Church of Christ, Scientist
The Church of Christ, Scientist, often known as The Christian Science Church, is a nontrinitarian Protestant Christian denomination, founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879. The Bible and Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures are together the church's key doctrinal sources.
Christian Science is not to be confused with Scientology, the churches of Christ, the international Churches of Christ movement, or Religious Science founded by Ernest Holmes. Although it has outward similarities to the New Thought Movement, of which Religious Science is a part, partly through ties between the New Thought Movement and certain disaffected Eddy students such as Emma Curtiss Hopkins, Christian Science regards itself as more restrictedly Christianity-focused.
Christian Science Theology and Healing
Eddy argued that given the absolute goodness and perfection of God, sin, disease, and death were not created by him, and therefore cannot be truly real. This led her to conclude that the material world was an illusion that obscures God's world of spiritual "Truth," which she felt was the true reality. Eddy came to believe that this material misperception, which she called "error," could be remedied through a better spiritual understanding of humanity's relationship to God, and contended that this understanding was what enabled the biblical Jesus to heal.
This teaching is the foundation of Christian Scientists' belief that disease – and any other adversity – can be cured through prayerful efforts to fully understand this spiritual relationship. It is encapsulated in Science and Health as "The Scientific Statement of Being," a kind of Christian Science creed that is arguably the most cited textual passage in Christian Science practice; it is also read aloud in churches and Sunday schools at the end of every Sunday service:
This belief in the unreality of imperfection is the basis of Christian Scientists' characteristic reliance on prayer for traditional medical care, often with the aid of Christian Science practitioners, who are, at the pleasure of the church's Board of Directors listed in the Christian Science Journal, and in Christian Science parlance, "treat patients" through prayer. Such "treatment" usually, though not always, is for health-related problems, although a practitioner's "patient" may request help for personal problems as well, such as relationships, workplace difficulties, and so on.
However, Christian Science's healing theology has been controversial since the church's founding. In refusing medical care for spiritual healing, a number of people have died from illnesses later determined to have been medically treatable or curable. This sometimes results in wrongful death lawsuits against the parents of deceased children who were given Christian Science treatment in lieu of medical care. Christian Scientists for their part counter that death alone is not grounds for prosecution, and claim that spiritual healing has cured numerous cases declared incurable by medical professionals. Indeed, the church regularly publishes claims of individual and practitioner-assisted healing in its religious periodicals.
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. In practice, however, any reliance on medical treatment is strongly discouraged among Christian Scientists, most of whom regard it more as a last resort rather than simply an option. Church members even temporarily relying on medical science have been removed from offices or positions they held in their branch churches, though still retaining their church membership. The church Manual (see below) itself is unclear on the right of Christian Scientists to seek medical care, saying only that "[I]t shall be the privilege of a Christian Scientist to confer with an M. D. on Ontology, or the Science of being" (p. 47).
Christian Science's focus on the idea of spiritual healing led to some measure of stir in the theological realm too: particularly under the eye of the scientific revolutions of the 19th century, many mainstream denominations had relegated it 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 under its influence 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 70s.
Organization of the Church
The Mother Church is the church's world headquarters, and is located in Boston, Massachusetts. A 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 at once related to the central church but with large autonomy. They can be found worldwide, primarily in the US though also in Europe and other locations, and usually maintain a Christian Science Reading Room for reading and study open to the public. Churches have usually a one one-hour church service each Sunday, consisting of hymns, prayer, and readings from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. They also hold a one-hour Wednesday evening testimony meeting, with similar readings and accounts by those attending, and sponsor Christian Science lectures in their communities annually.
The church is structured by a 138-page constitution of sorts by Eddy titled the Manual of The Mother Church, consisting of various Articles of By-Laws ranging from duties of officers to discipline to provisions for church meetings. The Manual was an unusual establishment, as it enacted a rule of law in place of hierarchy, placing binding requirements on even its top executives whom she subordinated to it. A few adherents contend Eddy intended the Mother Church to dissolve upon her passing, though the view is a minority one.
Recent Church History
Beginning in the late 1990s, church executives undertook an ambitious foray into electronic broadcast media, beginning first with a monthly half-hour television production, expanding later into a nightly half-hour news show on the Discovery Channel anchored by veteran journalist John Hart (not a church adherent), then expanding into an elaborate cable TV superstation with heavy in-house programming production. In parallel, the church purchased a shortwave station and syndicated radio production to National Public Radio. However, revenues fell short of optimistic predictions by church managment, who had defied early warnings by members and media experts, forcing closure of most of these operations in well under a decade.
The media collapse led to a much more serious controversy. Facing bankruptcy, the church published a series of biographies on Eddy, including the book The Destiny of The Mother Church by the late Bliss Knapp in 1991. Many inside and outside the church believed that this was done in order to secure an approximately $100 million bequest from his trust, unavailable to the church unless it published his book. But doing so was a highly controversial move, because the church had previously refused to publish Knapp's work, claiming that it strayed from official church teaching. The church's publication of the book caused such church-wide controversy that in the Mother Church alone, the editors of the church's religious periodicals and several other church employees resigned in protest.
Behind all of these great expenditures and acquisitions of money has been the church's desire to increase its ostensibly declining membership. Christian Science enjoyed more popularity in earlier decades than it does today; indeed, most of its churches are sparsely attended, and more congregations are selling their own churches in order to combine with more stable local branches. Of course, this is not the case with all Christian Science churches, but the religion is facing a general downward trend. The Mother Church, however, is prohibited by the Manual from publishing membership figures, so there are no official numbers to document any rises or falls in church membership.
The church's most recent effort to stimulate interest in the faith is the newly-opened Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity, a $50 million building in Boston housing Eddy's published and unpublished writings. As did the church's earlier multimillion-dollar outreach projects, the library's expense and concept caused controversy among some church members, though most supported it.