Three little vignettes tell a great deal about the purpose and role of The Christian Science Monitor:
• A magazine writer, who had spent some time researching a story about the Monitor, finally came to the Editor with this conclusion: "It's the Christian Science that goes into it [the Monitor] that makes the difference."
• A leading United States Senator was about to give an exclusive and headline-making interview. He chose the Monitor because, as his staff said, "No other paper carries the impact the Monitor does on moral issues."
• A Congregational minister wrote, "The Monitor sustains our assurance that, in spite of the world's turmoil, God is!"
Each in his way was recognizing the unique character of The Christian Science Monitor. Owned by a church, its purpose is spiritual, its role is healing.
Different newspapers exist for different reasons. Some are straightforward business propositions. Some are propaganda instruments for a particular point of view. Some of the worst seem to exist only to titillate. Some of the best are dedicated to informing their readers as skillfully and competently as they can.
But the Monitor fulfills the specific obligation its founder felt to extend her church's healing touch to national and international affairs.
In the years following her discovery of Christian Science, the idea of a periodical began to stir Mrs. Eddy's thought. At first she had no intention of launching a church of her own. But the need for both a church and a newspaper became explicit. The latter was to take form as an outreaching arm of the former. Both came into being as the result of experience, prayer, and revelation.
Mrs. Eddy often coupled the influence of pulpit and press in her writings. For instance, "It is the pulpit and press," she writes, "clerical robes and the prohibiting of free speech, that cradles and covers the sins of the world,—all unmitigated systems of crime; and it requires the enlightenment of these worthies, through civil and religious reform, to blot out all inhuman codes."Miscellaneous Writings, p. 246;
Though the Monitor was no mere whim but was destined to perform a specific function of her church, not everybody glimpsed Mrs. Eddy's vision for her newspaper.
One of her biographers, Irving C. Tomlinson, wrote that few if any of her works "were more commented on, more criticized, more debated by her followers and the public, than the purpose, motive, and contents of The Christian Science Monitor as a newspaper." But, he went on, "Mrs. Eddy was in no way shaken by the futile attempts of ignorance to snatch the paper from the divine order ordained by its founder."Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1966), pp. 107—108;
She regarded the Monitor as one of her greatest achievements. When the first issue appeared, Mrs. Eddy was in her eighty-eighth year. It is sometimes said that one of Mrs. Eddy's principal reasons for starting the Monitor was to reform journalism. Certainly the argument can be made that the paper has had a reforming influence in the profession. But this aim was supplementary and incidental to the basic one, namely, "to injure no man, but to bless all mankind."
Mrs. Eddy was never careless in her use of language, and her choice of verbs in the naming of her periodicals is instructive. The Journal, she writes, is "to put on record the divine Science of Truth." The Sentinel is "to hold guard over Truth, Life, and Love." The Herald is "to proclaim the universal activity and availability of Truth." And the Monitor is "to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent." (See The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 353;.) To put on record. To hold guard. To proclaim. To spread undivided.
An editorial in the Sentinel by the Monitor's first Editor said that the paper was intended to "appeal to good men and women everywhere who are interested in the betterment of all human conditions and the moral and spiritual advancement of the race." Quoted in Erwin D. Canham, Commitment to freedom (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1958), p. 39; Obviously, it was intended to touch public and world leaders alike with the healing quality of Christianly scientific thought. Just as obviously, it was believed that as the Monitor succeeded in this aim, so would it actively further mankind's acceptance of Christian Science.
Though the Monitor has its own special role, it is an integral member of the family of Christian Science periodicals. These periodicals have been likened to a garment without seam, and the comparison is an apt one. Each has its own role, but each is part of the totality of Mrs. Eddy's concept of her church.
The Monitor is not a great newspaper that happens to be an appendage of the Church of Christ, Scientist.
The Monitor is an expression of this church that happens to be in the form of a daily newspaper.
And so it follows that support of the fundamental purpose and role of the Monitor is support of Mrs. Eddy's concept of church, and conversely that an attack upon this purpose and role is an attack upon her concept of church.
The fact that the Monitor's thrust is basically a healing one does not mean it cries peace, peace, where there is no peace. It does not mean that it looks at the world through rose-tinted glasses. The Monitor's early editorials made it clear that it was to be a real newspaper in which the significant news of the day would be printed. It was not to be a bland paper, whose Editors could not make up their minds about issues of the day. Indeed, such a paper would have been out of character with its own founder. Of Mrs. Eddy, Mr. Tomlinson writes: "... I do not recall a single instance in which I found Mrs. Eddy to be neutral. On questions of public policy, she beheld the moral issue as paramount, the welfare of all mankind as the primary issue, and on such matters she was never neutral. Through communion with the one Mind, she sought a clear concept of the right and the wrong of each vital question. Then she took her stand definitely for what she believed to be right. From her girlhood, she had never been afraid to declare her views and to adhere firmly to the stand she had prayerfully taken. Arguments of expediency or popularity failed to intimidate her."Tomlinson, p. 193;
But in offering its best, spiritually-inspired thinking about human affairs, the Monitor strives to depersonalize evil, to treat individuals with Christly compassion, and to heed its founder's injunction "to injure no man, but to bless all mankind."
One of the most popular misconceptions about this Science is the stereotyped suggestion that Christian Scientists have their heads in the clouds and do not face up to human problems because they argue these simply do not exist.
The Monitor is a daily contradiction of this fallacy. Through the Monitor, the Church of Christ, Scientist, is proving its concern and care for humanity. Sometimes this means tackling some pretty tough subjects. For example, the Monitor has assigned reporters to investigate organized gambling, the maladministration of state lotteries, the international narcotics traffic, corruption in the courts, phoney land sales, and many similar topics.
With all the Monitor's investigative projects, the aim is not to sensationalize but to uncover and heal. Those who produce the paper believe in informing the reader about unwholesome situations that should concern him. Monitor writers do not believe in letting the reader wallow in the misery of the situation. So each such project has an underlying healing thrust.
We know that the outreach of the Monitor, in the sixty-seven years since Mrs. Eddy launched it, has greatly increased. Besides its own readership, Monitor content is published through its syndication service for a circulation of many millions in papers around the world. We know that the Monitor's reporting and views have wide circulation among senators and congressmen and governors and big-city mayors and leaders in other nations. It has entrance to heads of state.
Sometimes there is evidence that the Monitor's efforts have specifically affected a certain piece of legislation, or action against some scandal, or reform in some far-flung land. But much of the time it is impossible to measure the actual healing effect of the Monitor. The extent of this healing depends on two factors. First is the quality of thought that goes into the paper. Christian Science is in full accord with the Christianity taught and lived by Christ Jesus and with the Golden Rule: "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."Matt. 7:12. Second, and of overriding importance, is the way subscribers use their paper and the quality of thought they bring to bear on the questions the Monitor draws to their attention.
The effectiveness of The Christian Science Monitor depends on the extent to which the spiritual perception that goes into it is supported by the prayers of its readers and translated by them into action.
