A complicated story of grief and faith has been unfolding all week. A thread on #wakeupolive.
Last Saturday, tragedy struck a northern California family. Their 2-year-old daughter reportedly stopped breathing in her sleep and was pronounced dead after attempts to revive her at the hospital failed.
The girl’s grieving mother, Kalley Heiligenthal, is a worship leader at controversial megachurch Bethel. Via Instagram she asked people to join her in praying that God would resurrect her daughter Olive.
Bethel is at the epicenter of a movement within Christianity that teaches that God gives modern-day followers the same powers to heal and raise the dead that the Bible says he gave his disciples.
Heiligenthal’s call for resurrection prayer was boosted by Bethel’s influential music ministry and her colleague Sean Feucht, who is running for Congress and recently prayed over President Trump in the Oval Office.
All week, the hashtag #wakeupolive has spread on social media, with many people offering prayers and uploading video clips of Bethel worship services calling for Olive to rise from the dead. A GoFundMe was launched for the family.
But as the week wore on, the hashtag also attracted criticism by those who question the theology and wisdom of demands that God bring Olive back to life, especially as days passed without a miracle. Some wondered where this would lead the grieving family and its supporters.
Believers have pushed back against the critics, citing the biblical stories of Jesus’ resurrection after three days, and Jesus raising Lazarus after four. Olive’s mother posted an Instagram message on Wednesday saying, “Day 5 is a really good day for resurrection.”
Bethel’s founder Bill Johnson posted a video message on Wednesday evening defending the effort, citing a biblical passage in which Jesus instructed his disciples to heal the sick and raise the dead. instagram.com/tv/B6PRu9_h5xp…
Johnson is known for supporting an entrepreneurial approach to the kind of spiritual activism and spiritual warfare taught at Bethel’s School for Supernatural Ministry, which has led to criticism of unorthodox practices.
“We rarely know what we’re doing, especially when we come into new areas like this,” he said. “There’s no manual that tells us, ‘Fast this many days, pray this many hours.’ We don’t have any of that. What we do have is a biblical precedent: Jesus’ lifestyle and Jesus’ commands.”
“Someone asked, ‘How long do you pray, and when do you quit praying?” said Johnson. “And I don’t have a good answer. We’re kind of in the middle of that journey right now. But there is a biblical precedent to continue praying.”
Johnson said that Olive's body has been in the morgue since she died, which local news has also reported. redding.com/story/news/201…
The complicated relationship between Bethel and the town of Redding was explored in this CalMatters story last June: calmatters.org/california-dre…
