Alexander & Mary Boddy, British Healing Pioneers 

From the noisy industrial town of Sunderland in Northern England came unlikely healing pioneers, Rev. AA (Alexander) and Mary Boddy. Sunderland at the time was the largest shipbuilding port in the world, full of noxious factory fumes and clanging steam hammers. As a spiritual well of revival, Sunderland was visited thirty times by John Wesley.  

Alexander Boddy was born on Nov 15, 1853, the third son of Rev. James Boddy in Cheetham, Manchester. Mary was a descendant of John Wesley. As a baby, Alexander was not expected to survive: “But the Lord raised me up again when death seemed certain.” After seven years as a legal solicitor, Alexander attended the 1876 Keswick Holiness Convention where he decided to become an ordained Anglican pastor. Like many at Keswick, he believed in personal holiness, pleading the Blood of Jesus for sin and for victory over disease: “As to divine health, disease was also dealt with at the Cross. When He crucified the flesh, the old man, we read He bare our sicknesses (Isaiah 53). He separated us from the things of the old Creation, old things passed away (2 Cor. v. 17). But we must believe It and appropriate the separating power of the Blood; for Calvary did it, the Victory was gained for us there.” In 1884, Bishop JB Lightfoot sent Alexander at age 32 to All Saints Church, Sunderland. The previous pastor had taken to drink and emptied the church. Alexander developed a major ministry to people struggling with alcoholism.

Alexander met his wife Mary in 1890 at one of the parish mission conferences that he often organized. They married in 1891. Mary was supernaturally healed from asthma in 1899: “After many months of prayer, God spoke to me from John 5:39…and as I believed the Word and received Jesus to come into me as my physical life, he did so, and I was made whole.” Afterwards she regularly prayed with, and laid hands on, the sick. With her musical gifting, teaching, and gifts of healing, Mary was deeply appreciated as a partner in ministry by her husband. Alexander used a service of Anointing the Sick and taught on the subject of healing. 

As a world traveler recognized by the Royal Geographic Society, he wrote five travel books and a devotional book on Israel, Days in Galilee (1900): “Oh, for an outpouring of the Holy Ghost until hearts overflow to one another in love!  There is no other solution of these difficulties but the yielding to the full possession of the Spirit’s power.” When the 1904 Welsh revival broke out, Alexander visited Evan Roberts in Tonypandy, Wales, to see for himself. Being most impressed, he started a revival prayer meeting at All Saints Sunderland. People were said to be aglow for two years afterwards. Alexander held an interdenominational United Revival Service for 15,000 people at the Sunderland football ground.

In 1907, Alexander invited a British-born, Norwegian Methodist pastor, TB Barrett, to lead a parish mission at Sunderland. On September 13, Barratt wrote “the eyes of the religious millions of Great Britain are now fixed on Sunderland.” The stone in the wall of the Parish Hall still carries the inscription “WHEN THE FIRE OF THE LORD FELL, IT BURNED UP THE DEBT” (there had been a debt on the building). Many people were amazed that the Holy Spirit fell first in England on unlikely Anglicans. 

From 1908 to 1914, Alexander hosted an annual Whitsuntide Sunderland Convention, which had people attending from many denominations and nations.  Whitsuntide (or Whit Sunday) is the British term for the week of Pentecost. He noted in the June 1908 Confidence Magazine: There was a unity that nothing but the Holy Spirit could give. We were Anglicans, Methodists, Friends, Salvationists, Congregationalists, but ‘denomination’ was forgotten. All one in Christ Jesus was true. Then we were English folk, Scottish Folk, Welsh folk, Irish folk, Norwegian folk, Danish and Dutch, yet all one in Christ Jesus.

One of his most famous visitors was Smith Wigglesworth who was seeking a deeper experience of God.  After Mary laid hands on him, he received a vision of the empty cross and Jesus glorified and began praying in the Spirit. Such an outpouring of the Holy Spirit launched him around the world in a remarkable healing ministry: “After this, a burning love for everybody filled my soul.”

With the help of the Boddy’s friend Cecil Polhill, many missionaries were sent from Sunderland to the ends of the earth. Boddy’s motto, “unity is not uniformity” characterizes how welcome he made others feel, regardless of whether or not they were Anglican (Church of England), the Boddy’s had a Kingdom mindset rather than a narrowly denominational mindset.

In the first 1908 edition of the Boddy’s magazine Confidence, the ministry of healing was emphasized. C. Peruldsen from Edinburgh wrote that in her visit to Sunderland: “Not only did the dear Lord fill me with the Holy Ghost, but He healed my body at the same time. The doctor had been attending me almost daily for six months up to the very day I visited Sunderland. I could take no solid food of any kind, but now I am able to eat anything. I have seen my doctor many times since and he is amazed. Glory to God for His great love and kindness to me.”

This magazine, which had 141 issues until 1926, was read globally by thousands. In the second edition, Mary Boddy wrote about ‘Health and Healing.’  Alexander taught in the Confidence magazine about the importance of James 5:14 laying on of hands and anointing with oil for divine healing: It is the prayer of faith – not the oil – that saves…The Lord is restoring the gifts of the Church, and many in this land have, in measure, a gift of Healing.

Alexander Boddy the veteran world traveler ministered extensively in Europe, Canada, and USA. The founder of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, A.B. Simpson, became his good friend, inviting him to preach on Divine Healing in July 1914. 

Bishop Dr. N. T. Wright said, “Those who pray for a fresh work of the Spirit on our own day will do well to learn from such earlier events (as the outpouring at All Saints Sunderland).” 

Like Alexander and Mary Boddy, may we in 2025 also seek for a fresh outpouring of the healing ministry in Canada.