True Crime-Paranormal-Conspiracy Theories Stories Part V #Wattys2023

Christian Catholic Apostolic Church: John Alexander Dowie

John Alexander Dowie (25 May1847 – 9 March 1907) was a Scottish-Australian minister known as anevangelist and faith healer. He began his career as a conventionalminister in South Australia. After becoming an evangelist and faithhealer, he immigrated with his family to the United States in 1888,first settling in San Francisco, where he expanded his faith healinginto a mail order business. He moved to Chicago in time to takeadvantage of the crowds attracted to the 1893 World's Fair. Afterdeveloping a huge faith healing business in Chicago, with multiplehomes and businesses, including a publishing house, to keep histhousands of followers, he bought an expansive amount of land northof 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 manybusinesses. The operations of the city have been characterized as "acarefully-devised large-scale platform for securities fraud..."His lieutenant initiated an investigation of business practices anddeposed him from leadership in 1905. Dowie was given an allowanceuntil his death.

In this period Dowie had also refinedhis religious organization, naming it in 1903 as the ChristianCatholic Apostolic Church.

Personal life and education

Dowie was born in 1847 in Edinburgh,Scotland to John Murray Dowie, a tailor and preacher, and hiswife.[1] In 1860 his parents moved the family to Adelaide, SouthAustralia. John Alexander Dowie worked for a few months in aboot-maker retail and factory business developed by his paternaluncle, Alexander Dowie.

He took various other jobs, advancingto a position as confidential clerk for the resident partner of afirm that was doing a business of $2 million a year.

In 1867 Dowie's father was president ofthe South Adelaide chapter of the Total Abstinence Society in 1867,and John Alexander was an active member. Around 1868, at the age of21, Dowie returned to Edinburgh to study theology.

He married his cousin, Jane Dowie, on26 May 1876. She was the daughter of his father's brother AlexanderDowie and his wife. They had three children: A.J. Gladstone(1877–1945), Jeanie (1879–1885), and Esther (1881–1902).

Ministry in Australia

Congregational Ministry

After Dowie completed his theologicalstudies, he returned to Australia and was ordained in 1872 as pastorof a Congregational church at Alma, South Australia (near HamleyBridge). Dowie then received and accepted a call in 1873 to apastorate at Manly, New South Wales before moving to Newtown in 1875.

The Salvation Army

About this time he gave up hispastorate as a Congregational clergyman. For a time he was involvedwith the Salvation Army. After his move from Sydney to Melbourne inthe early 1880s, he attracted many followers. In 1882, he was invitedto the Sackville Street Tabernacle, Collingwood. After hisauthoritarian leadership led to a split in the church, Dowie wasfined and jailed for more than a month for leading unauthorizedprocessions. He gave his account of the incident in Sin in The Camp.