Comments (8)

Richard sounds like a level-headed person, as does Jenny Sayer. But their type is the minority among the c.sers. I've known through my years raised in the religion. The two church spokespeople on this blog reflect the head-in-the-sand mentality of so many church members. Davis himself concedes the point that C.S. adherents condemn those who seek conventional medical treatment. This no doubt explains why C.S. numbers are dwindling to near-zero.

I do not need to take Phil Davis or any leaders of the Church at their word. To be honest, I'm WAY too skeptical to do that. I have my own proofs and my own experience to tell me this is the right choice for me.

I have found Christian Science to be not only a reliable approach to my own healthcare, but also an inspired way to look at the world, myself, and my interactions with other people every day -- it's so much more than healthcare.

I was raised in Christian Science and have done my share of questioning -- questioning that ultimately led me back to Christian Science because of the limitations of other religions or views of the world. I've never felt pressure to not seek medical help if I felt that was in the best interest of me or my child, and in some cases I have. At the time it was the wise and appropriate thing to do, and In no way led me to doubt the validity of Christian Science.

Christian Science challenges the view of the material world as the limit of our being and reality. Throughout the history of mankind, there has been a hunger for something more than what we take in through the five senses, and the teachings and practice of Christian Science satisfy that hunger for me and, I know, for others.

That fact that some have had bad experiences with Christian Science should not be a surprise, as no system has all the answers for everybody. And, I would say to those who have great doubts about Christian Science that maybe at this point in their lives, another approach would serve them better, and be glad for their discovery of that. In the same way, I would hope that that would not let their own concerns stand in my way. The important thing is that for those who are seeking to live life on a spiritual basis, and willing to think and pray outside the box, Christian Science has great rewards.

In the case of my children, they have seen plenty of examples of the effectiveness of Christian Science. And yet I realize that they will need to make their own choice about what is right for them. I encourage them to think for themselves, and yes, I engage them in discussions about Christian Science, but I would never want them to choose Christian Science just because I have or to please me. Not that they would anyway.

Christian Science is an understanding and view of the world that, when sincerely and consistently lived, does result in regeneration of one's life experience and in physical healing.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has read the Christian Science textbook that its theology is not just about spirituality, but is in complete contrast to the materialism of the age—including the systems that advocate it. However, it is also clear from this same textbook that each individual must make their own choices on health care, free from coercion. In one such statement from this book, the author, Mary Baker Eddy states: "While a course of medical study is at times severely condemned by some Scientists, she feels, as she always has felt, that all are privileged to work out their own salvation according to their light, and that our motto should be the Master's counsel, "Judge not, that ye be not judged."

Phil Davis,
Manager
Christian Science Committees on Publication

Throughout my childhood I was not shielded from other religions, although my parents were Christian Scientists and I attended a Christian Science Sunday School. I occasionally visited friends' churches and synagogues; they visited mine. We exchanged ideas on religion and health care openly through those years. When I was in high school I even joined the choir at a large local Methodist church and went on a choir tour my senior year with those wonderful congregants, whom I still love dearly.

It was this exposure to other religions and my own family's experiences in Christian Science that convinced me to stick with this religion. Having seen family members experience quick healings of broken bones, serious burns, deep gashes, paralysis, strep throat, and yeast infection helped me to see the potential of Christian Science prayer-based treatment. That, together with the inspiration I felt from studying the religion, is what convinced me beyond any doubt that there is a God and that this God isn’t helpless when it comes to the whole range of troubles we may face in life. More than anything else I wanted to know this God as much as possible.

But I can honestly say that I never felt brainwashed to do so. Quite the contrary, I feel it helped me think for myself from elementary school through my college years. Now, still as a thinking and educated individual, and after a 20+ year career in meteorology and computer science, I still choose Christian Science to help me meet my spiritual, emotional, and physical needs.

Mary Alice Rose
Christian Science Committee on Publication
Maryland

Phil Davis, the church's official spokesperson, tells the Washington Post that the church doesn't tell its members that they're not supposed to see doctors? Then how come the church's board of directors sent a letter out the very same week to all of the church's members telling them that the avoidance of medical care was at the core of the church's reason for being?

Here's a direct quote from the letter, from the christian science church board of directors to all the church's members:

[beginning of quote]

"Obviously, you treasure our Church and its healing mission.

"With all the complexities of the world, this Church and its healing activity have an amazing and profound spiritual simplicity. This remains true in the midst of the world's efforts to pull us away from childlike living, loving, and healing.

"We're aware of St. Paul's warning not to be "corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." (II Cor 11:3) A graphic example of the world's pullaway from Christ healing is the intense pressure calling on everyone to adopt material medicine. Thankfully, this Church stands as a beacon for authentic healing."

[end of quote]

how is is that this organization is able to get away with such double-speak, especially when the cost is measured in the needless death of those who could have gone to a doctor, but decided, instead, to take phil davis at his word?

It was 1976 when I found out about Christian Science, a religion I soon adopted and practiced for over thirty years. I did much, much more than "sign up," I studied it deeply, thought about it deeply and jumped on the escalator of prestige within the CS community: I became a "practitioner" of its healing method, a public lecturer on the subject, and a teacher of its doctrine and metaphysics. I eventually wound up at the headquarters of the movement, in Boston at the "Mother Church." I was brought on as one of the developers of a new website, spirituality.com, and became its Senior Editor for the last five years of my identity as a Christian Scientist. For over 25 years, the Church's various publications published around 150 articles of mine that explained and defended the religion. Prior to moving to Boston I was a defendant in one of the more notorious and protracted legal cases in the Church's 100-year history, concerning the death of an eleven-year old boy whom I had been hired to heal with CS.

The above should blunt the usual charges against critics, that they’re lightweight, inexperienced and misinformed. I also have no animosity toward the Church, and, with few exceptions, still have a high regard for the sincerity, humility and good intentions of the Christian Scientists with whom I have associated for over thirty years. As a deep and thorough student of the literature – including the Bible, several biographies of Mary Baker Eddy (founder of the religion) and historical accounts – and as an experienced defender of criticism of the religion, I know exactly what I eventually rejected, and why. I have been more or less silent about my experiences the past couple of years, preferring to establish myself in a new life while lying low against attacks on me personally as some kind of traitor, and free from the tyranny of the absurd worldview I had adopted.

One of the claims that could be made against me is that I had not grown up as a Christian Scientist, having come into it in my mid-thirties, and therefore had not witnessed its power and practicality while an impressionable youth. This is true, and I have found that among most of the people with whom I became friends, the "lifers" were the ones most unable to forgo its teachings, even when life experiences posed serious challenges to the sanity of their convictions. (To me this is one of the most persuasive arguments against religious training and upbringing of children. I agree with Daniel Dennett that children should be taught about the varieties of religious theories that abound in the world, but not identified with and indoctrinated into the religion of their parents.) The effect on these holdouts is to create a form of schizophrenia, where they live one life but proclaim another, with rationales for the ensuing cognitive dissonance.

Which brings me to the reason for this post, a kind of "outing," of myself as an apostate. A recent comment here by "Mike," struck me as the most eloquent and correct refutation of Christian Science I had ever seen. It made me exclaim: I wish I'd written that! Mike is a 'lifer," having been raised as a Christian Scientist, and is living proof that even deeply indoctrinated persons can break free of its spell and not go crazy in the process. More power to him and to others, particularly boomers, who are concerned that their good luck behind the wall of denial is running out.

As someone who was raised in Christian Science, and survived, I want people to know exactly what kind of religion it is.

While Christian Scientists are genuinely kind and well-intentioned, the worldview they choose to embrace can and does do great harm.

That worldview is this: that what we think of as reality simply isn't real. Because in this reality, people get sick, have problems, and so on. If God is all good and all powerful, they say, how could he permit disease to exist?

The answer is that he cannot and does not. Instead, the only reason such bad things exist in the world is because we humans mistakenly *believe* they exist. Once we eliminate this belief in ourselves (called "error" or "mortal mind" in Christian Science), the appearance of disease or discord simply disappears. This is the method of Christian Science "healing" in a nutshell.

For example, I never had a cold as a child. Not once. I had the *belief* of a cold many times, sometimes even the "claim" of a cold, but becuase there's no sickness in God's kingdom, I never had a real, actual cold, because colds simply aren't real.

This way of thinking is so simplistic that it raises hopes of healing, and when healing doesn't happen, you have practitioners like the person profiled here saying, "Well, Christian Science is very complex." Yet if you read the church's publications, you'd think that "knowing the Truth," as Christian Scientists put it, is as easy as falling off a log, and as reliable as a Japanese car.

And what the Christian Scientists call "healings" -- when they do happen -- can almost always be attributed to the body's ability to heal itself. Think of it -- we haven't had modern medicine for very long, maybe just around 100 years, and before then doctors were pretty much quacks. This is why Christian Science proved so popular at first when it debuted shortly after the Civil War.

So if you don't have competent medical treatment, you basically suffer through things until they pass (or *you* pass!). And a lot of the so-called healings I've read about or been told that I experienced are nothing more than that.

Christian Scientists will point to the testimonies of healing in their publications, but the church's guidelines for publishing them do not demand any sort of verification. Other Christian Scientists who have witnessed the "healing" (and who are predisposed to believe the religion's worldview anyway) are certainly accepted as witnesses, but in the absence of those, a person who can vouch for the testifier's character suffices as "verification" of the "healing." Hardly rigorous or objective, certainly not enough to merit the word "testimony."

Christian Scientists will also point out that they are not *required* to rely on Christian Science for healing, and that is technically true according to the church Manual (kind of like the church's constitution).

However, the real-life social pressures to reject medicine is so strong as to be nearly irresistible. Contempt for medical science runs through every aspect of Christian Science teaching. Just open to any random page of Science and Health, the Christian Scientists' companion text to the Bible, to see Mary Baker Eddy's attacks on medicine as false and ineffective.

So the social pressure is great indeed. If, for example, Mr. Davis from this article chose to rely on medicine to treat an illness, his status as a practitioner (a prestigious status in the church) might be jeopardized. And if he were a church officer in his local branch church, he would almost certainly be asked to step down from his position (though his basic church membership would not be affected).

I could obviously go on forever about this. As someone raised in the religion by a very devout family, I know how well-meaning and how wrong Christian Scientists can be. I'm glad I survived the experience. But I reject their insistence that the world we perceive isn't real, that there's something better. The world *is* real, with all its imperfections and problems. Christian Scientists don't like imperfections or problems, and simply try to pray them away, convinced they're not real. I embrace the imperfections and the problems, because they *are* real. But so am I. So are we all. And our power lies not in our ability to deny them, but to fix them, one by one, together.

Most people pray when they go to the doctor. Not to be healed - but so that they can afford to pay the bill!