Methodists Start Investigation of Spiritual Healing

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 276, 22 November 1935, Page 9

Methodists Start Investigation of Spiritual Healing

LONDON—The “live issue” of spiritual healing is being investigated here by 16 Methodist doctors, ministers and laymen. This committee was appointed by the recent Methodist Conference at Bristol to “consider the whole question of spiritual healing.” The results of its investigations will be reported to the next Methodist Conference in July, 1936, by the convener, the Rev. Leslie D. Weatherhead of Leeds.

Mr Weatherhead, who first raised the question at the Bristol Conference, is a psychologist and' has published several books on psychology. At Bristol he said that some'of them wanted a great ciiiirch to inhke a great pronouncement upon a great subject. But the first thing to do, he suggested, was to appoint a committee “which would have the power rather of a commission of inquiry. ’ ’

There are a large number of people who are ill, Mr Weatherhead declared, whose troubles are neither physical nor mental, but spiritual. The disharmony, he said, was not of the body and not just bntp'ccn the mind-and the world of affairs' It was a disharmony between the soul and God. A great many sufferers were not treated adequately either by the doctor of the body or the lay psychotherapist.

A great many methods practiced under the heading of spiritual healing “arc not altogether sound,” Mr Weatherhead went on. “Some of us feel that all methods which are hostile to the findings of modern medicine and surgery are not to be regarded as sound methods, and that any method which is to be practiced, must be one which is going hand-in-hand with the discoveries of medicine, and surgery.”

What was wanted, he suggested, was a committee of doctors and laymen to find out what methods were sound, to correlate idqas, to gather evidence and to see if any valuable approchmcut was possible in tho future between the ministerial profession and the medical profession.

Mr Weatlierhead's proposal was seconded by D.r. E. S. Waterhouse, of EiChmond College, who declared that spiritual healing was one of the live issues in the religious life of to-day which the conference should face. Thero was, ho added, an enormous interest in people’s minds in that question, and such an interest could be exploited in undesirable directions. Therefore, he believed Methodists should be given some guidance in the .matter. jTho committee was appointed by the coherence without further discussion.