Seed of David / faith-healing isolates

This is a composite entry: "Seed of David" is used here as a descriptive label for a recurring pattern among small, independent faith-healing congregations across the USA rather than the name of one specific denomination, and should not be read as documenting a single organisation with unified leadership. The pattern's most thoroughly documented case is Faith Assembly, an Indiana congregation of several thousand members led by Hobart Freeman from the mid-1960s until his death in 1984. Freeman, a former Grace Theological Seminary professor of Old Testament studies, taught that using medicine represented a failure of faith and that illness must be overcome through prayer alone; investigative reporting and academic study (Daniel McConnell) documented at least ninety congregation deaths, disproportionately maternal and infant, during his ministry, and Indiana prosecutors charged him with negligent homicide over one death shortly before Freeman himself died refusing treatment for an untreated, gangrenous leg.

Comparable congregations — First Century Gospel Church and Faith Tabernacle Congregation in Pennsylvania, and various "Church of the Firstborn" and "General Assembly" congregations in Idaho, Oregon and Colorado — follow the theological logic documented in the separately catalogued Followers of Christ (Oregon) entry: illness is read as a sign of hidden sin or insufficient faith, medical intervention (including for children) is refused or discouraged, and children who die are frequently buried in private, unlicensed cemeteries without a death certificate naming a medical cause of death. Multiple US states — including Oregon, Idaho, Pennsylvania and Indiana — have prosecuted parents and, in some cases, congregation leaders for manslaughter or criminal neglect following child deaths from treatable conditions such as diabetes, pneumonia and bacterial infections; several states subsequently narrowed or repealed religious-exemption clauses in their child-neglect statutes as a direct result. CHILD USA (formerly Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty) maintains the most systematic documentation of these prosecutions across jurisdictions.