In the last few years, a substantial shift has taken place in the way Christian Science and Christian Scientists are perceived in the "public square" of human discussion. Symptoms of this change are seen in:
• adverse or ominous court decisions, both civil and criminal, in several states;
• an aggressive and systematic "targeting" policy by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, mandating changes in state law to remove religious accommodation provisions;
• expanded media reporting of negative judicial and legislative activity, e.g., the highly publicized prosecutions of parents relying on prayer for the healing of their children;
• stereotyped and distorted depictions of Christian Scientists on television, and the too-often erroneous stories and reports from the press about our faith and our Church.
In the midst of this widespread skepticism and misunderstanding, there are other stirrings:
• emergence of a bold discussion of the collision between religious and individual rights on the one hand and the compelling interest of the modern state and of medical science on the other;
• passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the United States in response to judicial overreaching;
• a historic debate about health care and health-care systems;
• a growing quest for explanations and proofs of healing beyond what is offered by conventional medicine. As in Jesus' time, so today there are many willing to reach beyond "... doctrines and time-honored systems ..." Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. vii. to touch the hem of his garment.
In their April 22 letter to church members in the United States, The Christian Science Board of Directors noted that these challenges call upon individual Christian Scientists "to communicate more effectively and openly, to our neighbors and communities, both who we actually are and what the Science of being genuinely has to offer mankind."
The spectrum of opportunities to witness to Truth's revelation and to its demonstration has been referred to as "New Occasions"—taken from James Russell Lowell's poem (adapted and set to music as Hymn 258 in the Christian Science Hymnal). This is not, however, a fancy slogan, a new wave of thinking, a diversion from the challenges currently pressing on the Church of Christ, Scientist, and humanity. Nor is it something apart from our day-to-day activity, purpose, and responsibility.
As Lowell's poem also notes, "New occasions teach new duties. ..." And the "new occasions" we face today point to the need for three essential dimensions of discipleship that flow from Mary Baker Eddy's statement of her life-purpose, "...to impress humanity with the genuine recognition of practical, operative Christian Science." "As you journey, and betimes sigh for rest 'beside the still waters,' ponder this lesson of love. Learn its purpose; and in hope and faith, where heart meets heart reciprocally blest, drink with me the living waters of the spirit of my life-purpose —to impress humanity with the genuine recognition of practical, operative Christian Science" (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 206-207). They are:
1. Being awake, active.
2. Being attuned, listening.
3 . Being genuine evangelists.
1. What is called for by today's challenges to religious freedom, to spiritual healing in general, and to Christian Science practice in particular is sustained vigilance—the price of liberty. The steady erosion of carefully crafted religious accommodation provisions in state laws throughout the United States has occurred not through any single act or edict, but rather through nuance, assumption, interpretation, and dissimulation. The antidote is a Church awake and active. An organization and membership prepared to keep watch all night and run to meet the oppressor in the morning. That means being there. Being in the halls of Congress, at the state house, the courthouse, and the White House.
2. Recent newspaper and magazine articles as well as best-selling books emphasize the hunger for religion in America and around the world, the reach for alternatives to conventional medicine, the linkages between prayer and healing, the resistance to the state's suppression of church, the quest for values and structure. Each represents a hand reaching out from the crowd toward the garment's hem of Christ, Truth. Are those in the crowd being met halfway? Is their mental reach being welcomed and comforted? The opportunity is for Christian Scientists to be better attuned to those voices and better equipped to respond.
3. It has become apparent that, in too many instances, the Christian Science Church and individual members have somehow allowed the public to define them instead of their defining themselves for the public. Part of this has to do with a desire not to offend or to proselytize. Another part has to do with fear of being misunderstood, or worse, of disapproval. But the greater part of this reticence may lie in the heart and in withholding from that heart the animating exercise of the spirit of evangelism—preaching the gospel of "... primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing." Mary Baker Eddy, Manual of The Mother Church, p. 17.
Again, Lowell's poem states, "New occasions teach new duties ..." It is our intent to carry regularly in the Journal, and also in issues of the Christian Science Sentinel, the occasions and duties currently demanding the alertness of this Church and its members. And also to report on actions being taken in responding to these challenges and opportunities. The following are two recent examples.
A member awake and active
Jean Carl saw the need to respond and acted. She is an attorney and a former assistant Genesee County prosecutor in Michigan. Not long ago The Flint Journal published an oped column questioning the care that Christian Scientist parents give to their children. The views expressed in the column did not ring true with Jean's own experience—both as a prosecuting attorney specializing in child abuse and neglect cases, and as one who had experienced clear-cut healing through prayer in Christian Science—so she wrote a guest column for the same space.
Her experience was mentioned at the Annual Meeting of The Mother Church in June (see the report in the July 1994 issue of the Journal), but we thought you would also like to read the column as it ran in The Flint Journal.
From The Flint Journal (Michigan)
April 10, 1994
"IF YOU ASK ME
Spiritual healing is effective
option
by Jean P. Carl
"A recent commentary in this space questioned the compassion of Christian Scientists for their children.
"It saddened me to read it, because such a sentiment is so far from the truth. We Christian Scientists love our children. And we care for ourselves and our children through prayer in our religion, which is rational and loving because it is so effective, dependable and gentle.
"While I was an assistant prosecuting attorney for Genesee County who specialized in child abuse and neglect for nine years, there was not a single case involving a Christian Scientist child.
"This kind of care may not be familiar to every reader of The Flint Journal, but it is a system of care Christian Scientists have relied on for more than 125 years. We never would have stuck with it if it did not work.
"In fact, there are scores of healthy families who have relied on Christian Science prayer alone for their health care over many generations. We have carefully verified records of healings of children of spinal meningitis, juvenile diabetes, pneumonia, ruptured appendix, bowed legs.
"I realize it is difficult for those who have come to trust material medicine without question to accept these healings. But many others who are not Christian Scientists have had similar experiences themselves and are glad for God's healing care for us.
"I was healed of a lump in my breast. Naturally I was very fearful, but I called a Christian Science practitioner. We worked together, and it dissolved.
"Although there have been a few, rare deaths of Christian Science children, reasonable people understand that there are unexpected and tragic deaths in every system of care. But it is the overall record that is important, and the overall record in Christian Science is excellent.
"In fact, there is no objective evidence that Christian Science children are more at risk than children who receive medical treatment. In fact, they may be less at risk.
"It's because of this superb record as well as for constitutional reasons that legislators in Michigan and most other states have accommodated the practice of responsible spiritual healing in state law.
"It's plain that legislators are interested in a high standard of health care rather than in giving legislative entitlement to a single system of health care.
"Those who rely on orthodox medicine have come to trust it from their experience. The same is true of Christian Scientists. But we do not resign ourselves to disease or death as God's will.
"And we never would want to have the First Amendment used as a shield for neglecting the health care of children. What we do is hope that those who are interested in this subject will look objectively at the splendid record of Christian Science healing and recognize that this religion like primitive Christianity is lifting suffering from the lives of thousands, many of whom have been given no other hope."
One effect of writing this column deserves repeating from the July Annual Meeting report: "Someone who read the column and had questions about Christian Science contacted the writer. She took Science and Health, copies of our periodicals, and a lecture invitation to this seeker. The seeker's sincere interest led her to talk with a Christian Science practitioner. Another voice in the crowd, reaching out."
Evangel of the Arizona highways
Many members who attended one of the meetings last year that focused on Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy went home inspired to do something new—to read the book with a totally different perspective ... to give a copy to a friend or family member ... or maybe to apply ideas gained from fresh study to heal a longstanding physical or personal trouble.
Mary Roland took her inspiration on the road. She returned from the meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, to her home in Prescott pondering a passage from Science and Health: "Today there is hardly a city, village, or hamlet, in which are not to be found living witnesses and monuments to the virtue and power of Truth, as applied through this Christian system of healing disease." Science and Health, pp. 149-150. The thought came to visit all seventeen public libraries in the county and offer a copy of Science and Health to any that did not have it in their collection.
Mary serves her branch church's community as an Assistant Committee on Publication, and some time ago as an Assistant Committee in Ohio she had visited twenty-one libraries on a similar project. So seventeen seemed manageable.
First Mary discussed the idea with her branch church board to see if they would supply the books. She also called a "most helpful and encouraging" county director of libraries who provided information about locations, hours, librarians' names, and so on.
Equipped with a car trunk full of books and copies of a news story about the naming of Science and Health as one of the seventy-five books by women whose words have changed the world, she took to the highways.
In many small towns in Arizona the library is the center of the community A satellite dish may be behind every second ranch house and mobile home, but many people still drive long distances to libraries for learning, enjoyment, and social gatherings. "So having our books in there is like having a Christian Science Reading Room in their community," Mary says.
Placing the textbook in the local libraries sometimes resulted in Christian Scientists' learning that there were other students of the book nearby. Mary also says that some of them are now more open about their religion because they feel more accepted in the community
Nothing substitutes for on-the-shelves research. Mary noticed in one library that there were several Christian Science books, some in Spanish, but no English Science and Health. A local Christian Scientist commented that this was because the library refused to place the book on its shelves. Remembering that the Science and Health meeting had brought out the powerlessness of resistance to the Comforter, she called the board of her church and asked for the members' support through prayer. Later in talking with the librarian Mary said, "You know, you have a Science and Health in Spanish on the shelf but no English copy." The librarian replied, "Well, we need one, then."
Mary Roland doesn't believe in a limited audience. "There are unlimited opportunities to reach out and make Christian Science and Science and Health available in our communities. But it has to be impelled by prayer. We must love the Comforter and love the community we go into.... Otherwise, we are just putting books on shelves to get covered in dust."
She also stresses following up with prayer and further steps. She returns to libraries to see whether the books are being used, and in this way she keeps in touch with the librarians too. Recently she was working in her branch's Reading Room when one of the librarians she'd visited came in. The librarian said that in addition to the book she'd already received, they needed a large print Science and Health for their easy-read section.
Mary Roland's work has been so effective that she has had to go back more than once to her church board for money to buy books. One librarian told her they had once subscribed to The Christian Science Monitor, but no longer had the budget for it. Mary's branch church decided to provide a subscription.
These reports will appear regularly in the Journal. What you are doing to help others gain an accurate understanding of Christian Science is vital. Send your accounts, ideas, or questions to:
The First Church of Christ,
Scientist
175 Huntington Avenue, A-251
Boston, MA 02115–3187 U.S.A.
A future report will feature a discussion of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act signed into law by President Clinton in October 1993.
Oft to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side.
A great cause, God's new Messiah,
Shows to each the bloom or blight,
So can choice be made by all men
Twixt the darkness and the light.
New occasions teach new duties,
Time makes ancient creeds uncouth;
They must upward still and onward
Who would keep abreast of Truth,
And serenely down the future
See the thought of men incline
To the side of perfect justice
And to God's supreme design....
From Hymn 258 in the Christian Science Hymnal.
Copyright © 1994 The Flint Journal. Reprinted with permission.
