Children in a Faith-Healing Sect Keep Dying. The State Lets It Happen.

In 2023, newborn baby Malachi passed away in Idaho due to pneumonia and bleeding lungs, conditions that could have been treated in a hospital. This is part of a pattern that has occurred since the 1970s, where parents belonging to faith-healing sects in the state have been able to pray for their children's recovery instead of seeking medical help.

The Followers of Christ sect, which includes the family of Malachi, believes that God heals the faithful and that life and death must be left to God's divine will. Despite this belief, the state's criminal and civil laws do not apply to these children, allowing parents to choose faith healing over conventional medical care. Idaho lawmakers have continued to strengthen parental rights, banning vaccine requirements and making parental consent a prerequisite for medical care of minors.

However, this has not been enough to prevent the deaths of children like Malachi and his brother Liam, who also died from treatable conditions. In the past 13 years, at least 15 babies and children from the faith-healing sect have died from illnesses that doctors could have successfully treated, according to experts who reviewed the death records.