In the Name of God: The True Story of the Fight to Save Children from Faith-Healing Homicide
*Starred Review* In 2008, the small town of Oregon City, Oregon, became the epicenter of the legal battle to end the practice of faith healing that denied medical treatment for children. The Followers of Christ Church had nineteenth-century roots in Clackamas County, whose culture included believers and those who tolerated them, who both bought into ideals of the Right to raise children without government interference. The Followers of Christ’s faith-healing fundamentalist beliefs were supported on the national level by the powerful Church of Christ, Scientist. But a series of child homicides drew the attention of those determined to make sure that children didn’t suffer and die from illnesses left untreated. Fighting against religious shield laws that protect parents who refuse medical treatment for their children, a team of investigators and prosecutors worked with a Followers insider and a former believer and advocate who’d lost her own child to faith healing. Stauth offers a dramatic account, broad enough to include historical perspective on the Great Awakening and the prophets and religious figures who shaped the faith-healing fundamentalists, and intimate enough to cover the families who struggled to reconcile love for their children with unyielding faith in their beliefs that dictated they take no action, other than prayer, to save their children’s lives. A powerful, shocking story. --Vanessa Bush