John Alexander Dowie

John Alexander Dowie (25 May 1847 – 9 March 1907) was a Scottish-Australian minister known as a Christian evangelist and faith healer. He began his career as a Christian minister in South Australia. He formed what became known as the "Pentecostal Movement". Working as a faith healer, he emigrated with his family to the United States in 1888, settling in San Francisco, where he developed his faith healing practice into a mail-order business. He moved to Chicago in time to take advantage of the crowds attracted to the 1893 World's Fair. After attracting an immense faith healing business in Chicago, with multiple homes and businesses, including a publishing house, to keep his thousands of followers, he bought an extensive parcel of land north of the city to set up a private community.

There, Dowie founded the city of Zion, Illinois, where he personally owned all the land and established many businesses. The operations of the city have been characterized as "a carefully-devised large-scale platform for securities fraud". His lieutenant initiated an investigation of his business practices and deposed him from leadership in 1905. Dowie was given an allowance until his death.

In this period, Dowie refined his religious organization, naming it in 1903 as the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church.