Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality

Hagerty, Barbara Bradley. Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009.

Hagerty, an award-winning religion journalist, turns her reporting skills into a deeply personal and religious search for the healing power of God in the physical world. Having grown up as a practicing Christian Scientist, she left the organized religion when she discovered she was more comfortable with medical help. At that juncture, she had to “cross the river and immerse [herself] in the unnerving questions about God, and reality, and whether what [she] instinctively believed was true—or rubbish” (9). The value of this book for research on Christian Science is the depth from which Hagerty wrestles with the deep convictions in the reality of God and the difficulty of finding that God. Her quest led her to interview many patients and doctors in medical and science fields. In one of the cases, she noted that “contact with death somehow broke the physical laws that held him [the man in the case study] in bondage.” But, she asks, “what if no laws of nature were in fact broken? What if he came in line with spiritual laws that we do not yet understand…?” (279). She concludes that Christian Scientists are more deliberate than other healers about pursuing the spiritual law. “Somehow [its practice] places a person in the path of spiritual power” (280).

ISBN-10: 1594488770
ISBN-13 (Hardcover): 978-1594488771