Shadows of Perfection: Illness, Disability, and Sin in American Religious Healing, from the Civil War to World War I

In the late nineteenth century three major religious healing movements---evangelical divine healing, Christian Science, and New Thought---emerged and thrived in the United States. While these movements diverged from one another in significant ways, they all emphasized the potential perfectibility of both soul (or "mind") and body. Together, they were a substantial force in challenging traditional Calvinist notions of the potentially salvific power of illness and disability experiences. This dissertation examines ideas, metaphorical references, and narratives about illness and disability in the writings of participants in these movements. It argues that all three religious movements maintained a strong etiological linkage between sin and bodily malfunction, even as they promised the possibility of the abolition of both. In so doing, these movements challenged associations that would link worldly weakness and impotency with religion, and thereby encouraged Americans to see spiritual power as a force that could change all aspects of their lives. Inevitably, however, dreams of perfectible, "normal" bodies promoted in these movements implied a shadow-world of ill and disabled ones. Ultimately, those people whose bodies remained impaired were implicitly cast as religious, as well as worldly, failures. These movements became important sources from which many twentieth- and twenty-first-century Americans drew ideas as they sought to understand the relationship between mental, spiritual, and physical health and are thus important to consider if we seek to interpret vernacular religious attitudes towards illness and disability today.