Mother Catherine Seals
A Prominent Figure of Spiritual Healing in New Orleans
I couldn't help but to be curious about Spiritual Healing in New Orleans this week, as it was present in our assigned reading. In "Jazz Religion, the Second Line, and Black New Orleans" by Richard Brent Turner, the author speaks about how he found a sense of healing, and recovery after his mother's sudden death through people associated with Vodou and Spiritual churches in New Orleans. This led me to look a bit further into healing practices in New Orleans, which ultimately led me to Mother Catherine Seals.
A brilliant article titled "Digging To Learn More About Mother Catherine Seals" by Mark Sanders gave me some more insight into who this powerful woman was. The article stated that Mother Catherine suffered a stroke in the 1920's and ended up seeing a faith healer who wouldn't help her due to her race. After facing this adversity, she decided to heal herself- which worked. Mother Catherine decided to use her newly founded power on other, and founded a church 1922.
I began to research Mother Catherine further and discovered that she had bizarre rituals, such as entering the church through a hole in the roof to give the illusion of being sent from the heavens, and "sleeping in a brass bed surrounded by bodyguards" while church members would pray over her sleeping body.
She healed people of different races. She had thousands of followers. Her funeral attracted thousands of people. Yet her church "Church of Innocent Blood" seemed to disappear. I cannot help to but question why this church with thousands of followers slowly lowered in popularity. I want to research further if this religion stemmed off into another more prominent religion, or if it had simply disappeared all together.
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