John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907).
Faith
healer, founder of Zion 
City, Illinois, and
the Christian Catholic Church. Dowie—who became a prominent advocate of
healing-–was a sickly child. When he was thirteen his family migrated to
Australia, where he began to earn his living. At the age of twenty he
decided to enter the ministry and began to prepare for the university. In
1868 he left Australia for Edinburgh University, where he studied at the
Free Church School. After three years, Dowie returned On April 1, 1872, he
accepted a call to the Congregational Church in Alma. The next year he took
a church in Manly Beach. In 1875 he moved again, this time to a church in
the Sydney" suburb of Newton. There, he later claimed, he became convinced
of the practical message of healing.
On May 26, 1876, Dowie married his cousin; In 1878 he left the
Congregational Church and launched an independent ministry, first in Sydney
and later in Melbourne. After an unsuccessful try for a seat in the
Australian parliament, Dowie gained ‘notoriety,' for his stubborn
opposition to the he liquor traffic. During the 1880s he also renewed his
focus on healing.
Dowie and his wife and their two
children (William Gladstone and Esther) migrated to the U.S. in 1888. After
two years of itinerant healing evangelism, which rook him to many parts of
the country. Dowie established a base of operations in Evanston, Illinois,
in 1890. During the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, he conducted meeting across
the street from popular attractions, and his ministry began to grow as
people testified to healings. He started a publication1 Leaves
of Healing, and opened a divine healing home in Chicago. Local
controversy only increased his audiences. Soon several homes and an
enlarged publishing effort took shape, and Dowie began conducting services
in his spacious Zion Tabernacle. In 1895 Dowie organized his followers into
the Christian Catholic Church.
Intensely evangelistic, Dowie stressed
consecration and holiness and welcomed participation from blacks and women.
The primary focus of his however, was healing. Dowie insisted that
those who sought his prayers relinquish all medicine, and, instead,
exercise faith. He also demanded that his followers abstain from use of all
pork products. Stubborn and aggressive, Dowie seemed to welcome conflict:
over the years, his sharp criticism alienated virtually every other
significant American exponent of divine healing.
I
(click image for larger picture)
n 1900 Dowie unveiled plans for a religious
community that would be molded by his own views of what a holy society
should be. The community—known as Zion City and located north of Chicago on
Lake Michigan--~grew to approximately six thousand persons during the next
few years. Dowie, meanwhile, became increasingly eccentric. He reasserted
his restorationist hopes and announced in 1901 that he was the prophesied
Elijah, the Restorer. In 1904 he told his followers to anticipate the full
restoration of apostolic Christianity and revealed that he had been divinely
commissioned the first apostle of a renewed end-times church.
In September 1905, as Dowie prepared to
announce plans for the planting of Zions in other areas, he suffered a
stroke. This followed several major confrontations with critics, first in
New York during a much heralded visitation in 1903, then in Australia, where
his attacks on the vices of the reigning British monarch gained
international press attention. While traveling in the interests of both his
health and his Zion in 1906, he lost control of his community. Individuals
there had suffered severely as a result of financial mismanagement. He died
in 1907, disgraced and ignored bv most of the thousands who had acclaimed
him.
Dowie's end-time expectations, his message
of divine healing, and his restorationist vision made him an important
forerunner of Pentecostalism. Many of his followers accepted Pentecostal
views; some became prominent leaders in a movement that regarded itself as
an end-time restoration. Most Pentecostal leaders with roots in Zion
affiliated with the Assemblies of God. Some, however, more committed to a
thoroughgoing restorationism, moved on into Oneness Pentecostalism.
Bibliography: G. Lindsay, John
Alexander Dowie (reprinted 1980); G. Wacker, Marching to Zion” Church History 54 (December 1985): 496-511.
E. L. Blumhofer
