Kathryn Kuhlman

American Evangelist

Date of Birth	:	09 May, 1907
Date of Death	:	20 Feb, 1976
Place of Birth	:	Johnson County, Missouri, United States
Profession	:	Evangelist
Nationality	:	American

Kathryn Kuhlman was an American Christian evangelist who hosted healing services and is best known as a 'faith healer'.

Early life

Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman was born in 1907 near Concordia, Missouri, where her father was mayor. She was one of four children to German-American parents Joseph Adolph Kuhlman and Emma Walkenhorst. Kuhlman had some of the best Bible instruction at home thanks to her parents, both of whom were Methodist.

She had a spiritual experience at age 14 and several years later, she began itinerant preaching with her elder sister and brother-in-law in Idaho. Later, she was ordained by the Evangelical Church Alliance.

Amanda H. Williams of Brooklyn, New York, a trailblazer for women in ministry and known for her healing ministry, helped to birth the healing ministry in Kuhlman.

Personal life

Burroughs Waltrip was a Texas evangelist. He divorced his first wife, left his family, moved to Mason City, Iowa, and started a revival center called Radio Chapel, for which Kuhlman and her pianist friend, Helen Gulliford, helped him raise funds.

After a romance between Waltrip and Kuhlman began, she told her friends that she could not "find the will of God in the matter", seemingly feeling guilt-ridden. Kuhlman's friends tried to encourage her to not marry Waltrip. However, she reasoned that Waltrip's wife had left him, not the other way around. (The details of their separation are not clear.) On October 18, 1938, she secretly married "Mister," as she called him, in Mason City, but the wedding supposedly brought her no peace. The couple had no children and eventually separated in 1944, divorcing in 1948.

Regarding her marriage, in a 1952 interview with the Denver Post, Kuhlman stated, "He charged—correctly—that I refused to live with him. And I haven't seen him in eight years. On many occasions, Kuhlman expressed remorse for her part in the pain caused by the breakup of Waltrip's previous marriage, citing his children's heartbreak as particularly troubling to her. She claimed it was the single greatest regret of her life, second only to the betrayal of her loving relationship with Jesus.

Death

In July 1975, a doctor diagnosed Kuhlman with a minor heart flare-up; in November, she had a relapse. As a result, Kuhlman underwent open-heart surgery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during which she died on February 20, 1976. It was reported in her biography that at the time of her passing in the hospital, a bright light was witnessed hovering over her lifeless body.