Biography
Dowie was born in Edinburgh to John Murray Dowie, a tailor and preacher. He moved to Adelaide, South Australia with his parents in 1860 and found work in a prosperous shoe business run by an uncle, Alexander Dowie. After a few months, Dowie left the employment of his uncle and had various jobs through which he advanced his position. At length, he became confidential clerk for the resident partner of a firm that was doing a business of $2 million a year.
His father was president of the South Adelaide chapter of the Total Abstinence Society in 1867, and John Alexander an active member. Around 1868 at the age of 21, Dowie returned to Edinburgh to study theology. He then returned to Australia and was ordained pastor of a Congregational church at Alma, South Australia (near Hamley Bridge) in 1872. Dowie received and accepted a call to a pastorate at Manly, New South Wales, in 1873 and at Newtown in 1875. He married his cousin, Jane Dowie, on 26 May 1876. They had three children, Gladstone (1877–1945), Jeanie (1879-1885) and Esther (1881–1902).
He published Rome's Polluted Springs in 1877, the substance of two lectures given at the Masonic Hall, Sydney. In 1879 he also published at Sydney The Drama, The Press and the Pulpit, revised reports of two lectures given the previous March. About this time he gave up his pastorate as a Congregational clergyman and became an independent evangelist, holding his meetings in a theatre and claiming powers as a faith-healer. He was for a time involved with the Salvation Army. Coming to Melbourne in the early 1880s, he attracted many followers. In 1882, he was invited to the Sackville Street Tabernacle, Collingwood. His authoritarian leadership led to a split in the church, and Dowie was fined and jailed for over a month for leading unauthorized processions. He gave his account of the incident in Sin in The Camp.
After a visit to New Zealand, he moved to the United States in 1888. He first settled in San Francisco and later moved to Chicago where he established a tabernacle and healing homes. His healing ministry was successful, but he spent much of 1895 in court fighting allegations he was practicing medicine without a license. In 1896, Dowie founded the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church with himself as general overseer. In 1900, he founded the city of Zion, 40 miles from Chicago, where he owned all property and prohibited smoking, drinking, eating pork and establishing theaters, dance halls, doctors' surgeries and secret lodges. In 1905, he suffered a stroke in Mexico. While absent, he was deposed by Wilbur G. Voliva, his chief lieutenant. He attempted to recover his authority through litigation but was ultimately forced to accept an allowance until his death in 1907.
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