On Sunday, June 1, The Mother Church service in Boston was broadcast to Berlin and over the Internet. Thirty minutes after the service, Mother Church President Honor Hill welcomed participants to a program about how Christian Scientists in Germany dealt with religious oppression under the Communist government, which banned the practice of Christian Science. who is Chairman of The Christian Science Board of Directors and who had witnessed the effort to regain the freedom to practice Christian Science, introduced the panel of speakers. This account has been slightly condensed.
This arena in Berlin, built just a few years ago, stands in the area that was once called no man's land: a vacuous piece of land, peppered with land mines and traps, that once separated the East from the West. I well remember standing in West Berlin, looking toward this spot, and praying for peace and freedom. Today, progressive and joyous activity abounds throughout that once-forlorn space. So it's very touching to be here today.
I had the privilege and the joy of serving as Clerk of The Mother Church in the late 1980s. In that capacity, I met friends, members, and first-time readers of Science and Health from all over the world. As I was able to travel and share the love of The Mother Church, I also listened to their challenges and their victories. It was the visits with members and friends in the former Communist world, Eastern Europe, that were so meaningful and inspiring to me. We met with friends in East Berlin, Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz), Magdeburg, Leipzig, and Erfurt. We also met with friends and members in Warsaw, Poland; Bucharest, Romania; Budapest, Hungary; Prague, Czechoslovakia; Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Moscow; and Riga, then in the Soviet Union.
