Christian Science; Who’s Right Or Who’s Wrong?

Christian Science; who’s right or who’s wrong?











Christian Science; who’s right or who’s wrong?
The Mother Church was built in 1894, at the behest of Mary Baker Eddy, who was for years known to her followers as Mother. Born a New Hampshire farmer's daughter in 1821, Eddy suffered all her life from a variety of mysterious and possibly psychosomatic illnesses. Inmiddle age she was an impoverished and eccentric itinerant, abandoned by her husband and family. Believing that she had rediscovered "primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing," she began to teach others to heal themselves, and in 1875 she published a book, Science and Health. Along with the Bible, it became the foundation of Christian Science. In an age before antibiotics and modernsanitation, when mind cures of all kinds were popular, Eddy's gospel “that people who studied her book and practiced its methods could heal themselves of anything” became wildly popular; sales of Science and Health brought Eddy tremendous fame and fortune. By the time she was seventy, she was considered one of the most powerful women of her day.
Since Eddy's death, in 1910, the religion she foundedhas ceased to be regarded as a notorious and controversial sectarian institution and has become quietly respectable. Over the past few decades its membership has been in decline, but though the Church has grown smaller, it has become politically powerful, in large part through the influence of its international newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor. During the 1960s and 1970s a number ofChristian Scientists occupied powerful positions in the federal government, as judges and as directors of the FBI and the CIA. H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, both Christian Scientists, used their influence as top aides in the Nixon White House to shepherd a bill through Congress which extended the copyright of Eddy's Science and Health (its full title is Science and Health With Key to theScriptures) for an extra seventy-five years. The bill has, however, since been declared unconstitutional.
In recent decades the Christian Science Church has succeeded in most states in establishing the right of Christian Scientists to deny their children medical treatment. Lobbyists have encouraged state legislatures to enact laws that protect Christian Scientists from prosecution for child abuse orneglect. These statutes provide a religious defense against such civil or criminal charges by stating that parents who rely solely on spiritual treatment in accordance with the beliefs of a recognized church are not considered to have failed to provide adequate care. Some stipulate that religious rights cannot limit a child's access to medical care in life threatening situations; others do not. Butnone of them makes clear how parents who deliberately avoid using medical care for their children can be trusted to distinguish illnesses that are life-threatening from those that are not.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association have publicly declared their opposition to the laws that allow Christian Scientists and members of other religious groups to withholdmedical care. This is because think type of behavior will only worsen the quality of life between those in need of medical care and will more often lead to their death. The Church rejects "faith healing" as a description of its proceedings, claiming that its "scientific" methods are not reliant on miracles and are nothing less than a rediscovery of the methods of Jesus Christ himself. But the dictionarydefinition of "faith healing" makes no such distinctions. Massage the rhetoric though they will, Christian Scientists practice faith healing as Webster's defines it: "a method or practice of treating diseases by prayer and exercise of faith in God." And the "verification" of these healings offered by the Church can be accepted only on faith. The Church's media guide claims that "Christian...