Controversial faith healer in Hamilton
Todd Bentley barred from U.K. for violent sermons
Nineteen-year-old Joel Garcia shuffles across the stage, stooped and in pain.
Todd Bentley approaches. He presses his hand on Garcia’s chest and begins to pray.
“Bam!” he shouts, pressing harder on Garcia’s chest “Bam, bam.”
Garcia quivers before collapsing onto the floor, where he lies motionless while an attendant holds his hand. Finally he rises and is helped off stage while Bentley praises the healing power of God.
The Abbotsford, B.C.-born Bentley, 40, is a controversial character. The Canadian preacher who claims his sermons can cure cancer and raise the dead has been preaching in residency at the River International Church in Hamilton since May.
Bentley rose to prominence in 2008 after leading a revival in Lakeland, Fla. that drew tens of thousands of worshippers hoping to be healed of their ailments by his touch.
In 2012 he was barred from entering the U.K. over concerns that his methods were too violent. After the Lakeland revival, videos began to surface online of him kicking and punching people he was trying to heal.
“I kicked a woman in the face,” Bentley said, describing one of the videos in a backstage interview after a recent rally. “I can’t expect people to understand this.”
Bentley says his methods are commanded by God, and he must obey his orders.
“It was in a gift of faith and I can’t expect people to understand that if they’re not in the charismatic, Pentecostal church,” he explained.
“I was in a meeting, and I felt like I was supposed to walk up and, you know, kick this woman,” he said. “Just before my boot touched her face, she fell under the power and collapsed. She got up and was healed from something in her hip.”
In previous tellings of this tale, Bentley described the woman collapsing as his “biker boot” touched her face.
The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada said it has accredited 3,700 preachers, who are held accountable for their “personal integrity, theology and ministerial standards.” Bentley is not one of them, the organization said.
Bentley’s ministry confirmed that he is an independent preacher who has never been given credentials by any Pentecostal assembly.
As the controversial videos spread, former British Labour MP Malcolm Wicks helped petition the British government to keep Bentley out of the country. It worked.
“They said I’m a threat to British society,” Bentley said in the interview.
“They put me on the same kind of banned list as they would put a terrorist,” Bentley said. “They claimed it was because of fanatical religion. I asked ‘What makes my brand of religion fanatical?’ You’ve never heard me preach.”
Despite his reputation for such physical ministering, Bentley insists that in 17 years of preaching, no one has ever been injured at his meetings.
Like most of his claims, it’s nearly impossible to verify.
For more than two hours the night of Aug. 2, Bentley harangued worshippers in Hamilton, claiming his sermons have healed the blind, restored crippled limbs and cured people of cancer.
Oscillating between a conspiratorial whisper and a booming roar, the heavily tattooed Bentley told of one woman whose cancerous tumour was, according to him, forced from her body by his presence alone. It slid down her leg to the floor, Bentley said. He claims she picked it up and carried it to him.
“Totally healed of a cancerous tumour in her leg. I’ve never smelled something so like a toxic swamp,” he shouted into the microphone to the crowd of around 120 people. Some collapsed in gales of what Bentley called holy laughter. Others wept and convulsed.
Bentley talked about another woman who broke down in tears after her clubbed feet were miraculously healed, he said. At one point in the evening, while telling of an anti-cancer crusade in Indonesia, Bentley compared himself to Jesus.
Backstage after the meeting, Bentley was much more circumspect about his healing abilities.
“I don’t declare that they are healed, I just let them share their story of their experience,” Bentley said.
“You will never hear me telling someone to come off their medicine. You’ll never hear me telling someone to not go to their doctors. I encourage that,” he said.
Minutes before while still on stage, Bentley had told of another miracle he performed recently on a young man in Alberta who suffered what Bentley called “pancreatic attacks.”
“Rather than be treated in the hospital — not that I’m against hospitals — but he checked himself out and he came to the meeting in faith that he was going to be touched. And he did, by the end of the night. He had strength and virtue come into his body. It’s another great testimony of the healing power of God,” Bentley said as the crowd cheered.
Even so, Bentley said he’s not worried about people coming to him for healing and turning their backs on conventional medicine.
“I can only be responsible for my part,” he said during the interview. “If they don’t go back to the doctor and they don’t come back to my meeting, I can’t be responsible for following up. Fifty thousand people sometimes show up to my meetings.”
While there were far fewer the night of Aug. 2 in Hamilton, Bentley’s Facebook Live stream purported to have reached nearly 500,000 people, racking up 10,000 views.
After the Lakeland revivals, ABC News investigated Bentley’s claims of healing but concluded that not a single one could be independently verified.
David Reed is a professor emeritus of pastoral theology at Toronto’s Wycliffe College, and also an Anglican minister. He said independent faith-healing preachers like Bentley often run afoul of more established Pentecostal assemblies.
“In my estimation, Todd has an irresistible urge to be very dramatic,” Reed said of Bentley’s preaching style, comparing it to Donald Trump’s runaway ego and bombast in the U.S. presidential election.
While Reed conceded that much of the criticism directed at Bentley stems unfairly from his bad-boy biker persona — Bentley is covered in tattoos, sports a bright red beard and facial piercings — he says it’s Bentley’s claims of people cured by physical force that go too far.
“I have little patience for that,” Reed said, calling it “pure showmanship” that goes beyond the bounds of what a professional preacher should do.
Reed also takes issue with Bentley’s on-stage claims of people being instantly cured. Though Reed does believe in the power of prayer to heal in a general sense, he drew a distinction between healing someone spiritually and curing someone of a specific disease. He said it can be dangerous for preachers to even suggest people turn their backs on traditional medicine.
Bentley acknowledged the lack of scientific evidence backing up his claims. He said doctors make it harder to track by refusing to disclose patient information and are often unwilling to associate their names with his work. His organization, Fresh Fire Ministries, collects personal testimonials from people claiming to be healed. They have around 500 so far, he said.
Bentley’s performances typically last for upwards of four hours, the majority of it spent talking about himself and the miracles he’s either witnessed or incited. The two lectures The Toronto Star attended at times veered into racially questionable grounds, touching on stereotypes about Africans, Asians and First Nations people.
Bentley is no stranger to controversy but for the most part, he shrugs off the criticism that comes his way.
“I seem to kind of welcome controversy,” he said.
As the evening reached a fever pitch, worshippers lined the front of the stage hoping to receive a healing anointment from Bentley. One woman quivered as Bentley approached her, apparently so gripped in the emotion of the moment that she collapsed before he actually laid hands on her.
Others in the line wept openly before collapsing onto the floor by the dozens. Members of Bentley’s staff covered them with blankets.
“Make sure you get a good beard shot,” he said, with a sidelong wink to two photographers crowded in around him as he pressed his right hand to a woman’s forehead and began to pray, his voice tumbling out at high speed like an old-time auctioneer.