Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), a member of the progressive “Squad,” who made headlines recently for comparing the Palestinian cause in Israel to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, was once a “faith healer” affiliated with a religious group that claims to have resurrected the dead and cured cancer and AIDS through prayer, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Bush has been one of a handful of progressive Congresswomen who are defining the Democratic Party’s agenda in the House of Representatives, along with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Bush, though, rose to prominence recently with her comments on the Israeli conflict in Gaza and her decision to label pregnant women “birthing persons” during a discussion on a parenting support bill known as the “MOMMIES Act.”
The Free Beacon, however, took a deep dive into Bush’s past after learning that Bush had reached out to a “faith healer” after contracting a particularly serious case of COVID-19.
“Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) spent years working as a faith healer for a religious group that claims to have resurrected the dead and cured thousands of people suffering from AIDS, cancer, paralysis, and other serious maladies—including Bush’s own severe case of coronavirus last year,” the outlet reported Monday.
“Bush did not have medical insurance when she was hospitalized with the virus last April, and she said her struggle illustrated the necessity of passing Medicare for All,” the Free Beacon continued. “Officials at her faith-healing church, however, said she was cured within 30 minutes after talking to the head pastor, Charles Ndifon, by phone from her hospital bed.”
“Cori, she had COVID, and she called me from the hospital,” Ndifon told the Free Beacon. “And 30 minutes later, she was breathing. Healed. It was that simple.”
The “faith healing” stems from Bush’s membership in a fringe church in St. Louis whose leaders believe “illnesses are the result of demonic forces that must be expelled from the body.” When Bush was miraculously cured of the coronavirus, the church used the matter as proof its methods work.
“We just murdered coronavirus, son!… I don’t care, bring people with AIDS. Bring the paralyzed people,” “Chris Chris,” an acolyte of the church’s leader told church members following the incident. “The paralyzed people are gonna get healed and start breakdancing. The AIDS people, they’re gonna be able to donate blood.”
The church itself sells books on their approach to faith healing — books that range between $10 and $200.
Bush’s religious beliefs are her own, but recently, even mainstream Christian religious beliefs among Republican legislators and other high-profile conservatives have led media and those on the left to question fitness for office. Now-Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett fell under scrutiny from Democrats and other left-leaning individuals for belonging to a Catholic group that stressed, among other things, an “authoritarian structure.”
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