Kathryn Kuhlman

Background

Kathryn Kuhlman was born on May 9, 1907 in Concordia, Missouri, United States. She was the daughter of Joseph Kuhlman and Myrtle Walkenhorst. Her mother was a Methodist; her father, the mayor of Concordia, was a nominal Baptist who had a deep aversion to preachers. At age fourteen, she was converted under the ministry of a traveling evangelist, describing the experience as "my first contact with the power of God the beginning of everything. "

Education

At the age of sixteen, Kuhlman left school.

Career

Kuhlman went to Oregon to work with her sister, Myrtle, whose husband, Everett Parrott, was a Methodist evangelist. Kuhlman sang and played the piano for the Parrotts' small-town services. When her sister's stormy marriage came to an abrupt end, the two destitute women rented a hall in Boise, Idaho, and Kuhlman began a preaching ministry that would last until her death.

For the next ten years she held services throughout Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. Kuhlman finally settled in Denver, Colorado, in 1933 and built the Kuhlman Revival Tabernacle shortly thereafter. Aided by her first radio broadcasts, her storefront congregation grew to 2, 000 within three years.

Kuhlman spent the rest of her life fending off the disapproval of her constituents, attempting to keep the entire affair as secret as possible. After she left Waltrip, Kuhlman moved east, leaving Denver and the adverse publicity generated by her divorce. She covered a wide area of the middle Atlantic and southern states, but gradually spent more and more time in western Pennsylvania. The town of Franklin, where she began preaching in 1946, emerged as a base. At about the same time, the emphasis of Kuhlman's ministry shifted dramatically; some of her listeners claimed that they had been healed of various maladies during her sermons. Such claims led to increased demands for her preaching, and in 1948 Kuhlman held her first services in Pittsburgh's Carnegie Hall. By the early 1950's the healings had brought her national prominence. Kuhlman's meetings were centered on herself.

As Kuhlman's ministry grew, so did the trappings: impeccably dressed ushers, large choirs, and theatrical buildups to her appearance on stage. Critics questioned her extensive art collection, the vast array of gaudy dresses that she wore, and, toward the end of her career, her private jet. A deeply insecure woman, Kuhlman was an inflexible administrator. She was close to only a few trusted aides, two of whom remained with her for over thirty years.

Kuhlman's only relationship with a mainstream congregation was after 1968, when Pittsburgh's First Presbyterian Church allowed her to use its building for her meetings. However, she was never fully accepted by Pentecostals either: her failure to preach the necessity of a second "work of grace" accompanied by the supernatural phenomenon of speaking in tongues, and her description of Pentecostals as "fanatics, " made her an outcast in their eyes as well. She walked in a theological shadow world.

Kuhlman never took credit for the healings that occurred during her services, nor did she claim to know any formulas to effect them. Insisting that her primary goal was to "save souls, " she had an extremely strong view of the sovereignty of God in healing. "I cannot heal a single person, " she maintained. "God does the healing. Whom He heals and whom He chooses not to heal is His business. " Kuhlman's supporters produced medical evidence of the authenticity of the healings; her detractors cited the lack of medical evidence, maintaining that the ailments were self-diagnosed.

In 1965, Kuhlman went to Pasadena, California, at the invitation of some local pastors. Pasadena became a second base of her ministry, and she soon moved into the Shrine Auditorium, from which she conducted services during the final decade of her life. Radio broadcasts had long since become a normal part of her services, and in the late 1960's she began to produce television broadcasts as well.

The number of services that she conducted increased dramatically, as did the geographical range with several trips overseas. Close associates of Kuhlman maintained that the resulting pressures caused a severe decline in her health.

Achievements

• Kuhlman's book I Believe in Miracles sold more than one million copies; this and the CBS shows brought her worldwide fame and made her the best-known female evangelist since Aimee Semple McPherson.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Greatest Power In The World (A Spirit-Filled Classic)

    (No woman in the 20th century demonstrated the restoring a...)

  • Nothing Is Impossible With God: The Miracles Set

    (God honored the prayers of Kathryn Kuhlman: "Take not you...)

  • God Can Do It Again: The Miracle Set

    ("If you never meet Kathryn Kuhlman, you will not have mis...)

  • I Believe In Miracles: The Miracles Set

    (This was Kathryn Kuhlman's theme song, this was her life....)

  • Glimpse Into Glory (A Spirit-Filled Classic): Stories From The "Woman Of Miracles"

    (Thousands knew Kathryn Kuhlman as a "woman of miracles." ...)

Religion

Kuhlman's theology defied traditional categories. Though she eventually joined the American Baptist Convention, she disclaimed any specific doctrine, declaring that "God doesn't have preferences in theology. " Her greatest emphasis was on the Holy Spirit as the agent of God's salvation and healing; this gave her the appearance of being a Pentecostal. Conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, distrusting such doctrines as well as her claims of supernatural healings, held her at arm's length.

Personality

A tall, slender woman with auburn hair worn in a Shirley Temple style of long curls parted in the middle, Kuhlman possessed a radiant smile. She conducted her services with enormous energy and spoke in a dramatic yet folksy style.

Connections

In 1938, Kuhlman married Burroughs A. Waltrip, whom she had met when he had appeared as a guest preacher at the Tabernacle. Their courtship was clandestine, for Waltrip was married; after he had divorced his wife (they had four children), he and Kuhlman were married surreptitiously by a local justice of the peace, over the protests of her close friends and advisers; they had no children. Kuhlman and the man she always called "Mister" probably separated sometime in 1944; Waltrip served her with divorce papers four years later.

Father:

Joseph Kuhlman

Mother:

Myrtle Walkenhorst

Spouse:

Burroughs A. Waltrip

Sister:

Myrtle

References

• Daughter of Destiny: Kathryn Kuhlman
• Kathryn Kuhlman: A Spiritual Biography of God's Miracle Worker
• Healing in His Presence: The Untold Secrets of Kathryn Kuhlman’s Healing Ministry and Relationship with Holy Spirit