The 'Toronto Blessing': A Holistic Model of Healing

Abstract

National and regional surveys that have included items on healing suggest that a significant minority of Americans claim to have experienced a divine or miraculous healing. Many of them are involved in a Pentecostal or charismatic (P/c) approach to Christianity, a recent offspring of which is the 'Toronto Blessing,' a modern revival having its origins at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship. P/c Christians promote a worldview in which the power of God freely moves through and among believers and in which healing is regarded as supernaturally natural, Using a model implicit in McGuire's qualitative research on P/c healing as a framework for multivariate analysis, the effects of ritual participation, physical manifestations and emotional responses on four types of healing are explored in a sample of 918 Toronto pilgrims.