Branch Church News

For decades, experts have been predicting that secularization would drive out religion. According to this study by Harvard University political scientist Pippa Norris and University of Michigan research scientist, Ronald Inglehart, those prophecies won't be coming true anytime soon.

The numbers aren't encouraging. Church attendance is down in rich, industrialized countries.

I went to Sunday School in Boston for 18 years, and I found every year to be incredible. Sunday School was the place I could go every week to ask questions, pray with a group, and actively engage in what I was learning.

Mary Baker Eddy's Church Manual provides a simple outline for conducting Sunday School. It includes a succinct guide to teaching, as well as a simple, but precise, "order of services" that includes singing and prayer.

Replying to an inquirer in 1896, Calvin Frye, Mary Baker Eddy's secretary, explained why Sunday School classes were no longer held for adults: In reply to your question about giving adults a lesson during the Sunday School session for children, Mrs. Eddy objects to having her students do this, as she deems the regular church service sufficient for them if they carefully heed the instructions to be derived from the Bible Lessons read at the service.

Love for children is an unbreakable thread that runs through spiritual education, from the earliest efforts of Jewish teachers up to the present. Even in humble households as early as 350 BC, children received at least some religious education.

Looking back And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children. Isaiah 54:13 King James Version Don't push these children away.

What's required for someone to unite with a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, will vary from one church to another, often reflecting the particular culture or times. This individuality is a reflection of "Local Self-government," which Mary Baker Eddy provided for in her Church Manual, under the section "The Mother Church and Branch Churches.

"We're opening our thought and accessing the community," says librarian Emily Preston, one of five active members of the Christian Science Society in Rolla, Missouri. "The challenge is that the Reading Room is inside the church, and it's just a little door off the side.

"We thought, 'We've got to do something to reach the public. ' Because it's no good to do things just for five members," says Pam Gasteen, librarian for the Reading Room in Wynnum, a suburb of Brisbane.