Minister discusses miracles, religion

Dawkins, a pastor at the Vineyard Aurora Church in Aurora, Ill., gave a demonstration of miracles Wednesday night in McCosh 10 in a seminar sponsored by Princeton Faith in Action.

He called up several people who said they were feeling pain in different parts of their bodies, such as headaches, backaches and neck stiffness, and prayed for the pain to leave.

“I’ve been having this headache for like three or four hours,” said Christian Smutherman ’14, who claimed he had his headache healed. “Immediately as you asked the question, the pain started going away.”

Dawkins then had Smutherman heal the back pain of another student, Alexis Brown ’12.

When Smutherman was unsuccessful at completely removing the pain on the first try, Dawkins said that Jesus once prayed for a blind man twice, “so that probably gives us around 15 tries.” Smutherman then kept praying for Brown until she said that the pain had completely gone away.

Dawkins spoke extensively about healing demonstrations that he has taken part in, noting that Jesus Christ “passionately loves” everyone on Earth. He said his church often goes to primarily gay communities nearby and asks people for permission to pray for them in order to show them how much God loves them.

Dawkins described one training session that he performed at a church in Puerto Rico. He told the church leaders that he wanted to take members of the church to “share God’s love in some place,” but that the pastor wanted him to bring elders.

“I knew that [the young people] weren’t going to wrestle with the theology as much, but that they would be engaged by the process of God showing up and doing stuff,” Dawkins said.

“I asked them, ‘If [the church elders] were going to find your dead body, where would you say, ‘Dear God, please let them not find me here?’ ” Dawkins said. The people directed him to a bar district nearby.

When Dawkins told them that they were going there, the people were confused.

“Their whole thinking was that you should be where Christians are, but, actually, God likes to come with miraculous power where there’s the least amount of belief in him,” he added.

Dawkins stressed that his group doesn’t mob or harrass people but instead asks if they want them to pray. People may be shocked or even afraid after being approached, he explained, so the group makes a point of splitting up into small groups of three and offers prayers.

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Dawkins also spoke about miracles he has performed in the past, including one on a gay couple. Dawkins initially simply prayed for the couple, but then asked the older man if he had high blood pressure and if he was having a high blood pressure headache. The man replied yes.

“I told him, ‘God will completely take this headache away so that you know how much Jesus Christ loves you and wants to pursue a relationship with you,’ ” he said. “We began to pray for him, and almost instantly he looked up and said, ‘It’s gone.’ ”

Dawkins added that he wasn’t the only person with the power to perform these miracles — and that all the young people in his group were also doing it.

“They saw and had a sense for it,” he explained.

Dawkins emphasized that he doesn’t want to spread a message of sinners going to hell, but rather that Jesus Christ passionately loves and wants a relationship with everyone.

“You and I were made to be carriers of God’s presence,” he said. “We were made to have miraculous power inside of us to be released to the world.”