If you're browsing through the bookshop in the Belfast City Airport, you might find a copy of Mary Baker Eddy's book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Or, if you don't go to the bookshop, you could see an advertisement for the book high on the wall above the ticketing area, or spot an eye-catching poster in the waiting room/lunch area. Its ever-so-appropriate headline: "Fuel for your spiritual journey." The ad points the reader to the airport shop as well as to spirituality.com—two places where the book can be purchased.
Advertising at the airport is just one of the ways that the members of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Belfast, are getting the message of Science and Health to its audience. But this willingness to look outward toward their community didn't come easily. Like many in Northern Ireland, there was a time when members of the Belfast church focused on their families, careers, and church work. Things changed with "the Troubles"—a period of civil unrest and terrorism that began in the late 1960s and has only quieted down in recent years.
"I can't speak for others, but I feel that we had a closed concept of church for many years. But after the Troubles began, we were more or less forced to broaden our horizons and to reach out more to other religions and to see good in them without compromising our own position," explains Betty Gadd.
