Back in the 1970s I sat in a church pew listening to an Anglican priest tell about being arrested for his resistance to apartheid in South Africa and his conviction that people's prayers had led to his release. The power of prayer to uphold and defend human rights—it's a message that still rings true and works wonders, as the writers in this month's Frontlines make clear.
They have seen prayer at work in a variety of circumstances and settings from Afghanistan and parts of Africa to Indonesia and the Philippines. And the rest of the issue speaks of other rights: the right to be free of disease, of anger, of fear—all of which can be imprisoning in their own way.
Probably none of these reports would surprise Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of this magazine. From her New England home, Mrs. Eddy scanned the world near and far. She saw that people had a human right to health—that being imprisoned in a sick body was not unlike being trapped in a sick country. With a lifetime of proofs behind her, she could write in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "The power of God brings deliverance to the captive. No power can withstand divine Love." Science and Health, p. 224
