Sometimes Pastor Billy whispered, “Sweeter than honeycomb” before he laid on hands; other times he shouted “POWAH!” at the top of his lungs

Halfway between the Ontario towns of Peterborough and Lakefield lies the Selwyn Outreach Centre. It doesn’t have the grandeur of a Gothic cathedral but it knows how to command attention. On either side of the entrance footlights illuminate giant signs that read “Jesus Is Lord,” and a Christmas-light marquee across the roof spells out “God Is Good.” The white stucco walls don’t reveal much and the large parking lot beneath a set of Canadian and American flags can give the place an empty look. Twice a year, though, the lot fills up and a sign by the roadside advertises “Miracle Healing Ministries Billy Burke.” That’s the part that made me pull over.

More accurately, the sign made me pull over, chicken out about going in, and then lurk on the Centre’s website for several months before trying again. When I finally made it inside the building, I wondered what exactly had scared me off the first time because everyone in the lobby looked like anyone else. The crowd skewed toward retirement age with a smattering of bored teenagers. I kept my head down and collected every pamphlet I could find, with titles like “Why Must I Be Baptized in Water?” and “Dies Speaking at a Friend’s Funeral (A Great Departure).” I avoided eye contact with the ladies at the merch table and pressed on.

The theatre was large and bright with solid wood rafters, a modern lighting system and a plush red carpet. Two large projection screens hung on either side of the stage, bookending a plexiglass map of the world. Below that stood a mural of a huge old-growth tree with people’s faces painted in the branches. I chose a seat in the middle row toward the back.

The room was about a third full, and I wondered if anyone else was visiting out of pure curiosity. In my head, faith healers were confined to southern gothic novels and the occasional documentary. They weren’t supposed to come this far north. Peterborough, a mid-sized Ontario city so unassumingly Canadian it had been used as a bellwether for national voting habits, didn’t seem like fertile ground. Indeed when I looked up Billy Burke online I found he was making the trip from Florida. His photos conformed exactly to my expectations of a Floridian faith healer: moustache, white suit, arms raised to heaven. The bio page said he found his calling after surviving a bout of incurable brain cancer at age nine.

“Good evening. Let’s stand together and worship our God,” said a woman who appeared from backstage, and the crowd rose. A live band had taken up their instruments stage left. The lyrics for their first number flashed on the projection screens and the anodyne sound of modern praise music pumped from the speakers. Vocal harmonies, provided by several attractive women on either side of a pudgy man in a purple tie, gave it some lift. I may have been projecting but I thought the crowd seemed a bit embarrassed.

The music faded and a local pastor, Brian Mahood, came onstage to warm up the crowd. He explained that while Billy Burke’s “Touching Peterborough” event happened twice a year, Pastor Billy touched Toronto ten times a year. There had been a few recent miracles on the circuit, including the sudden recovery of a Cuban preacher from brain cancer, a claim Pastor Brian would have backed up with video evidence if the AV system hadn’t gone on the fritz. The screen stayed black and over the speakers came the sound of barking dogs.

Finally Pastor Brian made the introduction we were waiting for. “Another preacher, another pastor, another holy ghost man, he’s back on the job!” The music ramped up and Pastor Billy Burke burst from behind the curtain singing “How Great Thou Art” in an off-key warble.

Pastor Billy wore a single-breasted jacket and pointy white loafers with no socks. His patter owed more to modern motivational speakers than the fire-and-brimstone preachers of old.

“Move around the room, greet some people,” Pastor Billy urged the crowd after a short preamble. I managed to conclude my first interaction with a smiling old man with just a “Hi, how are you?” but then a dewy-eyed older woman pressed my hand and said, “God bless” and I replied in kind.

By the time I sat back down I felt like I’d abused their sincerity. I was beginning to think I’d made a mistake, but that was before Pastor Billy cured half the terminal illnesses in Peterborough County.

“A year ago I brought my brother-in-law’s socks in my pockets and prayed over them,” explained a woman at the front of the stage. She considered this a factor in his speedy recovery from a lung transplant. Returning congregants shared their testimonies from meetings past and members of the audience shouted, “That’s right,” “Amen” and “Wow” whenever something struck them as particularly righteous. The band played discreetly in the background, and as every story climaxed they launched into an exultant coda.

“Can I have any men that are fifty and under that would be willing to catch?” Pastor Brian asked after several testimonies. Able-bodied attendants were recruited, a line of supplicants formed, and the energy in the room changed palpably.

At the head of the queue was a man named Cecil who had been deaf in one ear since age eighteen. He was now sixty-five. He’d lost his hearing in a drunken accident and had found Jesus in jail. “He came in the cell and sobered me up,” he said. “I’ve been sober ever since. He set me free from grand mal seizures. He raised me from the dead twice.”

“Let’s add a deaf ear to that list,” Pastor Billy said, completely unfazed. He tossed off a brief explanation about the ossicles of the inner ear before seizing the man by the head and shouting “BOOSH!”

Cecil fell into the waiting arms of the attendants. When he had regained himself, Billy snapped his fingers beside Cecil’s ear. “You hear that?”

After a pause of several seconds, Cecil said “Yup.”

“Give God a shout!” Pastor Billy roared. “Herniated disc, somebody with a herniated disc, herniated. Who is it? Come big guy.”

Over the next hour he cured arthritis, back pain, bone spurs, lymphoma, stage four liver cancer, a lipoma, a brain tumour, sleep apnea, atrial fibrillation and more.

The testimonies began with a mystical, outlaw intensity. After a half dozen or so I went numb, until the cumulative weight of so much agony kicked in again and the cycle repeated itself. Sometimes Pastor Billy was gentle, whispering, “Sweeter than honeycomb” before he laid on hands. Other times he shouted “POWAH!” at the top of his lungs. The element of surprise seemed to be key—he would often choose his moment unpredictably. When the stories were dense and rambling, a healing touch took the power of speech away.

Each healing was punctuated by a lesson but I found it difficult to focus on the contents. There was something stirring in the way Pastor Billy insisted that the blandishments of material culture “may grab you for a season, but they can’t hold you.” The poetic language was tempered with an explanation of why watching Batman v Superman wouldn’t feed your soul. He talked about “seed”—financial contributions to his ministry—but the pitch wasn’t particularly hard.

The healing moment itself was reliably potent. Some people were better at taking the Spirit than others and a few began to fall before Billy had actually laid on hands. One woman retained the presence of mind to pull her jacket down to cover her belly even in the throes of ecstasy. Others appeared deadly earnest or lay on the ground laughing for some time. When they didn’t fall the first time Pastor Billy gave them a second dose.

Sometimes it seemed as if people with chronic health problems just wanted a good evening. Others were casting about for answers. Still others didn’t seem to believe in the literal power of the spirit but wanted to receive it on the off-chance it might help. Two hours in, whatever impulse had compelled me to come was satisfied. Then for his next act Pastor Billy made me deeply, profoundly uncomfortable.

“It’s labelled communication disorder language impairment,” the mother said, before faltering in her explanation. Her daughter stood a few steps behind her, a thin girl of maybe thirteen, staring intently at the carpet.

Pastor Billy laid hands on the mother and she collapsed into the arms of the attendants. “Your mother’s out of the way now, come on over here,” he said, to laughter and applause. “What’s going on with you? What’s the matter? Are you a smart girl? Can you add? Can you subtract?”

“Not very well,” she said.

“Can you read?” The answer was muffled by a cellphone ringing in the audience. The owner silenced it and Billy picked up where he left off. “When I touch you, there’s new brain cells going to grow. You’re going to feel a little popping in your head—you’re going to get smart tonight.” The girl’s cheeks flushed.

“I’m absolutely upset about this,” Pastor Billy told the crowd. “Why would God do this to a young girl? Because this is a miracle service. You have to believe in it.” He went on to speak of a city with streets of gold, a sea of glass and a river of life. We would walk on the new Earth, the way it was when Eden existed. “Petting a great white shark, can you imagine that? Riding a giraffe? Climbing on the back of a bird and just saying, ‘Let’s go for a ride.’ All the stuff you see in some of these animated films now are pieces of heaven about to happen. You don’t have to watch Harry Potter. You don’t have to see some of these Star Wars—you’ll live it.”

Before I could fully appreciate these prospects, Pastor Billy shouted “POWAH!” and the spirit entered the girl. “Come on, say you believe it,” he bellowed, and the crowd echoed his words. “Did you feel that yet? You felt it pop?”

The attendants helped the girl to her feet and she nodded timidly. “Do you understand this? Her condition’s over. You mark my words, you watch her from tonight on, the rapidity, the sharpness, the acceleration in her mind, her thinking, her aptitude. You watch and you remember tonight.”

The mother had recovered from her swoon and Pastor Billy offered some advice on further visits to the Centre before turning back to the girl. “If you could be anything you wanted to be, what would that be?”

“I’m studying to be an esthetician,” she said.

“A what? I’ve never heard of such a thing. What is it?” Pastor Billy either couldn’t understand her speech impediment or refused to believe the girl really wanted to be an esthetician. He asked her to repeat it three times before giving up. “What about number two?”

The crowd treated it like a punchline. Pastor Billy seemed to anticipate this and added, “No, because that’s what she wanted to be before she had this. She has new brain cells. She’s going to have an aptitude that’s going to take her way beyond where she was. Sometimes you settle for where you are instead of letting your dream pull you out of where you are.” He led the congregation in a chant on this theme before asking, “Is there something you’d like to do that you thought was way out there, beyond you? What would it be? Do you know?”

“I’m not very good at… being in front of all the crowd…” Her manner of speaking made it hard to tell, but the girl sounded on the verge of tears. Backed into a corner she came out with, “I think Jesus wants me to sing.”

For just a moment, the possibility she would burst forth with a melody sweet and clear hung in the air, and you could almost hear the intake of breath as the audience leaned in. Instead what followed was an excruciating five minutes as Pastor Billy tried to squeeze a song out of her. In this at least he wasn’t being insensitive—it was hard to tell whether letting the girl sit down would be more painful than coaxing her to sing out. After finding out her favourite song and singer he said, “I don’t want to let go of this.” It was a fair reading of the room, though he followed it with “The fish is right by the boat.” Asking the key so the band could jam along also seemed like a tactical error.

The girl herself clearly wanted to sing. She coaxed out a syllable or two. She picked another tune to try. Several times she returned to the beginning of the verse, then put her head down and flushed as the audience clapped encouragingly. She managed a faltering, barely audible bar of music before Billy gently told her that was enough for today.

The meeting resumed its rhythm. At one point Pastor Brian brought Pastor Billy a yellow slip of paper that led to Billy conducting his healings in double time. Over a rising musical crescendo, he laid hands on the queue of people who didn’t have time for the full feature. I’d had enough. When I’d arrived I'd scolded myself: it was silly to be afraid of a missionary faith. Being welcoming, after all, was part of their modus operandi. It was anything but inclusive, though, to claim the girl’s difference would be erased as a result of this meeting. Sitting in the audience carried an uncomfortable note of complicity.

When Pastor Billy had left the stage Pastor Brian took the mic again for some final words. “Now remember, Pastor Billy has prayed over people, but the atmosphere is God’s miracle power. If you were in line, God was working on you while you were standing in line. Whatever you came for, say ‘Thank you, Lord, I’ve received it’ and walk out thanking the Lord, thanking the Lord…”

I walked out to my car mostly confused.

A week after seeing Billy Burke I ask for an appointment with Brian Mahood, describing myself as a non-Christian writer who’d been reflecting on last Tuesday’s meeting. I thought it might be a hard sell, but Mahood’s offer to see me is quick and friendly.

He leads me across the stage where the miracles took place. We look back at the empty seats, more than enough to accommodate the three-hundred-member congregation, and I remark on the special aura. Pastor Brian admits that one of the functions faith healings serve is to act as a kind of spiritual loss leader, getting the curious in the door.

“Generally the church—not this church, the broader church—accepts healing but doesn’t do a lot to encourage it,” Pastor Brian explains. “So many of us have been touched by it, that’s why we bring Pastor Billy in.” He estimates Pastor Billy has been making the trip up to Toronto for twenty years.

“Sickness is a mentality,” he says as we take a seat in his comfortable office. “We all know people that have bitterness in them are more susceptible to sickness—so there’s many avenues to sickness and there’s many avenues to health. Pastor Billy or myself are thrilled if people can get the right nutrition, get the right vitamins, medicine, whatever… There’s a point where we would say if you have sugar diabetes, get insulin. While you’re getting insulin, get prayer.”

I’m relieved the church is on board for modern medicine, though Pastor Brian does say the power of prayer could lead to tailing off from a prescribed dose of medication. I can think of scenarios where that expectation would be needlessly painful, but I don’t press the point. More interesting is the matter of blame—if a devout follower doesn’t receive healing, how are they to interpret that?

Pastor Brian clarifies that Billy Burke doesn’t have the power to heal people. “He has the power to encourage them to expect that God can touch them,” a difference that remains hazy to me. He points out that the relatively high fail rates of modern medicine haven’t seriously undermined our faith in it.

“People don’t realize, he’ll not say he’s healing anybody. What he’s saying is he’s praying a healing touch, and then he’s trusting God to help you discover—”

“Well, he does say ‘You are cured of cancer,’ or ‘The cancer’s gone,’ or ‘Can you hear that’ if you’re deaf in one ear,” I say.

Perhaps sensing my frustration, Pastor Brian makes a game effort to justify things rationally. He characterizes illness as “disharmony,” which is antithetical to heavenly harmony, which is analogous to the fact that gold with no molecular impurities would be transparent. It reminds me of an enthusiastic layperson explaining a book on quantum theory.

Sensing we won’t get much further with that line of questioning, I ask how it feels to lay on hands. “Sometimes you can feel God’s power going through you, sometimes you don’t feel anything at all,” he tells me. I like that answer because much of life feels that way. It takes courage on his part to articulate a belief that could instantly brand you a kook in someone’s eyes. Too much certainty, however, is a recipe for disaster. So I ask him: will he concede that in the case of the girl with the communication disorder they had not done their best work?

He knows that’s what I think, because I’d asked him in writing whether there was more valour in embracing and accepting difference than trying to remove it. In person I broach the subject by asking if the girl is one of those who might expect slow, incremental improvements rather than a sweeping change.

He tells me she showed up the next night with a marked improvement in her speech. “Her mother was overwhelmed… Pastor Billy even got her to sing.”

So much for pondering the complexities of the faith. The kernel of understanding that the girl’s autonomy should be respected is there but bound up with a messianic impulse. “He’s trying to get her not to see her sickness,” Pastor Brian explains. “What God’s trying to do is go past your sickness, go past your sin… and encourage you to begin to have a new life.”

I’m beginning to think I would be more impressed by a hearty “Hallelujah, miracles abound” than the constant attempt to tidy up and rationalize. Ultimately even Pastor Brian struggles to reconcile the mixture of bromides and fervent abandon that goes into a Billy Burke meeting.

“So that girl again, you would hope would get encouragement, and if she didn’t get healed you’d at least hope she’d have hope, and Christ. Right? More people and more people are getting healed, because of more and more faith, more and more expectation. So that’s what’s happening.”

“Perfect, yeah,” I say, and excuse myself. Pastor Brian doesn’t push a religious conversion on me, although he does invite me to the Christmas pageant. We shake hands and I thank him for the invitation. I don’t go, but the next time I pass Billy Burke’s roadside sign part of me is tempted to pull over again.