Object Lessons

MAGIC WITH A MESSAGE: The Poetics of Christian Conjuring

“…[Woolston 1910:17] In 1911, Woolston began meeting regularly with other Philadelphians seeking to use magic in ministry, and eventually founded an organization, the Gospel Illustrators of America, that would host a number of conventions over the coming decade (Adair and Varro 2004:7-8). 1 Throughout the first half of the 20th century, interest in gospel magic steadily increased, as a growing number of publications on magical ministry attests (Laflin 2000:21-24). On November 27, 1953, 19 Christian magicians gathered at the St. Paul's Methodist Church in San Francisco resolved to found the FCM (Adair and Varro 2004:15-22).…”

“…He embeds the story of this epiphany in a broader skein of typological references likening personal events with biblical antecedents. 7 To fulfill moral imperatives of Christian personhood, Burgess says he had to put his magical ministry "on the altar," evoking the story of God instructing Abraham to sacrifice his son (Genesis 22: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. The call to resume his gospel magic ministry, which Burgess qualifiedly reports in the form of "constructed dialogue" (Tannen 1986), came unexpectedly during a moment of Bible study as the revelation of the significance of a lesson God teaches Moses about the nature of his office as a messenger (Exodus 4: [2][3][4][5].…”