John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) was a Scottish evangelist and “faith healer” who migrated to the United States from Australia in the late 1800s. Dowie was referred to by critics of his time as a “confidence man”, a person who appealed to the confidence of victims using deception to convince or persuade them out of money or into submission. In the case of Dowie’s Christian Catholic Church cult following, commonly referred to as “Zionites” or “Dowieites”, both money and power were gained.

Dowie initially tried, almost successfully, to create a cult of personality in parts of Australia and California before entering the Windy City of Chicago and becoming the unstoppable force that convinced thousands of converts to migrate into Chicago and eventually to his communal Zion City, Illinois. Though city officials tried to drive the cultists out with civil suits, city ordinances, criminal suits, and even physical violence; Dowie was untouchable and unstoppable. At the height of his career as General Overseer of the Christian Catholic Church, Dowie had the power to sway Chicago politics in any direction he pleased by influencing the votes of tens of thousands of people.

Many recognized names in American Christianity were either directly or indirectly influenced by John Alexander Dowie. His successful creation of an enormous financial empire which produced the City of Zion, all of its industrial power, full control of the hearts and minds of tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of converts, coupled with his fame and his life of luxury attracted opportunists by the hundreds both during and after his life. Opportunists and like-minded religious leaders tried to replicate his creation. Even Pentecostal leader, evangelist, faith healer, and prophet Charles Fox Parham visited the Zion City commune before creating a commune of his own in Topeka, Kansas.

His legacy continued through the likes of evangelist John G. Lake who founded the Apostolic Faith Mission and caused Pentecostalism to quickly spread through South Africa, evangelist and self-proclaimed faith healer Fred Francis Bosworth and Burton Brydia Bosworth of the famous “Bosworth Brothers Healing Campaigns”, evangelist and promoter of the “Voice of Healing Revivals” Gordon Lindsay, and others. Dowie’s doctrines continued to spread through evangelist and “faith healer” William Branham, who through F. F. Bosworth and Gordon Lindsay was lifted into fame as the leader of the Post WWII Healing Revival.