I've Been Healed. I Could Already Walk, Right?

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Steve Martin plays a faith healer in the movie Leap of Faith. The film is about Pentecostal televangelists who are conning people with tricks. But really you don't need too many of those tricks because most of it is the audience kind of pushing the whole show along. It's fascinating to see pentecostalism more sanitised in the West than South Africa.

Shermer and Hardy discuss: Hardy’s religious journey (raised Catholic, now agnostic) • origin of Pentecostalism and its biblical basis Pentecostalism in Korea North and South, and Israel • the structure of the Pentecostal church and how it differs from other churches • Seven Mountain Mandate • how religions grow • pentecostalism and politics • the psychology of the believer • dispensationalism and the Rapture • prophecy • glossolalia • snake handling • eschatology and end-times theology • sin and redemption • prostitution • Jordan Peterson and secular religion.

Elle Hardy is a journalist and foreign correspondent who has reported from the United States, the former USSR and North Korea, among a long list of places. Her work has appeared in GQ, Lonely Planet, Foreign Policy and Business Insider, and on ABC Australia. Her new book is Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking Over the World.