'God can heal' adverts banned
- Created on Friday, 03 February 2012 20:05
A Christian group in the UK has been told it can not claim ‘God can heal’ in its advertising literature.
The decision was taken by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) which said it believed the adverts were misleading.
The group, Healing on the Streets, is based in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire. Its website has a leaflet, available for download, which said: “Need Healing? God can heal today!”
The ASA said the leaflet read: "Need Healing? God can heal today! Do you suffer from Back Pain, Arthritis, MS, Addiction ... Ulcers, Depression, Allergies, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Paralysis, Crippling Disease, Phobias, Sleeping disorders or any other sickness?
"We'd love to pray for your healing right now!
"We're Christian from churches in Bath and we pray in the name of Jesus. We believe that God loves you and can heal you from any sickness."
The ASA said the leaflets could encourage false hope and were irresponsible.
HOTS said its vision was to promote Christian healing "as a daily lifestyle for every believer". It noted: “It seems very odd to us that the ASA wants to prevent us from stating on our website the basic Christian belief that God can heal illness.
"All over the world as part of their normal Christian life, Christians believe in, pray for and experience God's healing; our ministry, in common with many churches, has been active in praying for God's healing (of Christians and non Christians) for many years."
Healing on the Streets was initiated in 2005 by the Causeway Coast Vineyard church in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Since then, it has been adopted by dozens of churches in the UK.
