Church of Christ, Scientist

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The Church of Christ, Scientist (whose adherents are known as Christian Scientists) are a Christian denomination founded in New England in the nineteenth century.

The church was founded by the American Mary Baker Eddy in 1879 following a personal healing in 1866, which she claimed resulted from reading the Bible.[1] She called this experience "the falling apple" that led to her discovery of Christian Science. She was convinced that "the divine Spirit had wrought the miracle — a miracle which later I found to be in perfect scientific accord with divine law." (Ret 24) She then spent the next three years investigating the law of God according to the Bible, especially in the words and works of Jesus. The Bible and Eddy's textbook on Christian healing, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, are together the church's key doctrinal sources and have been ordained as the church's "dual impersonal pastor."

The First Church of Christ, Scientist, is widely known for its publications, especially the Christian Science Monitor, a daily newspaper published internationally in print and on the Internet. Some consider the Church to be controversial due to its emphasis on healing through prayer when others might choose modern medicine. There have also been periodic tensions with other Christian denominations who reject the idea that Christian Science is a Christian denomination because of what some consider to be unorthodox tenets. (An example of these tenets is: "We acknowledge Jesus' atonement as the evidence of divine, efficacious Love, unfolding man's unity with God through Christ Jesus the Way-shower; and we acknowledge that man is saved through Christ, through Truth, Life, and Love as demonstrated by the Galilean Prophet in healing the sick and overcoming sin and death."[2] (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures p. 497)

Christian Science is sometimes confused with Scientology, an unrelated organization founded about 75 years after Christian Science. It is also sometimes confused with Religious Science, a recent denomination in line with the New Thought tradition.

Christian Science's most common symbol is the Cross and Crown.

Contents

Theology and healing

Origins and early development

In February 1866, Mary Baker Eddy (known at the time as Mary Glover) was healed of an injury "that neither medicine nor surgery could reach..." (Ret 24:12). According to her personal accounts, when she appeared to be near death, she called out for her Bible. She turned it to Matthew 9:2, which tells the story of Jesus healing a man who was sick with palsy, and after pondering the meaning of the passage, found herself suddenly well and able to get up. In her autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection, (Ret 24:17) she wrote:

Even to the homeopathic physician who attended me, and rejoiced in my recovery, I could not then explain the modus of my relief. I could only assure him that the divine Spirit had wrought the miracle—a miracle which later I found to be in perfect scientific accord with divine law.

She referred to this event as her "Great Discovery", the "falling apple" that led to her "discovery how to be well" herself (ibid.) (Later, she gave it the name of "Christian Science" stating that she "...named it Christian, because it is compassionate, helpful, and spiritual." (ibid).) Not knowing how it had occurred, she spent the next three years studying the Bible, experimenting and praying to discover if the experience was repeatable and if there were knowable laws that governed it. She claimed that she was able to heal others and began to be called out to the bedsides of those whom the medical faculty had not been able to help. A doctor attending a severe case in New Hampshire is said to have witnessed her healing one of his patients and asked if she could explain her system. At the time, she said only that God did it. But he urged her to write about it and soon she began her main work explaining her system of Christian healing, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

Soon others began to ask her to teach her healing method and she claimed that her students were able to approximate her ability to heal. The readers of her book gathered into an organization and gradually developed into a church, with Mary Baker Eddy as its pastor.

Theology

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Eddy argues that given the absolute goodness and perfection of God, sin, disease, and death were not created by Him, and therefore cannot be truly real. She bases this reading on Genesis 1, calling that the true record of creation in contrast to Genesis 2, the false record of creation obscuring the true (which occurred when "a mist went up from the face of the ground"). Rather than being ontologically real, in Christian Science evil and its manifestations are instead terrible lies about God and His creation. This, it contends, is what Jesus meant when he said that "the devil is a liar and the father of it" (John 8:44). The demand for Christians, therefore, is to "unmask" the devil's lies through Christ, revealing the true and eternal perfection of God's creation. Eddy therefore called evil "error" and felt it could be remedied through a better spiritual understanding of one's relationship to God. She contended that this understanding was what enabled the biblical Jesus to heal and accords with the Scripture: "We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error." (I John 4:6)

This teaching is the foundation of the Christian Science principle that disease – and any other adversity – can be cured through prayerful efforts, made possible only by God's grace, to fully understand this spiritual relationship. It is encapsulated in Science and Health as "The Scientific Statement of Being". It is read aloud in churches and Sunday schools at the end of every Sunday service, along with I John 3:1-3 and a biblical benediction:

There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual. (p. 468)

This belief in the unreality of imperfection, stemming from the allness of God, Spirit, is the basis of Christian Scientists' characteristic reliance on prayer in place of traditional medical care, often with the aid of Christian Science practitioners.

Christian Science practitioners are listed in the Christian Science Journal, with the permission of the church's Board of Directors, their only form of official recognition by the church and among the Christian Science laity. (Some "unlisted" practitioners maintain active practices as well, but they do so without the prestige that a Journal listing brings. Additionally, medical plans that cover Christian Science treatment generally only cover treatment provided by Journal-listed practitioners.)

Practitioners treat patients, in Christian Science parlance, through prayer. Such treatment often, though not always, is for health-related problems, and a practitioner's patient may request help for personal problems as well, such as relationships, problems of employment or housing and so on. Practitioners generally charge a modest fee for their services since this is their only form of employment. Christian Scientists believe that through scientific study of the inspired word of the 'Bible,' especially Jesus' words and works, one can learn to heal. Healing is understood not as an end in itself, but a natural result of drawing closer to God. Healing sin is particularly important. Eddy called this the "emphatic purpose" of Christian Science, writing that it is also sometimes more difficult than healing sickness, because "while mortals love to sin, they do not love to be sick" (Rudimental Divine Science, 2).

Christian Scientists celebrate the sacraments of baptism and eucharist in an entirely non-material way. "Our baptism," wrote Eddy, "is purification from all error...Our Eucharist is spiritual communion with the one God. Our bread, 'which cometh down from heaven,' is Truth. Our cup is the cross. Our wine the inspiration of Love, the draught the Master drank and commended to his followers" (Science and Health 35). The only ritual in the Christian Science church is voluntary kneeling at the Sacrament service twice a year, while repeating the Lord's prayer. Marriage is not a sacrament of the Christian Science church, but marriage does hold a special place in Christian Science as the moral and legal institution within which a man and woman can partner to help one another grow into a fuller "demonstration," or lived understanding, of their spiritual completeness as expressions of the Father-Mother God. The church's by-laws require a legal, religious ceremony for marriage: "If a Christian Scientist is to be married, the ceremony shall be performed by a clergyman who is legally authorized." (Church Manual 49)

Christ Jesus is both "Wayshower" and savior in Christian Science theology. Eddy distinguished between the corporeal Jesus, the human man in the flesh (the Son of Man), and the incorporeal Christ (the Son of God). According to Christian Science, Christ is "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error" (Science and Health 583). This incorporeal Christ is the "spiritual selfhood" (or spiritual identity) of Jesus (Science and Health 38). In Eddy's Message to The Mother Church for 1901, in the section titled CHRIST IS ONE AND DIVINE, she writes:

The Christ was Jesus' spiritual selfhood; therefore Christ existed prior to Jesus, who said, "Before Abraham was, I am." Jesus, the only immaculate, was born of a virgin mother, and Christian Science explains that mystic saying of the Master as to his dual personality, or the spiritual and material Christ Jesus, called in Scripture the Son of God and the Son of man — explains it as referring to his eternal spiritual selfhood and his temporal manhood. (Message for 1901, p. 8)

This accords with a basic plank in the platform of Christian Science:

The invisible Christ was imperceptible to the so-called personal senses, whereas Jesus appeared as a bodily existence. This dual personality of the unseen and the seen, the spiritual and material, the eternal Christ and the corporeal Jesus manifest in flesh, continued until the Master's ascension, when the human, material concept, or Jesus, disappeared, while the spiritual self, or Christ, continues to exist in the eternal order of divine Science, taking away the sins of the world, as the Christ has always done, even before the human Jesus was incarnate to mortal eyes. (Science and Health 334)

Christian Science teaches that Christ Jesus was sent by God and that his history is factual, including the virgin birth, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension. (Science and Health 46).

Because of his special status due to the virgin birth and his pure, unselfish nature, Jesus voluntarily faced his struggle in Gethsemane, death, resurrection, and ascension to show humanity that no phase of mortal existence was beyond God's redeeming love. Eddy wrote: "Jesus of Nazareth taught and demonstrated man's oneness with the Father, and for this we owe him endless homage" (Science and Health 18).

Jesus could have withdrawn himself from his enemies. He had power to lay down a human sense of life for his spiritual identity in the likeness of the divine; but he allowed men to attempt the destruction of the mortal body in order that he might furnish the proof of immortal life. Nothing could kill this Life of man. Jesus could give his temporal life into his enemies' hands; but when his earth-mission was accomplished, his spiritual life, indestructible and eternal, was found forever the same. (Science and Health 51)

Christian Science teaches that we are not Christians until we "go and do likewise," until we in some degree "come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," as it says in the Scriptures (Ephesians 4:13). We never become Christ, but we are called upon to become fully Christly or Christ-like, to emulate our Master's great words and works in some measure. This was Eddy's understanding of Jesus' saying: "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto my Father" (John 14:12). No one's ministry, however, can equal that of Christ Jesus in Christian Science. Eddy even stipulated in her Church Manual that "careless comparison or irreverent reference to Christ Jesus is abnormal in a Christian Scientist and is prohibited" (41). She also wrote: "The cardinal points of Christian Science cannot be lost sight of, namely — one God, supreme, infinite, and one Christ Jesus." (Miscellany 339)

Christian Scientists are trinitarian, but in an unorthodox way. One plank of the platform of Christian Science says:

Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune Person called God, — that is, the triply divine Principle, Love. They represent a trinity in unity, three in Divine one, — the same in essence, though multi-form in office: God the Father-Mother; Christ the spiritual idea of sonship; divine Science or the Holy Comforter. These three express in divine Science the threefold, essential nature of the infinite. They also indicate the divine Principle of scientific being, the intelligent relation of God to man and the universe. (Science and Health 331)

Here, Eddy calls God "Father-Mother," signifying not an androgynous God but a God "without body, parts or passions," as in the Westminster creed, who nevertheless functions both to govern and comfort. She calls the Holy Ghost "divine Science or the Holy Comforter," the spiritual law of God operating as the Holy Ghost in the world.

One further note regarding Christ and the Trinity. To her students, Mrs. Eddy sent a definition of the Trinity (circa 1898), which read in part: "Jesus in the flesh was the prophet or wayshower to Life, Truth, and Love, and out of the flesh Jesus was the Christ, the spiritual idea, or image and likeness of God." (Christian Science Journal, July 1915, p. 192). This statement clearly reflects Mrs. Eddy's doctrine regarding the uniqueness, unity, and individuality of Christ Jesus' eternal, spiritual identity.

Spiritual healing in the material world

Christian Science's focus on the idea of spiritual healing led to some measure of stir in the theological realm at first. Under the influence of the Enlightenment, many mainstream denominations had relegated spiritual healing to the realm of a one-time dispensation rather than a modern practice. During Christian Science's early days of rapid growth, claims of healing with Mary Baker Eddy's and the Science and Health's teachings became a subject of heated debate at Christian conventions, but for the same reason it also became a subject of reawakened interest in the 1960s and 1970s.

While reliance on the theology of spiritual healing is important to Christian Scientists, it is also not officially required of them, which has led to mixed legal opinions as to what constitutes negligence in its use. Orthodox practitioners treating a patient who decides to switch to medical care will typically no longer pray for that person. "Mixing" of methods is discouraged among orthodox Christian Scientists because, according to Eddy, they work from opposite standpoints. In Christian Science, God made "man" perfect, so "prayerful treatment" works from the standpoint of perfection, seeing man in "reality" as God made him; whereas medical science works from the standpoint that something is wrong, which must first be diagnosed, then fixed.

Christian Science teaches that spiritual healing is a natural result of following Jesus' teachings. Healing was a major part of Jesus' ministry, and Christian Scientists see no basis for excluding it from the practice of modern day Christians. They believe that Jesus proved his teachings by his healings.

The Church claims to have over 50,000 testimonies of healing through Christian Science treatment alone. While most of these testimonies represent ailments neither diagnosed nor treated by medical professionals, the Church does require three other people to vouch for any testimony published in its official organ, the Christian Science Journal. However, some critics of the Church complain that the verification guidelines are not strict enough, allowing verifiers who have not witnessed the claimed healing to "vouch for [the healing's] accuracy based on their knowledge of [the claimant]." (Taken from the Church's "Testimony guidelines".) The Church also has a number of statements regarding diagnosed conditions accompanied by legal affidavits of authenticity signed by medical practitioners who witnessed a non-medical healing. A book entitled Spiritual Healing in a Scientific Age by Robert Peel chronicles many of these accounts and quotes from the affidavits. Peel is the most academic/scholarly writer of the church's published biographers of Mary Baker Eddy.

Christian Scientists who wish to become public practitioners of Christian Science—spiritual healers—complete an intensive two-week "Primary" class. The instruction in this class is provided by a teacher. Teachers are added every three years by the church from the pool of active public practitioners. To become a teacher, they must first be selected by the church, then they take another class designated "Normal". Both classes are based on the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. In particular, the "Primary" class focuses upon the chapter entitled "Recapitulation" in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. This chapter uses the Socratic method of teaching and is where the "Scientific Statement of Being" is located. The "Normal" class focuses upon the Platform of Christian Science which is also found in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, but begins on page 330 in the chapter entitled "Science of Being".

Mrs. Eddy, the founder of the Church, said one may accept certain temporary aid from "materia medica" if a person is in such pain that he is unable to pray for himself.

"If patients fail to experience the healing power of Christian Science, and think they can be benefited by certain ordinary physical methods of medical treatment, then the Mind-physician should give up such cases, and leave invalids free to resort to whatever other systems they fancy will afford relief." Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures page 443

While the Church does not require members to forgo medical treatment, most Christian Scientists do so voluntarily because of their faith and they feel they have a history of success with this alternative form of healing. Indeed, outsiders believe that the social pressures to eschew medical care is so strong among Christian Scientists that those who feel they must see a doctor endanger their social standing in the congregation, and depending on the policies of their local branch church, may be stripped of any church office or position they hold. However, the vast majority of Christian Scientists would feel this perspective is not borne out in their own actual experiences around choosing medical care.

Organization

The First Church of Christ, Scientist is the legal title of The Mother Church and administrative headquarters of the Christian Science Church. The complex is located in a 14-acre plaza alongside Huntington Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts.

The church itself was built in 1894, and an annex larger in footprint than the original structure was added in 1906. It boasts one of the world's largest pipe organs, built by the Aeolian-Skinner Company of Boston. The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity is housed in an 11-story structure originally built for The Christian Science Publishing Society constructed between 1932 and 1934, and the present plaza was constructed in the 1970s to include a large administration building, a colonnade, and a reflecting pool with fountain, designed by Araldo Cossutta of I. M. Pei and Partners (now Pei Cobb Freed).

Branch churches of The Mother Church may take the title of First Church of Christ, Scientist; Second; but the article The must not be used.

The Mother Church is the church's world headquarters, and is located in Boston, Massachusetts. (An international daily newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor, founded by Eddy in 1908 and winner of seven Pulitzer prizes, is published by the church through the Christian Science Publishing Society.)

Branch Christian Science churches and Christian Science Societies are subordinate to the Mother Church, but are self-governed in the sense that they have their own constitutions, bank accounts, assets, etc., but in order to be recognised must abide by the practices that Mary Baker Eddy laid out in the Manual of The Mother Church. Church services, along with every other aspect of church government, are regulated by the Manual, a constitution of sorts written by Eddy, and consisting of various regulations covering everything from the duties of officers, to discipline, to provisions for church meetings and publications.

Board of Directors

The Christian Science Board of Directors is a five-person executive entity created by Mary Baker Eddy to administer the Christian Science Church under the terms defined in her equivalent of a church constitution, the Church Manual. Its functions and restrictions are defined by various by-laws throughout the Manual.

The Board (occasionally TCSBD or the BoD for short) also includes functions defined by a Deed of Trust written by Eddy (one of several, in fact) under which it consisted of four persons, though she later expanded the Board to five persons, thus in effect leaving one of its members out of Deed functions. This later bore on a dispute during the 1920s, known as the Great Litigation in CS circles, pivoting on whether the CSBD could remove trustees of the Christian Science Publishing Society or whether the CSPS trustees were established independently.

Services

Churches worldwide hold a one-hour service each Sunday, consisting of hymns, prayer, and currently, readings from the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible (there is no requirement that the KJV be used) and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. These readings are the weekly Lesson-Sermon, which is read aloud at all Sunday services in all Christian Science churches worldwide, and is studied by individuals at home throughout the preceding week. The Lesson, as it is informally called, is compiled by a committee at the Mother Church, and is made up of alternating passages from the Bible and Science and Health.

There are 26 set topics for the Lesson-Sermon, selected by Eddy herself. The topics follow each other in an unchanging, predetermined order, and the progression starts over mid-year so that every week in the year has a topic devoted to it.

The topics are:

  • God
  • Life
  • Truth
  • Love
  • Spirit
  • Soul
  • Mind
  • Christ Jesus
  • Man
  • Substance
  • Matter
  • Reality
  • Unreality
  • Are Sin, Disease and Death Real?
  • Doctrine of Atonement
  • Probation After Death
  • Everlasting Punishment
  • Adam and Fallen Man
  • Mortals and Immortals
  • Soul and Body
  • Ancient and Modern Necromancy, alias Mesmerism and Hypnotism, Denounced
  • God the Only Cause and Creator
  • God the Preserver of Man
  • Sacrament
  • Is the Universe, Including Man, Evolved by Atomic Force?
  • Christian Science

In years in which there are 53 Sundays, the topic "Christ Jesus" occurs a third time, in December.

There is also a Lesson-Sermon for Thanksgiving Day.

Because there are no clergy in the church, branch church Sunday services are conducted by two Readers: the First Reader, who reads passages from Science and Health, and the Second Reader, who reads passages from the Bible. First Readers determine the beginning "scriptural selection", hymns to be sung on Sundays, and the benediction. The vast majority of the service is the reading of the weekly Bible lesson supplied by Boston, and order of service set out by the Manual. To be elected the First Reader in one's branch church is one of the highest and most prestigious positions the lay Christian Scientist can aspire to.

Churches also hold a one-hour Wednesday evening testimony meeting, with similar readings and accounts of healing from prayer by those attending. At these services, the First Reader reads extended passages from the Bible and Science and Health. They may choose alternate Bible translations at these services (i.e. Phillips).

Recently some branch churches, following the lead of the Mother Church in Boston, have started to hold a social fellowship meeting at the conclusion of Sunday services. Branch churches also sponsor annual public talks given by speakers selected annually by the Board of Lectureship in Boston.

Recent history

Beginning in the mid-1980s, church executives undertook an ambitious foray into electronic broadcast media. A monthly half-hour television production was followed by a nightly half-hour news show on the Discovery Channel, anchored by veteran journalist John Hart. The Church then purchased a Boston cable TV station for elaborate in-house programming production. In parallel, the church purchased a shortwave radio station and syndicated radio production to National Public Radio. However, revenues fell short of optimistic predictions by church management, who had ignored early warnings by members and media experts. Most of these operations closed in well under a decade. Public accounts in both the mainstream and trade media reported that the church lost approximately $250 million on these ventures.

The media collapse brought the church to the brink of bankruptcy.

Current estimates for church membership vary widely, from under 100,000 to 400,000.

In 2005 the Boston Globe reported that the church is considering consolidating Boston operations into fewer buildings and leasing out space in buildings it owns. Church official Philip G. Davis noted that the administration and Colonnade buildings have not been fully used for many years and that vacancy increased after staff reductions last year. The church posted an $8 million financial loss in fiscal 2003, and in 2004 cut 125 jobs, a quarter of the staff, at The Christian Science Monitor. Davis said however that "the financial situation right now is excellent" that the church is not facing financial problems.

See also

References

  1. ^ "About Mary Baker Eddy, Discoverer of Christian Science". About Christian Science. The First Church of Christ, Scientist (Copyright 2006). Retrieved on 2006-08-15.
  2. ^ Baker Eddy, Mary (1875, 1947). Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Trustees under the will of Mary Baker G. Eddy. ASIN 0007FAPN0. 

External links

The Christian Science Church

Writings of Mary Baker Eddy

Christian Science Weblogs and Sites

Other Links Concerning Christian Science

Biographies, Histories and Commentary

  • Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery; Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial; and Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority comprise the three-volume biography of Eddy favored by Christian Scientists. It was written by Christian Scientist, scholar and longtime Mother Church employee Robert Peel. It is the church's de facto "official biography" of Eddy, though it was not published by the church.
  • The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science by Willa Cather and Georgine Milmine (1909) began as a famous Muckraking magazine series 1907-08. Scholars who are not Christian Scientists rely on it, but church members strongly disfavor it. It was reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press in 1993.
  • God's Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church by Caroline Fraser (2000), a biography of Mary Baker Eddy and a history of the Christian Science church from its founding to the present day, with a detailed section on the "child cases" of the 1980s. Fraser was raised in Christian Science, but later left the church.
  • Christian Science Mark Twain's famous, vitriolic 1907 polemic mocking Mary Baker Eddy, her writings, and the church's financial arrangements.
  • Mrs. Eddy, the Biography of a Virginal Mind Book by Edwin Franden Dakin (1929); C. Scribner's Sons.

References

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