As a young adult I became a member of The Mother Church shortly after the end of World War II. The decision to join the Church seemed to be the culmination of prayerful years during the war in my native Germany. As I realized later, that period marked the beginning of a deeper understanding of Christian Science and its practice, and of what The Mother Church stands for.
Germany had gone through chaotic conditions during the war. The German Nazi government had prohibited Christian Science, persecuted church members, and confiscated Christian Science books and other Christian Science literature. But nothing could stop the spiritual unfoldment of loving and truthful ideas which I had absorbed in Sunday School at a Christian Science branch church as a child.
As a result, when I was drafted into paramilitary service at age 15, I felt great security in the basic knowledge of God’s love for His children, which helped me keep my peace even under combat conditions and the threat of oppression. I always had my Bible with me, and my mother would send me letters with comforting passages she copied from the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health. I often reminded myself of Mary Baker Eddy’s words on page 110 of her textbook, “No human pen nor tongue taught me the Science contained in this book, SCIENCE AND HEALTH; and neither tongue nor pen can overthrow it.”
The entire family immediately felt the presence and enduring, motherly love of the Church, unrestricted in its reach throughout the world.
Throughout the war my family felt free from fear and persecution, knowing that we were under the wings of divine Love. This became especially clear to us in late June of 1942 while Germany was at war with the United States. The mailman knocked at our door to deliver a letter from the US to my mother, Elsa Mehring. She had earlier applied for membership in The Mother Church, and the letter came from the Clerk of the Church, in Boston. It stated that my mother had been elected into membership. The envelope identified The Mother Church as its sender, and next to the return address was the following statement stamped in large red letters: “Opened and inspected by the Censorship Office of the German government.” It seemed impossible that such a letter could have passed its censors. But clearly it had, and my mother and the entire family immediately felt the presence and enduring, motherly love of the Church, unrestricted in its reach throughout the world.
Today I still feel that mother-love of the Church. Having lived in three countries and traveled throughout the world, I am at home wherever I happen to be, thanks to the global activities of the Church, such as the availability of the weekly Bible Lessons and the Christian Science periodicals, as well as the Church’s mothering of its individual branches. Membership in The Mother Church means to me being part of the spiritual structure—"the structure of Truth and Love”—that blesses all mankind, and uniting with Christian Scientists from all corners of the earth who are dedicated to contributing, through prayer, to the spiritual renewal of the world.
