page_title: John Alexander Dowie
section_title: Move to the United States
hierarchical_section_title: John Alexander Dowie / Biography / Move to the United States
caption_attribution_description: English: John Alexander Dowie -- his robes stuffed with money -- leaves Chicago for Australia.
context_page_description: John Alexander Dowie was a Scottish-Australian minister known as an evangelist and faith healer. He began his career as a conventional minister in South Australia. After becoming an evangelist and faith healer, he immigrated with his family to the United States in 1888, first settling in San Francisco, where he expanded his faith healing into a mail order business. He moved to Chicago in time to take advantage of the crowds attracted to the 1893 World's Fair. After developing a huge faith healing business in Chicago, with multiple homes and businesses, including a publishing house, to keep his thousands of followers, he bought an expansive amount of land north of the city to set up a private community.
  There Dowie founded the city of Zion, Illinois, where he personally owned all the land and established many businesses. The operations of the city have been characterized as "a carefully-devised large-scale platform for securities fraud..." His lieutenant initiated an investigation of business practices and deposed him from leadership in 1905. Dowie was given an allowance until his death.
context_section_description: Dowie immigrated with his family in 1888 to the United States. He first settled in San Francisco, California and built up a following by performing faith healings across the state. His ministry, the International Divine Healing Association, was run largely as a commercial enterprise. All members were expected to tithe. Those who did were eligible to request Dowie's aid in healing their ills. They made such requests by mail or telegram (or later, by telephone). Dowie prayed in response to requests by paid-up members. Although Dowie funded his lifestyle largely through tithes, he also liked to buy up securities of bankrupt companies and sell them to his members. Two women whom he had defrauded in this way sued him and won their cases.
  In the aftermath of this legal and public relations defeat, Dowie moved to Chicago in 1890. After a few unsuccessful years, he gained fame by his activities on property rented adjacent to the World's Fair in 1893. There he staged elaborate "Divine Healings" in front of large audiences drawn from attendees to the fair. Many of these "healings" were staged: Dowie used audience plants and other dubious methods. For instance, he arranged for carefully screened individuals to be brought on stage to be healed. Dowie appeared to cure a range of psychosomatic illnesses with his stagecraft.
  With the growth in numbers of Dowie's following in Chicago, in 1894 he established the Zion Tabernacle downtown. He held regular services for large crowds at Chicago's Central Music Hall. He launched his own publishing house, Zion Publishing, and started a weekly newsletter titled Leaves of Healing.
  In 1896 Dowie disbanded the International Divine Healing Association to form the Christian Catholic Church in Zion. (He renamed it as the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in 1903.)
  By the late 1890s, Zion headquarters had moved to the seven-story Zion Home on Michigan Avenue. This building also housed many worshippers in residence from all walks of life; nearby were the New Zion Tabernacle, Zion Junior School, Zion College, Zion Printing, and the Zion Hall of Seventies. Dowie also established the Zion Home of Hope, more Zion Tabernacles, and various healing homes in Chicago. He leased Chicago's Auditorium Building to accommodate the swelling crowds attending his services. Beyond Chicago, his teaching spread through evangelists and publications across the U.S. and around the world. As his following expanded, Dowie also faced considerable criticism. In 1895 he was in court fighting charges that he was practicing medicine without a license.
  With a following of some approximately 6,000, he sought land north of Chicago and secretly bought a large amount of real estate. In 1900, he announced the founding of the city of Zion, 40 miles from Chicago: he personally owned all the property. He established a theocratic political and economic structure and prohibited smoking, drinking, eating pork, and the practice of any form of modern medicine. He also established a range of businesses, healing homes, and a large Tabernacle. Followers from across the world descended on Zion. Zion has been characterized as "a carefully-devised large-scale platform for securities fraud requiring significant organizational, legal, and propagandistic preparation to carry out."
  To this end Dowie forced his followers to deposit their funds in Zion Bank. It appeared to be a registered entity but was, in fact, an unincorporated entity under his control. He also sold worthless stock in an array of Zion's businesses. The entire structure of Zion was continually in debt, and eventually crashed as Dowie became increasingly senile and unable to handle his affairs.
  T.P. O'Connor, an Irish M.P. and journalist, wrote of Dowie: 
  "the one incomprehensible element in the man's gigantic success is the personal luxury in which he lives, and his superb refusal at the same time to account for any of the sums of money entrusted to him. His horses are worth a fortune in themselves; his carriages are emblazoned with armorial bearings; his wife is said to dress with the g
caption: Editorial cartoon by Bob Satterfield, depicting Dowie leaving Chicago with his carpetbags full of money
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