35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry
“We are faced with a serious problem: Although some forms of faith-healing may relieve psychosomatic symptoms, there is no clear evidence that faith-healing can cure organic illness; and yet faith-healing has become fashionable. Countless numbers of people are now being deceived in healing sessions and by television reports of those services. Faith-healers are practicing medicine without license outside the confines of regulation. Their religious beliefs are appealed to in order to provide immunity from criticism. It is time that they be called to public account.”
—Paul Kurtz, “Does Faith-Healing Work?”
Free Inquiry, Volume 6, no. 2 (Spring 1986)
Editor’s Note: Paul Kurtz (1925–2012) was the founding editor and publisher of Free Inquiry. This was the first of several issues whose cover features focused on the scandal of faith-healing. Authors, including James “The Amazing” Randi, Philip Singer, Joseph E. Barnhart, Tom Flynn, and Burnham P. Beckwith, reported on field investigations of faith-healers Ernest Angley and W. V. Grant and journalistic investigations of Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson,
Reverend Ike, Reverend Al, Jimmy Swaggart, and others. This issue included the first public announcement of Randi’s field investigation of TV faith-healer Peter Popoff, which culminated in the exposé of Popoff’s use of stealth radio transmissions to fake miraculous knowledge in the following Summer 1986 issue.
25 Years Ago in Free Inquiry
“Let’s talk about what’s right about public schools. They are still the best opportunity for people of different backgrounds to meet and mix. The differences in background are increasingly economic, not ethnic, in origin and the benefits of mixing accrue to adults as well as children. …
“[T]here is at least one lesson American public schools seem to have taught rather well: students have learned not to hate in the name of religion. The same can’t be said for everywhere in the world.”
—Andrea Szalanski, “Religion and the Public Schools: Introduction,”
Free Inquiry, Volume 16 no. 2 (Spring 1996)
Andrea Szalanski served as managing editor of Free Inquiry from 1983–2017. Here, she introduced a cover feature that included articles by Vern L. Bullough, Tom Flynn, Rob Boston, Edward Tabash, John B. Massen, Joe Barnhart, and Michael J. Rockler. Reading the articles today, it’s hard to escape the sense that the late 1990s were an almost utopian time for church-state separation in public schools, from which we have fallen far in later years.