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I was raised in the Southern Bible Belt in the most extreme Pentecostal, Assembly of God, and Southern Baptist environment.

Elmer Gantry has nothing on the things I've seen. Faith healing, talking in tongues (with translations), dancing in the spirit, people falling down in faints, tent revivals, altar calls, fasting for visions...everything but snake handling, I think. One time I was schlepped through an Oklahoma tornado outbreak to hear Marjoe Gortner, the boy preacher ("Glory Jee to Beezus") preach.

Then I spent about three decades wandering in the fever swamps of rebellion against God, whose infinite patience and mercy finally led me to the faith my mother had fallen away from: the Catholic Church.

I think I speak with some knowledge on the subjects of being "born again" and faith healing.

IMO, sometimes it's just as real as it can get.

That sort of preaching is designed to send one into raptures of strong emotion. Sometimes sinners do turn back to God on a permanent basis; sometimes it turns out to be just an emotional high, and they "backslide."

Sometimes people really are healed. I have no idea what the proportion is.

A lot of Protestants seem to think that being "born again" necessarily involves being swept up in one of those Elmer Gantry revival scenes, answering an altar call, and saying specific words.

I don't think those things are required, and I think you can be healed through private prayer just as well as by a television faith healer.