Join us as our popular guest & historian John Collins returns to talk about John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) who was a Scottish“faith healer” who migrated to the United States from Australia in the late 1800s.
Dowie was referred to by critics of his time as a “confidence man”, a person who appealed to the confidence of victims using deception to convince or persuade them out of money or into submission. Dowie initially tried, almost successfully, to create a cult of personality in parts of Australia and California before entering the Windy City of Chicago and becoming the unstoppable force that convinced thousands of converts to migrate into Chicago and eventually to his communal Zion City, Illinois.
Though city officials tried to drive the cultists out with civil suits, city ordinances, criminal suits, and even physical violence; Dowie was untouchable and unstoppable. At the height of his career as General Overseer of the Christian Catholic Church, Dowie had the power to sway Chicago politics in any direction he pleased by influencing the votes of tens of thousands of people.