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The 1973 CT Kuhlman Interview Questions and Answers

The July 20, 1973, issue of the Evangelical magazine, Christianity Today published an "interview" with well-known charismatic evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman. Actually the magazine had submitted forty-one questions to her and she sent back, on audio tape, lengthy replies to all except questions 17, 18 and 24. (The Archives does not have a list of the original questions.) The published "interview" contained only a small fraction of the material on the three and a half hours of tapes.

Harold Lindsell was the editor of CT at the time and the Archives has his papers, Collection 192. Included in the papers were the ten tapes of Kuhlman's replies on which the magazine article was based. Those audio files can now be hear in full through this web page. Below are the questions the editors asked, group according to the tape that they are on in Collection 192. Click on the word Answer after each question to hear Miss Kuhlman's reply. Comments below in brackets [] are from the Archives staff.

* * * * * *



Kuhlman's introductory comments

From Tape T99
Q1. You increasingly represent the last hope of the seriously ill. Is this not an awesome as well as a thrilling responsibility?
ANSWER (12 minutes)

Q2. You don't bother to answer critics and skeptics but would you grant that there are some Christians who have some honest, conscientious doubts about your ministry, and if so, do they deserve to know more about what you believe and how you operate than you normally state publicly?
ANSWER (4 minutes, 40 seconds)

Q3. Do you feel it fair to come under journalistic scrutiny from questioners who may not be entirely sympathetic with your ministry?
ANSWER (2 minutes, 49 seconds)


From Tape T100
Q4. Was Aimee Semple McPherson any specific model to you?
ANSWER (4 minutes, 19 seconds)

Q5. How do you conceive your calling? How and when did you get it?
ANSWER (8 minutes, 45 seconds)

Q6. In what church and denomination were you ordained?
ANSWER (4 minutes, 3 seconds)

Q7. Are your books audited and your financial statements available?
ANSWER (53 seconds)

Q8. What is the purpose of your Foundation?
ANSWER (2 minutes, 14 seconds)


From Tape T101
Q9. How effective has your TV ministry been? What has been the response in numbers of letters?
ANSWER (6 minutes, 18 seconds)

Q10. What is the role and place of speaking in tongues and what is its relationship to justification and sanctification? Is it a sign or the sign of the Spirit's control?
ANSWER (11 minutes, 10 seconds)

Q11. Do you feel that you have the gift of healing? What gift do you have?
ANSWER (4 minutes, 35 seconds)

From Tape T102
Q12. How do you regard your relationship to the institutional church, and what role and importance do you personally assign to the institutional church?
ANSWER (13 minutes)

Q13. What do you think of the Jesus Movement--its strengths and weaknesses?
ANSWER (4 minutes)

From Tape T103
Q14. How have you overcome the disreputable cloud regarding "faith-healers"? Has the self-confessed hypocrisy of Marjoe affected you or your ministry in any way? [Marjoe Gortner was a faith healer who in 1972 had released a documentary about himself entitled Marjoe, in which he admitted he was not a Christian believer and depicted his "ministry" as an effort to raise money.]

ANSWER (8 minutes, 41 seconds)

Q15. What is your definition of a miracle? How unusual does a phenomenon have to be to warrant that designation?
ANSWER (4 minutes, 11 seconds)

Q16. What do you mean by "coming under the power"? What is the biblical criterion for such an experience?
ANSWER (10 minutes, 8 seconds)


From Tape T104
Q16. Continuation from previous tape.

Q17. [None]
Q18. [None]

Q19. Do you find any hindrance to your work because you are a woman?
ANSWER (5 minutes, 12 seconds)

Q20. Why are there not more women preachers?
ANSWER (1 minute, 10 seconds)

Q21. What do you think of "Women's Lib"?
ANSWER (3 minutes, 10 seconds)

Q22. What kind of education do you advocate for young people today?
ANSWER (5 minutes, 30 seconds)

Q23. What do you think of the current physical fitness kick--health spas, natural foods, dieting, and so forth?
ANSWER (3 minutes, 20 seconds)

Q24. [None]


From Tape T105
Q25. How do you feel about abortion?
ANSWER (2 minutes)

Q26. What was your purpose in seeing the Pope? What was said between you? [Kuhlman met with Pope Paul VI in the Vatican on October 11, 1972.]
ANSWER (5 minutes, 54 seconds)

Q27. What is your interpretation of James 5:14? [" Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord." King James Version] Do you use oil? Do you regard yourself as an elder?
ANSWER (4 minutes, 14 seconds)

Q28. How do you interpret Paul's and Peter's apparent injunction against women speaking, in I Timothy 2:11 and 12? ["Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." King James Version]
ANSWER (8 minutes, 41 seconds)

Q29. Do you feel that all sick people should come to you?
ANSWER (1 minute, 45 seconds)

From Tape T106
Q30. What is your comment to Christians who come to your meetings and go away without having been healed?
ANSWER (6 minutes, 50 seconds)

Q31. Do you think that there is any correlation between your ministry of healing and such phenomena as ESP?
ANSWER (1 minute)

Q32. Is there healing in the Atonement? Did Christ die to relieve us of out physical as well as spiritual infirmities? Do you keep tabs on the ratio of spiritual and physical healings? Can, or should, a believer have one without the other?
ANSWER (8 minutes, 22 seconds)

Q33. What is your concept of illness?
ANSWER (3 minutes, 7 seconds)

Q34. To what extent is individual health related to social or cosmic health? Does our social mind set have much to do with the physical health of individuals?
ANSWER (5 minutes, 24 seconds)


From Tape T107 [The next two questions were combined.]
Q35. What is the most common ailment that people come to you with? Is there illness or handicap that you would not have the faith to pray to correct?

Q36. How much depends upon your faith and your praying for an individual? Can a person be filled with the Spirit and yet not have enough faith to be healed?
ANSWER to questions Q35 and Q36 (20 minutes, 58 seconds)

From Tape T108
Q37. Why do so few people have the gift of healing?
ANSWER (21 minutes, 22 seconds)


From Tape T109
Q38. To what extent are the healings you witness the result of the removal of a psychosomatic origin? Is anxiety the cause of most illnesses?
ANSWER (16 minutes)

Q39. How much knowledge do you have of medicine and therapeutic science?
ANSWER (3 minutes, 22 seconds)

Q40. What do you regard as the ultimate goal of your ministry?
ANSWER (62 seconds)

Q41. How do you understand the apparent desire of Jesus and the disciples not to publish certain instances of healing?
ANSWER (1 minute, 42 seconds)

 

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Last Revised: October 1, 2011
Expiration: indefinite

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