Raymond T. Richey: An interpretive biography.

The Raymond T. Richey (1893 to 1968), known as a healing evangelist, was an important figure in the history of the Pentecostal-charismatic renewal movement in the United States. He can be credited with being one of the first Pentecostal healing evangelists leaving a significant legacy for those who followed in his path, such as William Branham, Jack Coe, Oral Roberts, and Kathryn Kuhlman. This dissertation is an interpretive biography studying Richey. The thesis is that Raymond T. Richey functioned as a pioneer in the role of the healing evangelist and served as an important transitional figure from the Azusa Street revival (1906 to 1908) to the post World War II healing revivals (1947 to 1958). He played a leading role in the expansion of Pentecostalism in America. Born in Atwood, Illinois, he suffered an accidental injury to his eyes that eventually led to near blindness. But a miracle healing in 1911 fully restored his vision. This important event was to shape much of his remaining life and ministry. His family was a part of John Alexander Dowie's utopian city of Zion, Illinois. Here the message of divine healing as a benefit of salvation (the Full Gospel) became deeply ingrained within him. By 1917, his family relocated in Houston, Texas. Raymond T. Richey became an evangelist (and sometime pastor) with a twofold message of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ and physical healing in the atonement. He spread his dual message through relentless evangelistic crusades, publications, and radio broadcasts. Richey financed these campaigns through aggressive free-will offerings until the Great Depression curtailed his activities. He led soldiers to Christ during WWII as he campaigned with a red, white, and blue tent. Richey had the remarkable ability to reinvent himself in order to adapt to changing economic times and world wars. He prayed the dedicatory prayer at the founding of the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship, International (1953) and participated in the National Association of Evangelicals (1943--). He was an important member of Gordon Lindsay's Voice of Healing Network (1949 to 1968). Twentieth-century healing revivalists such as Richey helped bring Pentecostal theology and praxis into mainstream Protestantism through the charismatic renewal that grew out of Pentecostalism.1 David Harrell (1975), the leading scholar of the post World War II healing revivals, draws a clear connection back to Richey noting that he was one of the few revivalists in the early period who also had a major ministry in the post World War II revivals. 2 This dissertation makes a significant contribution to renewal studies in that it is the first interpretive biography to assess Richey's influence upon the Pentecostal movement.3

1 David Edwin Harrell, Jr. All Things Are Possible. The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America, (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1975) 1--2. 2 Ibid. 6. 3 Gordon P. Gardiner, Out of Zion into all the World (Shippensburg, Pa.: Companion Press, 1990): 167, 213. "No other one family of Zion has had as great an influence on the Pentecostal movement as has the family of Eli Noble and Sarah Waggoner Richey."; Paul Gale Chappell, "The Divine Healing Movement in America," Ph.D. diss., Drew University, 1983: 340; Edith Blumhofer, "A Pentecostal Branch Grows in Dowie's Zion," A/G Heritage, (Fall 1986): 4.