The healing purpose of the Church of Christ, Scientist, calls for fidelity to the spiritual design given by our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in the Church Manual. The Manual establishes the individual branch as the primary organizational unit for carrying on the healing mission of the church in the Field, and in the Manual Mrs. Eddy outlines specific church activities for fulfilling that mission.
The Manual also specifies just two occasions for branches to work together in an activity: they may unite in having Reading Rooms and in giving lectures.1 In this spirit, other joint activities have been formed, which achieve their effectiveness and legitimacy only when they are organized and directed by the branches themselves.
At this time, we would like to call upon the Field to join us in a review that will clarify the place of joint activity in our movement. In order to be productive, this spiritual appraisal must grow out of a genuine appreciation of the good accomplished, as well as out of gratitude for the devotion to joint activity on the part of many committed Christian Scientists.
Mrs. Eddy expected church members to advance the Cause of Christian Science through healing and regeneration. It is therefore essential to the progress of our Cause that we have a clear understanding of the place of joint activity in relation to the priority of a branch's individual Manual activities. Involvement in joint efforts must always be kept secondary to a branch's primary responsibility to minister to its community through its individual Manual provisions.
Therefore, we are now asking branches to periodically review their involvement in joint activities from two perspectives. First, the individual branch should evaluate its own participation based on the members' present ability and desire to support the activity; and second, the participating branches should consider together the effectiveness and advisability of continuing joint effort.
The following criteria should be helpful in this review: (1) there should be a distinct need that can only be met through the efforts of more than one branch; (2) a branch should be at a stage of development where participation in a joint activity would not sacrifice its primary attention to its individual Manual commission; (3) the participating branches should not allow a joint committee to become autonomous or to take independent action, but they should direct all efforts of the joint committee; (4) a branch should not surrender to a joint committee its right of individual self-government; (5) joint activity should not be self-perpetuating but the result of a conscious decision on the part of the branches to continue the activity.
It is our hope that in asking every branch, every church member, and every joint committee to review prayerfully their involvement in joint activity, we will not only be assessing objectively the appropriateness and effectiveness of such activity, but also strengthening our mutual appreciation of Mrs. Eddy's design for branch church activity.
1 See Man., Art. XXI, Sect. 1, and Art. XXXI, Sect. 3 (Art. XXIII, Sect. 1, referring to a conference of churches within the same state, does not relate to joint committee activity).
Questions on reading from the complete text of Science and Health
We recently received a letter asking: "Is it permissible to read from the desk on Sundays and Wednesdays using original, complete, loose pages from the Bible and Science and Health assembled in the order of the Lesson-Sermon and the readings chosen for Wednesday evening?"
Branch church members may be interested in the explanation of why this practice is viewed as not in accord with anything Mrs. Eddy has written in her Church Manual or other writings on the subject.
There are three principal considerations. First, of course, is Mrs. Eddy's clear statement in the Church Manual, Art. Ill, Sect. 4, "The Readers shall not read from copies or manuscripts, but from the books."
Second, is the fact that Science and Health, is not simply another book. The textbook stands with the Bible as the pastor of the Church of Christ, Scientist. This makes it incumbent on all Christian Scientists to want to see the full statement of Christian Science, as given by Mrs. Eddy, always represented in its entirety.
Third, in order to protect the copyright legally, any kind of incomplete or unbound edition of the textbook would require the appropriate copyright notice to appear on each page, which of course would not be feasible or desirable. Additionally there is always the possibility of confusion arising because someone has interleaved pages not written by Mrs. Eddy.
