In recent years a growing number of scholars have turned their attention to the nineteenth-century divine healing movement and its pentecostal successors in the twentieth century. Representative works include Nancy Hardesty's Faith Cure (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2003), James Opp's The Lord for the Body (Montreal: McGill-Queen's, 2005), Heather Curtis's Faith in the Great Physician (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2007), Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing (New York: Oxford, 2011) edited by Candy Gunther Brown, and Jonathan Baer's dissertation, “Perfectly Empowered Bodies” (Yale University, 2002). James Robinson builds on these previous studies in important respects while also bringing to the conversation a thoroughgoing focus on the transatlantic dimensions of the movement as well as a keen interest in theological concerns. The main purpose of the book, according to Robinson, is to trace the emergence during the nineteenth century of three key emphases that set “faith cure” proponents apart from fellow evangelicals who similarly believed that God still responded to prayers on behalf of the sick. These three areas of agreement included 1) a tendency to link healing directly to the atoning work of Christ on the cross; 2) a clear prioritization of the role of faith in the healing process; and 3) an uneasiness with reliance on medical “means” (5–7).

If Robinson is hardly the first to outline the basic contours of the divine healing message, or the first to highlight the interconnections linking healers on both sides of the Atlantic in the nineteenth century, then the degree to which he emphasizes the role of figures outside of North America sets his study apart. The book begins with a detailed discussion of the Scottish Presbyterian healer Edward Irving, whose teachings in the early nineteenth century closely corresponded to positions promoted by healers decades later. Robinson also pays significant attention to the ministries of the German Pietist healer Johann Christoph Blumhardt, and of Dorothea Trudel in Männedorf, Switzerland, stressing in particular the influence of the latter on late nineteenth-century developments. Chapters 3–6 concentrate largely on trends in the United States, while the final three chapters return the reader's attention to developments in Britain during the 1880s. On the one hand, other scholars discuss or at least mention most of the key individuals and events at the core of Robinson's narrative, ranging from Elizabeth Baxter's work at the Bethshan healing home in north London, to Andrew Murray's influence in South Africa and beyond, to the efforts of the homeopathic physician and divine healing advocate Charles Cullis in the United States. At the same time, Robinson provides far more biographical detail than previous surveys of the movement, delving deep into extant sources while also calling attention to several individuals—in particular British individuals—who receive little to no attention in other historical treatments of the subject. (Representative figures include George Morris, Edmund Fishbourne, and Josephine Butler.)

In addition to his lengthy biographical sketches, Robinson's “emphasis on the theology and biblical foundation of divine healing” also distinguishes his analysis from other studies (xiii). Indicative of his theological interests, Robinson inserts an excursus in the middle of the text where he comments on the work of various theologians, psychiatrists, and social scientists in order to defend the reasonableness of Blumhardt's belief in demonic possession and exorcism. Along similar lines, in contextualizing the divine healing movement Robinson frequently stresses broad theological and intellectual currents. He does an admirable job, for instance, highlighting the way in which divine healing advocates drew on Pietist and Holiness emphases in their struggle against philosophical naturalism and against a deeply embedded Calvinism that taught the faithful to embrace suffering as the will of God. Robinson also dedicates significant space to the theological writings of the Congregationalist pastor Horace Bushnell, who typically receives much more cursory treatment in other histories of divine healing.

While one of the clear strengths of Robinson's work includes his effort to show how the theology of healing espoused by leaders was “shaped by their personal experience of it” (xiii), this same attention to biographical detail and to explicitly theological reflections leaves little room for sustained discussion regarding the impact of non-intellectual trends on conceptions of divine healing within the movement. At various points he does touch briefly on the import of class dynamics, evolving gender norms, and the routinization of Methodism; he also incorporates a chapter outlining changes in the landscape of mainstream and alternative medicine in the nineteenth century. On the whole, however, such observations appear piecemeal throughout the work and remain subordinate to his much more thorough treatment of formal theological debates and intellectual currents.

To be fair, as evidenced by the book's subtitle, Robinson's main goal is to uncover the theological roots of the divine healing movement. He admits in the conclusion that despite his focus on “theological discourse” it should not be seen as the “primary factor in reorienting the prevailing mindset on suffering” (285). Rather, evangelicals' changing approach to suffering in the nineteenth century “was more a response or attunement to the multi-faceted societal changes posed in one of the greatest eras of dynamic transformation” (285). As Robinson's acknowledgment suggests, much more work remains to be done particularly on the non-intellectual social and cultural forces that shaped the thinking of the lesser-known figures in his study.

In the end, Robinson's primary audience includes individuals interested in the explicit theological assumptions espoused by divine healing advocates, or in the intellectual trajectory of nineteenth-century evangelicalism more generally. Those who wish to explore other dimensions and functions of divine healing nonetheless will find his book a valuable reference for biographical details regarding numerous figures in the faith cure movement on both sides of the Atlantic.