Quiet walks in the English countryside. Reading (most recently, a book about Jesus—in French). Biannual vacations abroad with her husband. Retreats to her country home in the North Yorkshire moors. Friday afternoons and occasional overnights with Francesca, the older of her two young granddaughters. These are a few of ’s favorite things, enriching her busy life as a Christian Science teacher and lecturer.
Lesley was raised not in Christian Science but in the Anglican Church, in Manchester. At 19, while studying French at university, she began confirmation classes at Liverpool Cathedral, the largest in the United Kingdom, and was later confirmed there.
But she soon began to lose faith and questioned the existence of God. “I began to feel it wasn’t really God who’d helped me through all those years—that prayer had nothing to do with my success,” Lesley explains. “Sheer intellectual arrogance. If you’re not careful, it can creep in.”
