, sanford

Category: Church History, Summer 2006